How do electric violins work? I've always wondered, as there seems nothing electrical about them, bows, rosin and normal strings?
I have an old rubbish violin that someone said i should turn into an electric violin, but i don't understand how that works. I'll obv buy a clip on pick up and an amp, and i may paint it but, would painting it have an impact on the sound as it would if you painted a non electrical violin? + how is that really making it any different to a normal violin - wouldn't the strings still make a sound? making a sound come from the violin and the amp? is that the point of it?!
I sound really stupid and i'm not sure how to explain what i mean so i'm just gonna ask, how do they work? xD

An electric violin doesn't need a soundbox because the sound gets amplified by the amp instead. So I don't know how you would turn an acoustic violin into an electric one without getting both acoustic and amplified sound. Maybe if you took the soundpost out? Not sure how much difference that would make.

You can't make an electric violin out of your current one without cutting away major portions of it to leave only a shell to hold the strings on the fingerboard and bridge.

You can amplify it, though and use it as an electric instrument - however as Primrose said, you will get both electric and acoustic sound from it. You do this by attaching a pick up - tone doesn't matter here as the pick up converts the vibrations of the instrument into sound and frequently the sound you get sounds nothing like the original instrument (when I play on stage, I use both a pick up and a mic for my violin - mic sound goes to the audience and I have a small pick up for my monitor so I can hear what I'm up to as well).

If you buy a cheap pick up for it, you will have an instrument that can be used as an electric instrument should you wish, but won't be an actual electric instrument - so if your hopes were of using it to practise silently, you won't be able to do that, but it will be useful if you want to amplify your fiddle.

Mind you - you can attach a pick up to your good acoustic violin if you want to do that...

Maybe the free fiddle would be better off as an art projet, after all?...

I thought the whole point of electric violins is that they don't work - one merely mimes along to a pre-recorded backing track whilst wearing a skimpy outfit.

A couple of the ebay shops are selling Violin pickups at the moment. I've recently got one for Uke and the same supplier does them for Violin. they are only about £6 plus poatage. It you want to know the name of the supplier PM me. don't want to cross the mods by advertising lol.

but it possibly does help to mime in an informed manner. I always cringe when watching any film scenes where someone is supposed to be playing the violin, or any musical instrument for that matter With hi-tech computer animated SFX these days, you'd think they could make things look realistic, rather than footage of someone 'hamming it' very badly.