Time for a little technical post.  

Recording an electric violin is something very different from making acoustic recordings. I've been experimenting a bit the last few weeks: with an amp and a microphone in front of it, directly without an amp, with different preamps. Recording the direct sound, gone through an appropriate preamp such as the Fishman ProEQII, is currently my favourite option, but a problem is that the recorded sound itself is then extremely dry. Your sound then largely depends on the quality of the effects you apply after recording. I experimented with my new Lexicon Pantheon reverb and this does quite a nice job in the end-result.

My main problem with recording "dry" direct sounds is that you don't have a very good "feeling" with your sound (and with your instrument) during the recording. I really prefer a good bit of reverb and a powerful sound while I am playing and this applies even more to recording. The best workaround is sending the fiddle dry to the recording desk, but sending it in parallel to whatever amplifier you prefer. If you record with headphone monitoring, you may need some of that amplified signal in the monitormix as well: this can be done by putting an extra mic in front of the amp and routing it straight to the monitormix (you could also record it as an extra track, you never know what it is useful for).  You could ommit the extra amp and just add some nice "effect sauce" to the violin sound in the monitormix, without affecting the original recorded signal.

For me personally, this had an enormous impact.

Sidenote: trackback spammers are now kicked out of the site!