Thanks for all these suggestions!
John, I'm a bass player so I'm not very educated when it comes to violins.

I'll have her look at these other violin brands and maybe she can start planning on an upgrade in the future. Definately going to try out the ART tube pre and some better effects asap.
Jay, I think our guitar player may have a fishman aura that he uses with his acoustic so that maybe something we could add to her signal chain very easily. I like the look of that radial pz pre. Hopefully Guitar Center(its the only store even remotely close to us) has them available to try.