Hi Joe & welcome to electric fiddler.
Do you mean $2,000 to $2,500? Surely not $25,000! Take it youre in the USA. Its a bit quiet on here at the moment but keep your eye on this site, somebody will help you. I'm English & only have a little experience of the British market, cant really advise you.
Cheers for now.
BAZZ

Greetings,

I am a violin maker (traditional not electric) but when I play in a band I use an electric fiddle. just thought I should register that conflict of interests!

I am supposed to do a lecture soon on the evolution of the violin, I was trawling for photo's of electric fiddles and came across this site.

When you buy a violin - no matter what it is, you should play it for about a week, try different vibrato techniques and dynamics etc, most electric violins have no dynamic range and do not respond to vibrato, this is because many use a piezzo pickup.

A piezzo pickup registers the frequency of a vibration and translates it into an electronic signal that can subsequently be converted back to audio using an amplifier.

Electric violins are almost 100 years old now and it is surprising how few models are effective.

I was working in a violin shop when I purchased my electric and I was in the privaliged position of being able to order as many as I wanted on spec - and getting them at trade price! So money really was no object.

I had £2000 to spend. I ended up getting a skyinbow which was then retailing at about £600 the more expensive ones just didn't respond well. I found many of them really nasal, and you couldn't make them sound like a real violin if you wanted it.

my skyinbow I just plug into a Marshall AR50 (I don't like the digital processing on the AR100) very simple and a great sound! you should be able to buy an Ar50 and a skyinbow for under £1000.00 I would recommend a digital delay pedal for fun! but buy a good one and never use too many pedals, each pedal you use reduces the sound quality.

I am sure a lot of people would disagree with me, but this is my opinion.

just make sure you try as much as you can before you buy, if they have confidence in their product this shouldn't be a problem.

Tend to agree about vibrato, not so sure about the lack of dynamics and sounding 'nasal'. I play guitar and have no problem playing finger tremelo/vibrato on the guitar. Sounds nice through my Trace Elliot amp. I play an Ovation, (I support Ovation in the Ovation/Takamine sound argument/debate), pioneers of Piezo on electro/acoustic guitars. Strange about electro.violin's & vibrato? I bought a Bridge, no trials, bought it on the internet direct from Bridge & its beautiful, acoustic sound is so like a real violin, correction, it is a real violin. You do seem to get a fair amount of reverberation, even with reverb turned to '0'. But hey, I like a reverb sound, within limits. No regrets.
BAZZ

Another way to electrify yourself is to stick with the acoustic violin and have a system fitted- this should not interfere with the acoustic sound, and cost around 2000-2500$ complete fitted.
Hear it :
You can hear how a stringAmp fitted nice acoustic violin sounds, playing totally electric in concert here: www.stringAmp.com - go to the page: "the sound"
they are available ready made too, as 4- and 5 string acoustic /electric violins

I make the StringAmp for violin, viola and Cello

$2,000 is a lot of money to convert an acoustic to an electric!
BAZZ