Andoer Clip-on Pickup Pick-up for Violin with 1/4" Jack 2.5M Cable Compact Professional

For the amount of money, you pay this pickup is amazing. I both it for my daughter violin to play in the worship team in the church. It works very well. Yes as some commented it pickups more of lower tones than higher, I'm speaking only about Violin here, but we actually like it because it gives you a more warm tone and does not produce any echo. It is very lightweight, stay secure on the violin without damaging it. I am really surprised by it. I honestly did not expect this much quality for this price. I can compare it to the professional violin pickup I have on my violin and honestly, this pickup is close to it but way cheaper.

I purchased two of these pickups to have as backups for my viola. Per another reviewer, I added furniture pads to the pickups and found that they are not noisy at all, unless tapped. The two violinists in my quartet ended up using both of the pickups for a gig that we were amplified for, and they worked just fine.The sound guy mentioned that they were "struggling" a little bit, but I'm not sure the audience noticed or cared. They work in a pinch! If you are looking for a permanent pickup to use for every gig, I would suggest spending the money on a nicer one. If you are casually using these for home use or as backups like I do, then they are great for the price.

This little piece of plastic has served me well for literally hundreds of gigs, recording, and practicing. I know this sounds crazy. I ordered this on a complete whim just to mess around with a potential cheap backup to my Fishman in-bridge pickup for some country gigs. IMMEDIATELY I was blown away by how awesome it sounds and how quick it is to set up. Just pop it on your fiddle and you're good to go.PROS:- Cheap. as. hell. No, really, it's $5. Do you know what that means? You can order 10 of them for half the cost of most fiddle pickups. Cable short out? It's cheaper than breaking ONE string. Get drunk and step on it/spill beer/set a PA head on it and break it? No guilt whatsoever, just change it out!- The sound... the sound is great. I'm still experimenting with this little thing. I run it through a little tube preamp and it has given me great sound for bluegrass, modern country, classic country, old time, folk, rock gigs -- everything. If you like the natural sound of your instrument, this is the way to go.- Totally removable! Takes about 5 seconds to put in and out of the instrument. If you play some gigs without a pickup and some gigs with, but want to use the same instrument without an ever-present input jack, this is the way to go.- Doesn't mute the acoustic sound at all. Picks up a great representation of the natural sound without the bridge-muting that comes with some VERY EXPENSIVE pickups.CONS:- Okay... so the quality is not perfect. I've had ONE cord short out on me in almost a year of hard use. But seriously... for 5 bucks... who cares?- The 1/4 inch cable is very light and very short. Not a lot of stage room. You may need an extension or a preamp if you're not VERY CLOSE to your PA head.- The pickup moves around a little depending on where it's placed on the bridge. This does a great job of preserving the sound, but a) makes it a little more likely to feed back when you're playing a really loud rock gig and b) sometimes leads to noise of the pickup moving if you bump it accidentally. But hey, who can hear it over the guitarists tuning anyway?TLDR: just order it and find out for yourself.

I want to get a word of caution out there right away, before gushing over this pickup. I have purchased four of these pickups, and decided to keep two of them. One of them arrive with a broken tip (the rubber-tipped portion that goes into the soundhole / f hole, and is hidden from view) so I sent it back. The other one that I returned sounded pretty terrible, and I am certain that it was not due to user error. Even the two good ones that I decided to keep sound different. So -- keep trying if you don't get a good one on your first purchase! I am lucky that the first one was really good, because I probably would have returned it and not gotten another if the first one was not a good one.That being said, this little pickup is amazing for the price. I was planning to purchase a used electric violin on eBay for somewhere between $325 and $550, when I read a violinist blog entry about the best violin pickups. There were a bunch of pickups priced around $125 to $250, and then this thing. Since it had free returns, I figured it was worth investigating. I got the first one, put it on my violin, and plugged it into my Fishman Loudbox Mini. I was happily surprised. With just a little bit of tweaking on the amp, I was able to get it sounding pretty great. I plugged the violin into a looping pedal, and was able to listen to just the sound of the violin coming through the amp (it is hard to get a true sense of the sound while playing live, with the violin right next to my ear).I was looking for a pickup because I regularly play violin at our church, and we were using a little mic on it. But this mic picked up everything nearby (drums being the biggest offender), so it was pretty difficult to get a good sound. I tested the pickup out on stage, and the sound tech said that the pickup sounded better than the microphone (a Shure KSM137, I think - a $300 microphone), even when I was just playing by myself.I can't recommend this highly enough. Just be patient, and try out the mic on different areas of your instrument. I've attached the sweet spot on my violin. If it doesn't sound like the instrument, then it may be a bad pickup. The one that sounded bad for me was obviously missing high end.Another note: these types of pickups are sensitive to touch. A light tap on the pickup or cable can be heard through whatever might be amplifying it. If you don't move around much, then you should be fine. But it's just something to keep in mind.