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Cello Repair Finished

Monday, April 1, 2013 @9:02:10 AM

I placed photos on my homepage here.

The owner complained about the cello sounding one-dimensional, or that it was as if it had a mute on the bridge, that it had poor tone. She asked me to see if I noticed anything while repairing the crack, that might account for that. Well, it is a trade fiddle. The sides are way thick, at 2.6 mm. No corner blocks. Carved in bass bar. Thick top, over 7mm in the middle in spots. I could have put corner blocks in, but I could not reduce the thickness of the sides. We discussed options, and money, and decided to leave the bass bar in, but to do some judicial thinning around it, and also in the flanks of the lower bouts where it was 6mm where it should have been 4. And I reshaped the bass bar. But the biggest contributor to the poor tone and volume in my estimation was a previous sound post patch that was never dressed out; it was way too thick.

After stringing it up, the tone was markedly improved. It is still a student instrument, but it sounds much better.

I don't perform many repairs, but this one was for a friend, and it was a challenge. Lots of fun.

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