structural:scholar_edition, structural:reformatting
Electric violas

Amplification of a viola with a pickup, an instrument amplifier (and speaker), and adjusting the tone with a graphic equalizer can make up for the comparatively weaker output of a violin-family instrument string tuned to notes below G3. There are two types of instruments used for electric viola: regular acoustic violas fitted with a piezoelectric pickup and specialized electric violas, which have little or no body. While traditional acoustic violas are typically only available in historically used earth tones (e.g., brown, reddish-brown, blonde), electric violas may be traditional colors or they may use bright colors, such as red, blue or green. Some electric violas are made of materials other than wood.

Most electric instruments with lower strings are violin-sized, as they use the amp and speaker to create a big sound, so they do not need a large soundbox. Indeed, some electric violas have little or no soundbox, and thus rely entirely on amplification. Fewer electric violas are available than electric violins. It can be hard for violists who prefer a physical size or familiar touch references of a viola-sized instrument, when they must use an electric viola that uses a smaller violin-sized body. Cale, formerly of The Velvet Underground, is one of the more notable users of such an electric viola and he has used them both for melodies in his solo work and for drones in his work with The Velvet Underground (e.g. " Venus in Furs "). Other notable players of the electric viola are Geoffrey Richardson of Caravan and Ramsey.

Instruments may be built with an internal preamplifier, or may put out an unbuffered transducer signal. While such signals may be fed directly to an amplifier or mixing board, they often benefit from an external preamp/ equalizer on the end of a short cable, before being fed to the sound system. In rock and other loud styles, the electric viola player may use effects units such as reverb or overdrive.