How do electric violins work?
Hollow-body electric violins usually use a vibration transducer – typically a piezo-electric accelerometer – to pick up the vibration from the instrument body. These can be mounted on the body near the bridge, under the bridge inside the body, or integrated directly into the bridge (instrumented bridge). Solid-body electric violins normally use an instrumented bridge. Several examples of electric violins can be found at http://www.woodviolins.com/ and of the vibration pickups at http://www.schattendesign.com/ . I have also seen home-built solid-body electric violins that were fitted with metal strings and used coil pickups similar to those used on electric guitars.
