Pickups for bowed guitar

[Jazz Noise]

That's technique, I'm afraid. Apply the rosin to your strings, try to angle your bow. Guitars with higher action or a large fretboard curvature deal better with this.

It works well on bass, but it makes s**t of the bow!

[litepipe]

Also be prepared to get rosin all over the guitar. Clean it after every use so it doesn't gum things up.

[gouge]

yeah prepare to trash your bow so don't use antique one from a violin.

you've really got to bash your strings hard.

[Silent Sound]

Use a cello or bass bow. They have more mass and can dig into those strings easier. I used a cello bow back when I was experimenting with that and never had that problem. But I also used it on a hollowbody electric with humbuckers, if that makes a difference. Now I either use an ebow or just play a cello or violin. I just couldn't jive with the bow on a flat bridge. It was dead-end for me, but I'd still encourage other people to try it out and see where it takes them.

[tundra]

Originally Posted by JieXian

hi Gearslutz,

my stock pickups can't pickup the bowed sound from the treble strings... I can hear it acoustically but nothing comes from the amp

Are there any particular type of pickups (low budget) I need to get the sound?

thanks

Guitar pickups will generally have a poor time picking up bows.

This guy uses a special magnetic pickup on his electrics

Www.togamanguitars.com.

[nedorama]

Um, Jimmy Page didn't have a problem with guitar pickups and bows. You'll need to turn up. Delay helps.

Jimmy Page Guitar Solo Violin Bow - YouTube

[JieXian]

What do you mean by special magnetic pickup on his electrics? I have a humbucker.

My problem is that while it picks it up it's very much softer than normal picking. Thing is, acoustically, the difference isn't that big.

I tried with an acoustic guitar using bridge pickups and the bowing sounds are waaaay more well balanced

[decay-o-caster]

do you have the problem when you're fretting all up and down the neck? my first thought was that your pickup might be sensing at a harmonic node, which would make it far less loud than if it's sensing between the nodes. but of course, if you have the problem everywhere on the neck, that's not the answer...

[Silent Sound]

Does the guitar sound well balanced when playing with a pick or your fingers? Basically what you want to do here is eliminate the possibilities to find out exactly where the problem is coming from. So first I'd make sure the guitar itself is working properly. If everything checks out there, then I'd make sure your strings are new. Old strings don't produce much in the way of treble anyway. If they're good, then I'd probably try a new kind of rosin. I wouldn't think rosin would cause this type of problem, but it's definitely easier to bow with some good rosin, and rosin is cheap, so it's worth getting it out of the way early. If that's all good, then I'd look at replacing either the bow or the guitar. Since neither of those are cheap, I'd save them for last.

Then again, it could just be your technique. You might be applying too much pressure on the bass strings and not enough on the treble strings (for lack of a better term). That's one of the things about using a bow. They are incredibly hard to keep a constant and even pressure over multiple strings at once throughout the stroke. So you might want to try to grip the bow like a double-bass player would, instead of how a violinist does. I kind of used my own grip method back when I was doing this myself. It was pretty similar to the double-bass style, but not exactly. I didn't really know what I was doing at the time, and just experimented with a bunch of different grips until I found something that worked for me.

[Jazz Noise]

Originally Posted by decay-o-caster

do you have the problem when you're fretting all up and down the neck? my first thought was that your pickup might be sensing at a harmonic node, which would make it far less loud than if it's sensing between the nodes. but of course, if you have the problem everywhere on the neck, that's not the answer...

+1! Bowing over a pickup could be a serious problem, too.

Another thought in regards to the acoustic guitar - what gauge do you use on your electric?

[JieXian]

Thanks for the help people.

Jazz noise, I think you've got it. I went to the shop a few days ago and the guy told me to raise my action and hence tension of my trebles and it sounds better. I've just realised that the 1st string on my acoustic is 14 or 15 as opposed to a 10 on my electric :D no wonder

decay-o-caster, I do realise that bowing on the harmonic node doesn't bring out the sound and it really sucks because the contour of my guitar forces me to bow before 14th fret if I want a clean single string.

I haven't tested it extensively but that should be it

(somehow I can't get my signature to show although I checked "show your sig" ...)

EDIT: nevermind it's just this thread