Customer Reviews

Barcus Berry 3100 Clamp-On Bridge Violin Piezo Pickup

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm a guitar player, not a violinist, but I purchased this pickup for my daughter who has been playing violin for several years. I also run the sound board at our church and it's always been difficult to get the violin mic'd, so I thought I'd find a pickup suitable for violins. My first pick was a Fishman V100 Violin Pickup, which is similarly priced. Please learn from my lesson and avoid that product; the method for attaching it to the violin amounts to a zip tie that straps the jack to the tail-piece, not to mention that my unit failed to produce any sound once installed. The Barcus Berry is a great product. It installed securely to the violin in 10 minutes and it produced good tone, even through my guitar amp. In a nutshell, this product works!

This is used frequently in semi-professional performances. Easily connects to standard sound equipment. It can be a little bit tricky to mount correctly to the bridge, but provides a great sound once installed. It tends to damper the sound of the violin a bit when not used with an amplifier. Fortunately it can be removed and installed when needed.

Bought this for my wife as a birthday present. Wanted something to enable her to move around when performing, and to boost her sound, as she'd previously been stuck playing next to a conventional mic. It took no more than 5 minutes to work out how to attach it to the bridge, then a couple more to get the female socket into the desired position, and then the sound guys just plugged her in, with an immediate, positive result!

We've not had a huge amount of time to judge the sound quality, and we cannot compare against other similar products, but compared to standing next to a mic it's a revelation. So, very easy to set up and apparently very good sound- what's not to like?

I bought it for my daughter's violin. With very little effort I could fix it to the bridge and body of the violin as shown in the picture. It works fantastic.

To start off - the pickup works great. I get a very nice amplified sound while using it. It took a lot of work to get it to being usable, though. (And I probably just got one of the "bad apples" that happen with electronics every once in a while.)

The Instructions: They're not very useful. It'd probably be easier to look at the picture Amazon provides for the item than to read the installation instructions they provide. The photo of the setup they provide with the instructions is also incorrect and inconsistent with the written instructions.

The Clamp: The arms on the top half of my clamp were ever-so-slightly smaller than the arms on the bottom half, making the screws that hold them together too large to keep the clamp on my instrument. I had to take pieces from two different chin-rests (a violin chin-rest and a viola chin-rest) to make it such that the rig wouldn't *fall off* of my instrument and take the bridge and pickup with it.

Functioning: As I said, I get a great tone out of it (while amplified), but because of the clamp issues and the length of the wire (from clamp to pickup), I get a ridiculous amount of buzz. The buzz does get covered up when I'm playing amplified, however. Also - the product does warn that the sound of your instrument will be changed while playing unamplified. This is very true - I feel like I lost some tone depth after I installed this pickup.

So - I would recommend this product to other people, but if you manage to get one with problems, be prepared to get frustrated. And make sure you have some chin-rests or chin-rest parts available, just in case.

Firstly, the assembly and attachment: COMMON SENSE!!!
(I would venture to say that this isn't such a common commodity, so perhaps include some diagrams for those who struggle?)

Secondly, the sound: Great through a good quality accoustic amplifier, and quite "nasal" through a P.A. system. Both good quality units but one better designed to handle the specific requirements of an accoustic instrument. With effects in place, both P.A. and AMP are fine, as they only need to "enlarge" a processed sound and the differences are neglibable.

Thirdly, the service and delivery: Well three days to Perth, Western Australia - all intact and ready for assembly. Nothing wrong with that either! The fact that we live geographically at the arse end of the "snail mail trail", the same purchase through a retailer would have taken around three weeks and cost anything up to 10% more just for shipping.

I notice that one bad review for this product wasn't even for this product. Such reviews don't help others researching an item. (Bet he needed pictures to assemble whatever it was that he did buy.)Honestly people, you get what you pay for, and for the price, this is a good device.

Four stars, and merry Christmas.

Ordering online is normally a great experience, unless the product is defective. Then you rely on the return process. Well what a painful experience we had. The Barcus Berry clamp on bridge came with the wrong parts. We could connect it to the violin bridge but the mounting hardware for the 1/4" plug was not properly matched. Basically the threaded tightener was a different thread size than the screws (shown in bottom left of the picture) It took several weeks to get my full refund processed. During the process, MusicianVIP told me that they had several Barcus Berry 3100's come back and that they were all being shipped back to Kentucky. They said I would have to wait. After several emails, I asked for a full refund which took TOO long. They also suggested that the Barcus isn't as good as a Fishman.

The whole process from receiving the product to getting my money back took over a month.

I had also communicated by email with Barcus Berry directly. Send them an email and you get a reply saying that they don't check email often.

I give it a 1 because the product arrived new and unusable, the reseller seems to be getting a number of returns, and I wasn't impressed with Barcus Berry.

Item is as expected - fine. I paid £22 postage up front. Unfortunately the seller forgot to pay postage so I had to trail off to the post office collection depot and pay a further £11.60 to collect the item. E-mail to the seller in America was unsatisfactory as they did not appear to understand English. There's no-one as deaf as those who don't want to hear!