NickA

Wondering what might be the best place to sell 'cellos and bows. My dad died a bit ago and I have his two 'cellos and umpteen bows to move on. One of the 'cellos is seriously valuable, so will probably have to go via a dealer or auction house. The other "teaching" 'cello is up on Musical Chairs and I might put the more valuable bow up there too ... but it's £10 per listing per 6 months and quite up market ... probably not the place for several mid quality bows. Any suggestions?

I've found the pjb kit works fine alone. Nice high piezo friendly input impedance and a built in hpf. Mr Jones knows a thing or two about bass amplification Depends on the pickup tho, I guess.. certainly works nicely with my realist sound clamp...so long as it's clamped to the right bit of bridge with the right amount of pressure.

Hi Silvia, you're no smaller (vertically!) than the lady who sits next to me at orchestra. She plays a 3/4 Bryant 5 string (rather better than I do) and would struggle to breach 5ft.

Problem with thumb rests is that they lock your right hand onto a particular bit of the bass robbing you of all kinds of tonal variety. And take your thumb away from damping duties. Probably why you'll almost never see one on a really nice bass ... or being used by a really good bassist! Snobbery? Yeah maybe ... just take this as the opinion of an aging jazzer 🙂

I was going to post that damn you 😂 🙂

Absolutely! But won't help the op with the twizzling eub issue. Being a cellist before an ebassist before a double bassist ....I've always used finger tips with LH thumb gently on the back of the neck on all three. Imo hooking your thumb round the neck and flatting your fingers is asking for trouble, even without a motorbike injury.

You don't HAVE to use a pre. My realist pickup goes straight to the bass amp and usually sounds fine. It does have an onboard volume control which is useful. A phase reverse might be useful, but they feel weird as the bass's own sound cancels what's coming out of the amp, an EUB should not suffer feedback anyway. Notch filter ... maybe. High pass? Already in the bass amp. Always nice to buy new gizmos of course.

At work we bought a QSC PLX 3602 power amp off ebay (£200 I think) - laboratory quality clean (which is what we needed) and effectively limitless power into tiny impedances. Plumb a sans amp into one of those beasties ...... .... and the next problem is finding a clean speaker 🙂 🙂 Schlepping a rack mount power amp and pre, plus a separate cab around is not ideal, I agree. Hence my super portable little PJB combo.

Don't really understand. Don't you play a double bass and and EUB the same way? And yes you can use your thumb to pluck against, you hook your right thumb under the fingerboard. You don't pluck directly across the strings either, more a diagonal movement using the side of your first and/or second finger. Maybe have a basic start up lesson. I've had far fewer right hand tendon issues from double bass playing than from bass guitar. The usual EUB issue is that they tend to twizel around whereas the dB stays locked to your body as you kind of wrap yourself around it.

Good philosophy. You can turn it off! A filthy amp is only that.

I don't think anyone uses them any more. Quick scan of pics via google doesn't show any current major 'cellist using one. Still, there was stuff Tortellier could do that, at the time, was almost unbelievable. Listen to the spiccato passage in his Dvorak concerto recording .. angling the cello out so as to use only the weight of the bow might have been a factor. And he pulled some marvellous faces too 🙂 At that level I agree you'd want everything to be perfect... at my level maybe not. Good article here saying what's involved; I think the bridge on my sub £10k cello got as far as the start of the section called "carving" then stopped .. which is fine by me. I don't need pretty. https://indd.adobe.com/view/7cba0480-f04f-480c-87fd-68e2ac7bee1e#new_tab

Hannah's mum sent her whole daughter (plus cello and spike) off to the Yehudi Menuhin school ... .. the spike alone evidently doesn't do the biz 🙂

Oh lord I'd forgotten those. Everyone (tortellier, rostropovich) had one in the 70s. So did a lass called Hannah Roberts in my local youth orchestra ...she played Kol Nidrei with us, aged about 8; god we were jealous. Her mum was the peripatetic 'cello teacher for Cambridge when my dad was the one for Huntingdon... she had one too. Cambridge was always posher than Huntingdon. Hannah has done OK with the old 'cello lark ( https://hannahroberts.com/ ) but seems to have dropped the bent pin. 🙂

That's a very popular combination. I have silver wound dominants on my G and C ... the price of silver now makes tungsten a reasonable proposition. I've not tried it but reviews say they can be a bit brash and "metallic" sounding (no kidding, they're metal!). How are they? NB: my 'cello has a nice fat bottom (oer missus) but is a bit harsh at the top end already. I see Larsen also do a tunsgten set now .. Magnacore. Might give them a try as the dominants are a) shot, b) not very good. @Owen, certainly does. Dad stopped playing about 9 months ago saying he'd played everything he was ever going to play and he was only getting worse at it. We wondered what was going on. Then he got diagnosed with a brain tumour ... and now, whilst sitting about waiting for the inevitable, I'm going through 'cellos, bows, heaps of music etc etc. About which, 1970s "self fitting" De Jacques bridges anyone? Sound pretty awful, but £500 cheaper than getting it done properly!

Glad to hear the 'cello work has come good. When you get to sit and play for a while, you soon forget the cost 🙂 My dad's Forster (the £90k one!) has Larssens and he talked me into fitting the same to my 1900 FFC. Too bright, but they do come down a bit with a few hours of playing. The Forster deserves a set of eudoxas .. but it won't be me that fits them sadly. Dad's dying and the forster will have to go.

ignore me. I was trying to track down Andrew McGill ...messaged him on Facebook and he got straight back to me.

Well, I'm sitting in a room with a £1,500 'cello and a £90,000 'cello and can certainly say the £90,000 one has the edge. Not just the tone wood I guess.

That one I did get shot of ... kind of sadly as I sort of miss it. All those knobs and sliders ..ahh. All that weight and inability to play quietly .. not so much.

Very unusual. You have to scrap a Wal bass to get a pair of those... and why would you.

Bridge adjusters. I got Tim Batchelar to convert my old fixed bridge and it is an amazing improvement. Down for easy action and extra mwah when jazzing, up for extra tone and volume at orchestra. Go to any jazz gig and you'll see the bass has an adjustable bridge. The " proper" thing to do is fit a high enough bridge to get the best tone and volume, then get the fingerboard raised to give you the action you want....expensive but perfect if you're only going to play one kind of music on one kind of string.

You expect me to subject my HiFi to rockabilly? ...it was an android tablet, so you're close 🤣😂🤣

Give it a go. Surely less damage to be done on a tin bass than on a wooden one. I presume the sound post is wood not aluminium! My dad used to do sound posts on cellos all the time ...I have his special tool ..but have yet to try it. Seems like one of those hard to learn but invaluable skills one should have.

Sounds suprisingly good ...what can be heard behind the guitar and vocals. Need a volume control for your guitarist tho. More bass !!!! ( non bass players may not agree 🙂 )