Violin Pickup Unboxing
After I graduated with my Master of Music degree from DePaul University, I was honestly so burnt out on performing. I was no longer playing because I loved it, but instead felt like it was something I had to do in order to survive. I felt as though my entire livelihood hinged on how well I played the violin, which, as I’m sure you can imagine, felt like a lot of pressure. I decided to take a step back from performing and focus solely on teaching. Teaching helped me rediscover my love and appreciation for music, and when I moved to New Jersey a few years ago, I felt ready to start performing again. I took a few auditions and played at a few weddings, but I noticed that when weddings had larger guest counts, it was very hard to hear my violin, especially when I was playing outside. As of April 2024, I have 14 wedding gigs lined up for the summer (and counting!), and of course I want to make sure that I am heard, no matter the guest count or location, so I purchased a violin pickup. I’ll be honest-I have never used a pickup before! I did some research online, but I found all of the information to be pretty overwhelming. From my understanding, it’s best to have a preamp to go along with your pickup to maintain the sound quality, but all of the pickups with preamps that I found were over $200. A contractor that I’m working with suggested a (very) affordable option on Amazon (without a preamp) and I decided to purchase that one just so I could a sense of how they work, and upgrade to the more expensive one if necessary.
The pickup I purchased is the Andoer Clip-On Violin Pickup CP-60V. It came in a pretty small box with a QR code on the side, but the link just brings you to the manufacturer’s website and lists features of the pickup; no instructions. There was a small piece of paper inside the box with instructions but they were in Chinese. To figure out how to put it on, I just looked at pictures of the reviews on Amazon, but it was pretty easy to do so; just clip it onto the bottom of your F hole so that the pickup is vertical.
I “tried out” the pickup at a gig this past weekend, and the reason I put that in quotes is because I wasn’t the one who actually got to use it. There were four of us, but only three pickups, so since I was playing 2nd violin I did not get to use one. The pickup certainly works, but honestly the sound quality was not that great. I hope that the poor sound quality was because it was being used by a viola rather than a violin; violas are deeper and more resonant instruments and the this pickup is specifically made for violins. Something that surprised me was that the other members of the quartet brought their own amplifier. I was originally planning to use one provided by the DJ, but now I’m considering purchasing an amp as well. If you have any thoughts about this pickup, recommendations for other pickups, or recommendations for affordable amps, please let me know in the comments!
