I'm perfectly happy with the ultra-cheap "Uyea Instruments" one I got off eBay for about £40 including postage.

Downsides: The bow that comes with it was a PoS so make sure you buy another one and keep the other for a spare, and the cable that came with it was crap too. Also the pegs aren't that well seated, so you might need to use sandpaper round the pegs to get the holes to match the peg taper. And the bridge takes a little while to stand properly on the pickup, which makes it tricky initially to get it strung.

Upsides: It sounds perfectly OK through an amp - like a guitar pickup, a violin pickup will never sound perfectly acoustic, but a bit of EQ will take the piezo edge off it just fine, same as with the guitar pickup. The setup is great - the string action and string spacing are set properly and the bridge arch is just right as well. It's also got decent volume and tone unplugged, so you don't need headphones for personal practise. (If you want a fully silent one for practise, this might be a downside.) Batteries last forever. And if (perish the thought) anything does happen to it on stage, £40 for a replacement is not a big deal.

Sure, if I'd spent £400 instead of £40, I'd have a better instrument - no question about it. But there's no way that instrument would be 10 times better than what I've got.

Graham.