Odd question, but definitely for Live Sound

[ezstep]

Okay, guys, put on your thinking caps.

 

Fiddle. Fiddle with Fishman outboard pickup (transducer?). Fiddle with pup onstage competing with other stage noise (the rest of us in the band). Actually, I can get a pretty darned good sound through the p.a., but if I crank her up in the monitors, she starts to squeal far too quickly. So, I need some sort of amp for onstage monitoring for the fiddle only.

 

I tried a Crate acoustic something-or-other (8" + tweeter). You don't want to hear my review, but it was cheap to begin with. I tried a Peavey Ecoustic amp (12" + horn). Better. I even grabbed my old Ampeg BA115 combo bass amp (15" plus horn) and it sounded the best of the three. But, I am thinking something more portable - possibly a keyboard amp???

 

Have any of you guys worked much with a fiddle? The best sound (to me)overall is to hang an SM57Beta overhead, but, again, it feeds back quickly. Give me some other options. No serious gigs are riding on your answers, just a weekend band, but I would like some pointers.

 

Thanks in advance.

[Imwithpepe]

Hhhhmmmm, right now I am running 3 wedges and occassionally a sidefill for a seven piece outfit with a fiddle player using a similar fishman pickup and have no problems with any feedback. Are you any kind of preamp for him/her???

[preacherman672]

I worked with a local band that had a pretty good fiddler. He used a Trace Elliot acoustic amp for on stage monitoring. Worked pretty good.

 

Les

[ezstep]

Hhhhmmmm, right now I am running 3 wedges and occassionally a sidefill for a seven piece outfit with a fiddle player using a similar fishman pickup and have no problems with any feedback. Are you any kind of preamp for him/her???

 

I don't know, but I don't think there is any preamp.

 

I am getting too much feedback from the overhead mic, so we are trying a separate stage amp instead. But, we are still getting some feedback from the wedges even then (not nearly as much as from the overhead). The Fishman is better for stage use than the overhead mic, which picks up cymbals, kickdrum, bass, etc.

 

From a pure sound aspect, the overhead sounds better. Crystal clear. But we lose the stage volume because of quick feedback. Electric guitar, steel/dobro, keyboards, and fiddle - each needs to hear the others clearly to jump in and out and take the fill-ins, the rides, etc. Part of the overall problem is the semi-deaf guitarist who must turn up VERY loudly (but isn't every guitarist semi-deaf and turns up ). The fiddler can hear herself, but the steel player cannot hear her well, and the pianist cannot hear her well, etc. Personally, I can hear it all. But...we are working with musicians, aren't we? They expect perfection.

 

[agedhorse]

I'm pretty familiar with the situation, spent a lot of time with the DGQ guys and have built some custom stuff for that whole scene over my many years of involvement.

 

1. For those small format piezo-ceramic pickups, you can even out the frequency response by using an active direct box with an input impedance of at least 680k - 1 meg. Fishman has a combination preamp/DI that also works well. Mark's active DI is a fine choice. If the output impedance is too low, the pickup loads down and becomes pretty non-linear in response.

 

2. You might try the wedge coming from behind and the side. That can improve the GBF by improving directionality between the ear and the pickup. Remember that any vibration picked up by the body of the instrument will also be amplified.

 

3. Have the player work on their technique... amplified fiddle with competing band sounds needs to be played more up front and agressively.

 

4. Beware of the console eq... mant monitor sends are pre fader and post eq. Listen to the instrument unamplified so you hear how the basic instrument sounds before adding pickup. Youmight be able to improve both the sound and the GBF with judicous use of channel eq.

 

5. Sometimes a good parametric eq inserted on a channel (or a console with a vari-Q parametric) and some time spend understanding the details of how a parametric eq works can be a big help in both the mains and monitors, specifically how to utilize high Q (narrower bandwith) cuts (and not just big cuts).

 

I cut my teeth on the San Francisco jazz, bluegrass/dawg grass scene starting in the late 70's and still work with most of the guys these days. It was a good way to learn, and a pretty cool scene when it was really hot.

 

Hope this helps.

[death metal jim]

I don't have much experience with fiddle players .But I did stay at a Holiday Express once.I mean run sound for a punk rock/bluegrass band last week .The fiddle player ran in to a bass amp and she wanted me to use the direct out. It worked fine no feed back.

[coyote-1]

I'm sure you know this already.... the problem is an instrument body designed to resonate, in order to amplify a tiny little string to be audible in a room. It will naturally vibrate in sympathy with whatever monitoring you use. There's no way around it.

 

Stage placement is the only thing you can do. A violin is right up in the player's face, so she won't need big monitoring to hear herself. She will need her own monitor mix, one that keeps her instrument relatively low while providing her the rest of the band. And she'll have to be located where her instrument does not pick up sound from the other monitors in which her instrument might be louder.

[Black Frog]

 

3. Have the player work on their technique... amplified fiddle with competing band sounds needs to be played more up front and agressively.

 

 

Very true.

 

We have a fiddle player in our band- he toured with Brooks & Dunn for a couple of years. Great player and uses an onstage amp for his fiddle. Sometimes he adds a bit of distortion to his fiddle as well. The amp is mic'd like a normal guitar amp. Works fine and sounds nice.

[agedhorse]

 

Stage placement is the only thing you can do. A violin is right up in the player's face, so she won't need big monitoring to hear herself. She will need her own monitor mix, one that keeps her instrument relatively low while providing her the rest of the band. And she'll have to be located where her instrument does not pick up sound from the other monitors in which her instrument might be louder.

 

 

You may wish to re-read my post... there are most certainly other factors involved.

[Rbts]

If there is the chance that the manner of the pickup is considered, I can share that when I was playing with a string player, she used something called "the band" pickup, and we never had any feed back.

http://larkinam.com/product.asp?pn=ELE622&bhcd2=1174083051

[Imwithpepe]

We use the same Fishman pickup and a Fishman pre-amp to boost him up a little pre-board. That keeps me from having to fight with his volume. His fiddle could be a factor as well. Not to imply that he is using an inferior instrument, but a lot of cheaper fiddles tend to have resonance problems. You just don't get the tone and volume that you need from them. Plus, I keep him wide right on my 5 man front line and space his wedge between him and the guitar player to his right. Not a big fan of overhead mic's for his either. Try an SM-57a Beta on a stand pointed pretty close to his sound hole. Allow for about 18" of clearance minimum. The stand mic will allow him much more movement and freedom than the overhead will and he will have much more control over his own volume. If you can find a good condenser that doesn't sound really bright, that will work as well. The overhead is just asking for feedback in my opinion.

 

I am still a rookie on FOH, but this is stuff I have learned from some research and my own experience.

 

P.S. Aged, feel free to let me know where I might have been wrong in that recommendation. No sarcasm at all. I am interested in your thoughts based on your DGQ experience. Which fiddle player were you working with at that time??? Mike Marshall or Darol Anger???

[GZsound]

I have been running sound at bluegrass festivals for years and never experienced the feedback problems with a fiddle that are described. Maybe in a band with drums, electric guitars, electric basses, etc. there would be a problem, but I can't imagine needing to get the fiddle monitor so loud it feeds back.

 

An amp or powered speaker on stage might be a good idea, but I can't understand why an onstage powered amp would not feed back as bad as a monitor speaker at the same level...unless the amp simply doesn't reproduce the high frequencies as well as the monitors.

 

Haven't seen any fiddle players with amps on stage...yet.

[agedhorse]

Often, variation in mounting positions and methods for pickups can influence both the sound quality and feedback potential for am acoustic fiddle/violin/viola/cello/bass.

 

The problem with anything but tight micing (assuming a miced method of course) is that the bleed from the band will also be amplified due to lack of isolation, and as you raise the level of the fiddle, the level of everything else will also rise leading to no amount of gain solving the problem but certainly leadingto feedback. Miced fiddle from 18" away will sound very nice for an acoustic act with little monitoring needs and good FOH isolatioin though.

 

I have worked with Darol and Mike in a wide variety of their different projects going back to before their (and my) involvement with the ill-fated Windham Hill Records era. One of my old business partners played with Darol and Mike (and David Balakrishnan who was also part of Turtle Island) in yet another long ago jazz and swing project called Onami. I also worked with Darol and ex-wife Barbara Higby in various groups. They are also involved with various studio projects throughout the San Francisco bay area scene. For the most part, they are musically inseperable. I am also good friends with another DGQ fiddle and mando player Joe Cravin who is a local boy. I have done a lot of custom work on his gear over the years. A guitarist who used to play with all of them (including the Onami days) is Dix Bruce... a player who knows or can fake almost any tune in any style and is an unbelieveably intuitive player, now playing with the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra. It was a fun time musically, very challanging and demanding especially considering the state of the gear of 20+ years ago. A lot of custom built stuff that just wasn't available at that time regardless of price.

[Imwithpepe]

 

Often, variation in mounting positions and methods for pickups can influence both the sound quality and feedback potential for am acoustic fiddle/violin/viola/cello/bass. The problem with anything but tight micing (assuming a miced method of course) is that the bleed from the band will also be amplified due to lack of isolation, and as you raise the level of the fiddle, the level of everything else will also rise leading to no amount of gain solving the problem but certainly leadingto feedback. Miced fiddle from 18" away will sound very nice for an acoustic act with little monitoring needs and good FOH isolatioin though. I have worked with Darol and Mike in a wide variety of their different projects going back to before their (and my) involvement with the ill-fated Windham Hill Records era. One of my old business partners played with Darol and Mike (and David Balakrishnan who was also part of Turtle Island) in yet another long ago jazz and swing project called Onami. I also worked with Darol and ex-wife Barbara Higby in various groups. They are also involved with various studio projects throughout the San Francisco bay area scene. For the most part, they are musically inseperable. I am also good friends with another DGQ fiddle and mando player Joe Cravin who is a local boy. I have done a lot of custom work on his gear over the years. A guitarist who used to play with all of them (including the Onami days) is Dix Bruce... a player who knows or can fake almost any tune in any style and is an unbelieveably intuitive player, now playing with the Royal Society Jazz Orchestra. It was a fun time musically, very challanging and demanding especially considering the state of the gear of 20+ years ago. A lot of custom built stuff that just wasn't available at that time regardless of price.

 

 

I am definitely familiar with Joe's work. Just figured that based on the time period you named, you would have worked more with Darol or Mike. I did some work with Darol's Republic of Strings at a festival last summer. He was a great guy to work for. Really nice and humble. Lots of fun to talk to. Nowhere near the taskmaster that Grisman is...

[agedhorse]

All those guys are demanding, but that's the nature of the scene. They are demanding of themselves as well.

 

Most of the shows I have done included both Darol and Mike. I started doing shows with them in about 1981 or so, and worked maybe 10x a year with them for about 15 years. I now work with them 2x or 3x a year but I see Joe a little more regularly as he and I live pretty close in a small college town. Check out Joe's solo albums as well as some older stuff he has done with Rick Montgomery, and his other band Way Out West. He also plays in Psychograss with Darol and Mike and Todd Phillips (another of the regular bay area gang).

[Imwithpepe]

Yeah, I remember the Psychograss stuff. I was still in high school back in the Like Minds days, but I have caught quite a few of the solo projects and worked with Darol when he did Republic of Strings last year. Worked a little with Mike Marshall when he played with Sanjay Mishra about three years ago. Never have worked for Grisman, but I have always had a ton of respect for his music. You might find that I will be bugging with questions now that I know your experience. :cool:

[Rick6]

One simple idea that occurs to me comes from the archtop jazz guitar world, where feedback is a constant headache.

 

Some of the guys report that blowing up a party balloon inside the instrument stops the feedback and doesn't appreciably affect the tone. [my own experience is that filling a guitar with a sofa worth of foam muffled the acoustic sound and didn't noticeably affect the amplified sound with a piezo under the bridge].

 

Well, maybe it won't work, but it will only cost about a nickel to try and you don't have to modify the instrument.

[ezstep]

Full "dress" rehearsal last night. It went very well.

 

My final rig? Fiddle/violin through a bass amp (Ampeg BA115 - it has a small piezo tweeter) with the line out for the p.a. and back into the monitors just enough for a little presence, so the guitarist and steel, etc., can hear and not step all over each other on leads. It sounded very good last night. Small show tomorrow evening, and then a full p.a. mix next weekend with the p.a. and monitors cranked, expecting about 800 people.

 

Should be fun.....

Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

I do agree that she needs training to step up and take control of a lead when she wants it. If you don't take your turn at lead and there is one or two seconds of nothing but rhythm, you lose your turn and someone else jumps all over it. She cannot afford to be shy, but I think I can get that out of her. And, that will only get better with time.