KNA Pickups KNA VV-3 Portable Pickup for Violin and Viola

surprisingly good for a purely passive pickup, works great with my thomann 3/4 bass.

The sound from this pickup is remarkably good. I’ve gigged with it playing through a tonedexter wavemap/preamp into house PA systems where it sounds good and quite acoustic violinish I’m told though part of that is down to the tonedexter. Into an LR Baggs di it’s ok. No tendency to feedback. It does need careful fitting to the bridge. So pleased I bought 2 more, one for my viola and one for my second fiddle.

Great pickup but too fat for the bridge unless you sand it. I place it in f hole instead and seems to work fine.

Great sound for the price! The quality of sound w/this pickup is unbeatable, like other reviewers I too think the end bit that sticks out would be much better if it faced down and not up, but other than that top quality output and easy to install w/no damage to instrument. Will be buying KNA product again for my guitar. Lead isn’t the greatest but not awful either. Well worth the purchase!

Superb pic up for my 200 year old cello. Easily fitted, and stable once in place.Perfect for when I’m playing in public, plugging it directly into my Bose amp…no need for any additional pedals. Sound is far better than the much more expensive pic ups I’ve tried in the past. Thank you.

Pickup arrived promptly, well packaged and with clear simple instructions. Included was a little tool to tighten the barrels on the attached good quality "carpenter style" jack socket.The barrels were long enough to fit my viola, though I wonder if they might struggle with a very large instrument? The kna website suggests the pickup ships with spare longer barrels for such an instrument?As a precaution, I loosened the top two strings to avoid any distortion in shape of the bridge and set too with emery boards (used to file finger nails.) In no time at all, I had a snug fit for the piezo element. (See the photo)First impressions: plugged into a 1M ohm instrument input- a balanced, warm sound with lots of signal (more than I was expecting). Eventually, I boosted the presence and cut a little of the lows to closer resemble the acoustic sound of my viola. Not that you'll need to if using say, a smaller guitar amp. 😁After a good long play, I was impressed by the usability of the sound - NO buzz, distortion, or hum. Maybe use a hi-pass filter to minimise handling noise if going into a large pa? As someone who's used amplified strings many years- my violin has the (industry standard) L.R. Baggs fitted - I'm VERY impressed, especially considering the price!

I really wanted this to work. It seems well thought out. I tried some sanding of my violin bridge but it was still too broad to fit. I really don't want to go too far since the violin is set up perfectly at the moment. So I and reluctantly returning the item as too large to fit.

Installed the pickup within 5 minutes of it arriving at my door. Extremely straight forward process. My Romanian 3/4 size double bass needed just two of the extra shims to fit snuggly in the left wing of the bridge.The jack input attaches to the ailpiece very effectively as well. The sound is just what I expected for the price and can really shine with the correct preamp and speaker.I’m very happy that it can easily be removed and is not too obvious.