Stompbox to make a guitar sound like a fiddle

[WesMVaughan]

Is there anyway a stompbox can be made to do this? Make the guitar sound like a fiddle? If not, why not?

[R.G.]

Define the word "like",  a measuring technique to measure how much "like" is in the result, and a suitable passing score.

[theundeadelvis]

Watch the EHX Effectology Series on Youtube. You may find something close there.

[Philippe]

Perhaps best to start off by addressing an ages-old question...what's the difference between a violin & a fiddle? Answer: nothing.

So with that in mind, maybe all you need is something like a BMP with its classic violin-like sustain
                                                                   OR
you can always take the Jimmy Page approach & use a violin bow on the strings of your LP.

[R.G.]

Even more interesting is to define the differences between a guitar and a violin. 

[oldschoolanalog]

GR-55
   

[WesMVaughan]

I always thought that a fiddle was when the violin is played outside of classical music.

what is BMP?

I will check out the EHX Effectology series when I can get on a non-dial up computer.

There is something I think Roland makes where you install a pickup on your guitar that runs to a multi-effects processor. I seen a guy that had this on his guitar and he could get violin, B-3 organ, piano etc.  I was wondering if an analog stompbox could create just the fiddle/violin sound without needing a special pickup or tons of other useless sounds.

EDIT: Yes the GR-55. But I don't want to spend $719 for all that. Why can't it be done in a stompbox?

[artifus]

i'm guessing a swell pedal.

[Liquitone]

problem with a swellpedal is that although you can make those cello like long notes it wont be fast enough for fast notes,
the only thing ive tried that comes anywhere close to a violin so far has been to use actually use a real violin bow on a les paul type guitar (strat,tele,etc. are to flat to get the angle for single notes on the high and low E strings) I prefer a cello-bow to a violin bow on guitar because the added weight helps getting the preasure on the strings more easily. Adding a bit of drive helps to get the notes going more easily.(I tend to use a fulldrive 2 for it but every other overdrive will probably do.)

the lack of roundness on a guitars fretboard makes it hard playing single notes on anything but the high and low E strings though. oh,.and its quite easy to get some horrible dissonants too, especially higher on the fretboard.

[WesMVaughan]

Yea those are some good ideas...and then there is the e-bow. I am looking to alter the TIMBRE of the guitar to the TIMBRE of a violin.

This has got me wondering about the differences between violin and guitar TIMBRE. Most of the TIMBRE must come from the Bow?

I went through the same thing with electric guitar slide Vs. Lap steel.  I found out that the biggest difference was the tonebar slide. I made a great lap steel out of a cheap $99 affinity squier strat by  JB welding a 3/8" bolt for the nut and a 5/8" bolt for the bridge. So other than the steel bolts used for the nut and bridge which might have added something to the sound, and the 3/8" raised action there was not much difference. 

I think Dan electro had a pedal that was supposed to alter the timbre of the guitar to a sitar. Boss also makes an acoustic simulator.

I thought I heard that Dimebag used some kind of fiddle effect on the song Rebel Meets Rebel. Someone told me that he might have used some kind of harmonizer. Others have said that someone actually played fiddle on that song.

[Galego]

Buy an e-bow? 

[Hides-His-Eyes]

The closest I've gotte is with using a real bow on the guitar. So much of the violin's "sound" comes from

a) the easy manipulation of the dynamics and

b) the actual sound of a bow dragging across strings.

the ebow does nothing for b).

[petemoore]

  Fairly convincing and somewhat violin like..
   The volume control on the Tele [or similar, Strat...etc.] is in good position to turn picking 'pop up' ramps into slow rising volume ramps...somewhat similar to some ramps that would commonly be heard on a violin. The reason I mention these guitars is because of the VC placement [with the right pot/knob it is easy to 'pinky-slide' it up/down] in relationship to the picking / pickup area.
  Some delay / reverb helps add to the illusion by adding the 'hall sound' into the mix, to make the content sound ~mimic the accoustics of a place often associated with hearing violins.
 

[Galego]

How about a Boss Slow Gear and a compressor?

[Liquitone]

i have an ebow,. and although it can do nice things like cello like swells and overtones it still sound like an E-bow and not like an actually violin bow, same thing with a swell pedal, slowgear etc
I have to agree with hides-his-eyes on this, the actual sound of the bow and the way you can play with its dynamics.
about timbre, i think violin is somewhat pronounced in the mids, that why i like using a ts-style drive with it. it also gives that grainy violin sound,.clean guitar will sound quite thin with a bow (i think jonsi from sigur ros uses a slightly overdriven marshall)

ofcourse a bow on guitar will never sound exactely like a violin, but its possibly the closest you can get. (I tried a real violin, but my bandmates quickly begged me to get back to guitar)

[deadastronaut]

i'm guessing a swell pedal.

nice simple one...

http://www.wix.com/mjdehuu/guitarfxelectronics#!projects/vstc2=autoswell-experiment

[Joe Hart]

I've heard it said that if you take the initial attack off of a guitar note, then they all sound extremely similar. The differences in "tone" are the picking dynamics that each player adds and that each guitar provides. That being said, an eBow or a BMP or whatever really doesn't address the initial string attack, which is the bow. "Ramping up" the sound takes the initial attack out of the equation and therefore it can sound more violin-like, but never really like a violin.
-Joe Hart

[amptramp]

The dynamics have been covered above and will give some degree of satisfaction, but the harmonic content is another issue.  If you look at a guitar, when a string is plucked, you have a damped oscillation at frequencies corresponding to the string langth and the position at which the string is plucked.  If the string is plucked halfway between the bridge and the fret, you have an isosceles triangle and the waveforms from that correspond to the fundamental plus all odd-order harmonics at amplitudes of the square of the harmonic order.  For example, the fundamental plus 1/9 of the third , 1/25 of the fifth, 1/49 of the seventh and so on.  If you pluck the string off centre, you get even-order harmonics as well and all the amplitudes change with the position at which the string is plucked.  If you have a violin, the bow grabs the string and pulls it out to a position at which the force on the string exceeds the static coefficient of friction and the string snaps back, creating a sawtooth wave with a gradual rise in amplitude followed by a sudden return to rest.  This is followed immediately by the bow grabbing the string again and the process repeats itself.  Once again, when the string is attached to the bow by friction, you have two independent parts of the string on each side of the bow that combine sawtooth waves which have a harmonic content of fundamental plus all harmonics with the amplitude that is the recirocal of the order, fundamental plus 1/2 second , 1/3 third, 1/4 fourth etc.

What you have to do is get the guitar output to match the sawtooth waveform and time the sustain where you want it to imitate the bow stroke.  This means use a sustain pedal followed by a harmonic reshaper that provides a sawtooth and you will get the guitar output to sound like a violin.  This is shown at this site with the option to generate the associated sounds:

http://www.falstad.com/fourier/e-sawtooth.html

which has other examples of waveforms and their fourier components.

[WesMVaughan]

Thanks for all the replies!

AmpTramp, that was amazing.

I have a sustain pedal, can you make the harmonic reshaper?

[artifus]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gizmo

*edit* i'd almost completely forgotten about this device until this thread and wondered, what with 3d printers popping up here, there and everywhere if anyone had considered a little diy project or printing replacement parts?