The Failing Victory of Upgrading My Cello: A Long and Ridiculous Story

If you've read through my blog you've seen all the posts about repairing guitars and other musical instruments.  I think it got to my head.  I've had a lot of success repairing, building, and modifying guitars and fretted musical instruments.  I thought, "Well, I can upgrade my cello the same way.  There are lots of luthiers who work on both guitars and the violin family of instruments."

Well, it turns out, I am not one of them.  I had so many things go wrong while working on this cello it will make you cringe.  It makes me cringe.  So I will tell my tale of woe.  Just know that it's not all bad.  I did end up putting my cello back together.

So here was the plan.  I wanted to upgrade my tailpiece and change my wooden peg tuners to metal gear tuners.  Step one was purchasing a harp style tailpiece, gold fine tuners, and a tailpiece cord.  All of it looked great out of the box.  That is, until I tried to put them together.  The tailpiece had a decorative ridge on it that the fine tuners couldn't fit around.  So I ended up sanding down the tailpiece with a sander.  In a bit of stupid luck, it ended up working out great.

While violin family basses (officially called a double bass) come standard with metal tuners, cellos do not.  It was all but impossible to find metal cello tuners made in the same style as basses.  There are other metal tuners that are disguised as wooden tuners, but that's not what I was after.  I wanted the metal looking ones.

It seemed that in all the world there was just one seller that sold them.  I was able to find him on E-Bay.  I bought a set, and if you look below, you can see the problem with them.

They don't come anywhere near fitting the peghole spacing.  So I e-mailed the seller about returning them.  He made me an offer for a discounted set of tuners that were four individual tuners instead of one solid piece per side.  So I went ahead and ordered them.

However, things took a turn for the weird as I was called away during the summer.  So I didn't have the chance to work on the cello for almost four months.  When I got back I decided the next thing to do was install the four individual tuners.  This is where I had numerous problems.

I had to ream out the pegholes to fit the tuners, only to find out the tuners were not made at an angle.  If you look at the scroll of the cello headstock you'll notice it narrows down.  The tuners were made at a 90 degree angle.

So I ended up filling in the pegholes so as to re-drill them.

Do you notice a problem?  If you do I wish I had you beside me when I screwed up.  I filled the wrong holes.  The tuners are staggered the other way.  I put the cello away for the day so I could calm down.  The next day I ended up filling up all the holes.

After I had let the glue dry for 48 hours I ended up re-drilling all of the pegholes so that the tuners would sit at a correct angle.  I then dry fitted all of them.

The screws they sent me were completely abysmal.  I tried one, and said, "Nope."  I immediately went to Ace Hardware and bought two sets of screws.  Both were the same size, but one was brass colored and the other standard steel metal color.  Luckily the brass colored ones were strong, and I had no problems with them.

Before I installed the tuners I took a wood dye pen, and colored the reamed wood.  That way, it was all the same color.  Everything looked as good as it was going to get, so I carefully installed the tuning pegs.

It looked alright, but the job was still far from finished.  During all this work my soundpost ended up getting knocked down.  I said "To heck with it," and had Luthier John Importuno install it correctly.  He was really cool about the entire thing.  But even he admitted, "He hated those metal tuners."  I understand.  Every musician has their own style with likes and dislikes.

So now that the soundpost was back up it was time to tune up the cello.  I brought it home, and started tuning it up.  This should be the end, right?  Nope.  The brand new tailpiece cord that goes around the endpin snapped.  My tailpiece, strings, and bridge all came crumbling down.  I ordered a newer, stronger cord.  Mercifully, the seller shipped it quickly.

So I put it all back together again.  I had a problem with the "D" string tuner.  It would turn forward, but wouldn't turn backwards when I was trying to tune.  There was one spot in the gear that was a little rough.  I eventually got it to catch, and then I was able to retune.

So finally!  Finally I was able to get my cello back together after it being in pieces for almost seven months.

So how did it sound?  Well, like I needed new strings on it.  I looked at the strings when I was putting it back together and saw how worn they were.  Then it occurred to me just how old they were.  Do you know what a good set of cello strings cost?  The ones I like are $140.  Yeah.  Not kidding.  So I'll hold off on buying those for a while.

But overall, the cello sounded pretty good.  I was able to play it for about 20 minutes.  I'm still an okay player.  Not great, but I can have a bit of fun with it.  I broke my right hand last year, and it makes it difficult for me to hold my bow.  I can only play for a few minutes straight before I have to take a break.

If had to do it all over again, I would go back in time, and try to warn myself.  You know, like in Sci-Fi movies.  I'd tell myself, "It just ain't worth it."  Even if my cello looks somewhat steampunk now.  Of course, if I wanted it to have a steampunk look, I'd just play it with goggles on.  But I digress.

Just remember this kids, if you have an idea of upgrading your orchestral instrument, talk it over with a professional luthier first.  They have contacts with dealers/suppliers that you are not aware of.  They can determine a better long term plan for your instrument.  But just remember the first thing I tell all players, "Have fun with it."  And I should have heeded my own advice.

Operation Pedal Clean-Up: Austin Gold Overdrive

Twenty years ago I worked at an independent music shop.  The owner, Don, bought guitar and amplifier brands that weren't carried by Sam Ash, Mars, or Guitar Center.  He said he, "Couldn't compete against their prices."  One of the brands he carried was Rocktron.  They were known for their rack gear and pedals mostly.  

I was playing around with some of their pedals one day when I came across one called the, "Austin Gold Overdrive."  It was an overdrive pedal unlike any I had ever heard before.  With a name like Austin Gold you'd think it would be another Tubescreamer copy, but it wasn't like that.  Back then, I wasn't sure how to describe it.  I only knew I liked it.  

Fast-forward to the future I recently looked up information on it.  I read where other musicians gave their thoughts on it.  A lot of them decribed it as "Light overdrive boost pedal that doesn't color your sound."  Okay, I realize that's a lot of musicianese.  Let me translate for those who don't understand. 

There are really three things happening with this pedal.  First, it's a light overdrive.  That means it adds a touch of break-up.  Think of Jimi Hendrix's song, "Hey Joe."  The very first notes of the song have a slight break-up.  This pedal does exactly that.  

Second, it's a boost pedal.  That means your volume goes up when you engage the pedal.  It helps when using the pedal when playing a solo.  

Third, the pedal doesn't color your sound.  A lot of players love their amplifiers.  They want a way to add break-up, but not change the sound their amplifier's sound.  This pedal does just that.  It's actually rather rare for a pedal to not to "color" your sound.  

Some players thought that the Austin Gold was a "Poor Man's Klon Centaur pedal."  I can't say I've ever played one of those due to their rarity.  However, I have played the Electro Harmonix Soul Food Overdrive pedal which is a clone of the Klon.  My personal opinion is they are nothing alike.  Again, the Austin Gold is kind of it's own thing.  

So what does it sound like?  Well, I have to say it nails any Stevie Ray Vaughn song.  I could also play a lot of Jimi Hendrix songs with it.  I would say any modern blues sound could be played on it.  It's pretty clean so it enables the player to roll their tone knob back, and play really bluesy if they wanted.  

So as I previously stated I had wanted an Austin Gold pedal for years.  I started searching around for one on Reverb.  Twenty years after I played one, they were now considered "vintage gear" and the prices had jumped.  After searching for a few months I came across one that wasn't in such good condition.  It seems that someone had taken black spray paint to the gold on the pedal.  

Since it was being sold at a great price I took a chance on buying it.  I think with shipping it was less than $30.  That's normally considered a steal, but again, the pedal was in rough shape.  I don't know why someone would spray paint it black?  Especially since it covered up all the control knob markings.  So I decided to see if I could clean it up.  This is what I was working with.  

Someone painted the entire enclosure black.  However, someone else tried to clean up part of the pedal.  The first thing I thought of was using some silver polish I had.  It wouldn't be too hard on the metal or remove any of the writing on it.  

I had results, just not good ones.  It seemed to work a little bit, but it looked like it was going to be a long day.  

The silver polish was starting to break up some of the paint, but not all of it.  I started looking for something stronger.  I looked through my bottles of chemicals when I came across my Denatured Alcohol bottle.  

I have to say, this made a difference.

It's not perfect, but I will say it's 95% of the way there.  It's certainly better than the black out paintjob that was previously on the enclosure.  Here's a funny thought, let's take a peek at the aftermath.

This is the pile of rags I used.

 Not to mention I had the paint residue all over my hands.

Don't worry, I used more denatured alcohol, and it took it off my hands.  So, I have to say I was successful when it came to Operation: Pedal Clean-up.  I can read the print on the pedal so I'm happy with my work.  Now, if I would only play my pedal more than work on or write about it.

New Guitar Day: Guild Bluesbird

Back in 2006 I saw my first Guild Bluesbird.  Even though it was on a blowout sale, there was no way I could afford even 1/20th of it back then.  However, it never stopped me from wanting one.  My decision to acquire a Bluesbird ended up becoming pretty easy as of late.

Ever since Gibson came under new management they have become even bigger jack-holes than they have been in the past.  When they decided to sue my hometown Dean Guitars I knew that was it.  I had it with Gibson and thus Epiphone guitars.  I decided to sell off a number of guitars, two of them being Epiphones.

So I decided to sell off four guitars to purchase a Guild Bluesbird.  It just so happened that a really nice one came across Reverb.com a month ago.  I made the choice to pull the trigger, and it purchase it.  There were a few good things about it, and a few not so great things.

Now, the Guild Bluesbird has changed designs over the years.  I wanted one that was made in the Rhode Island plant between the late 90's and early 2000's.  This model is built like a Les Paul, but is completely hollow in places.  It's actually a pretty lightweight model.  It also came stock with Seymour Duncan 59' pickups.

I really liked the flame top, thinner style neck (for a Les Paul style guitar), and overall sound and feel of the guitar.  One thing the seller didn't disclose to me was that the guitar was a 2nd.  I looked it over and couldn't find anything wrong at first.

But once I set the guitar up I saw what the problem was.  The guitar neck was back-bowed at the lower register.  That means no matter how low I set the action the strings would be a hair high from the 12th to 22nd frets.  If this was an overseas guitar it would have passed inspection, but for a higher quality company like Guild, the back-bow made it a 2nd.

I know a lot of people would have sent it back, but the seller had it priced correctly for a 2nd.  The sale also included an original Guild hard-shell case and free shipping.  As the positives outweighed the negatives I decided to keep it.

Here are the photos:

I ended up setting it up in two stages.  First, I gave it a quick set-up and string change.  It was already set-up pretty well, but I gave it a few tweeks to my liking.

Today I put her on the bench and did a little more in depth work.  I made sure to take photos so I'll go over the work I did with the corresponding photo.  Here's my bench.  Yes, I know.  I need to clean it up a bit.

The one thing I wanted to do was change out the resistors.  They had cheap metal film caps in there so I upgraded them to Tropical Fish caps.

Here's the before shot with the original caps.

And here is the after shot with the new caps.

As I mentioned earlier it came stock with Seymour Duncan 59' pickups.  Something I like to do is change the Alnico 5 magnet of the neck pickup to an Alnico 2.  It's an inexpensive way to change the sound without having to buy a new pickup.

The thing I hate about changing magnets is taking a cover off the pickup.  They are serious about soldering it on there.  It's not hard to take it off, it's just time consuming.  I don't want to destroy the pickup.  After a bit of time I successfully changed out the magnet.

One thing I noticed when I originally set the guitar up was that it had been fret-dressed at least once, and possibly twice.  There's not much life left in the frets so I'm going to have to perform a complete re-fret in the future.

But for now she's a fun guitar to play with.  I've got everything set up how I like it.  Again, it just comes down to needing a re-fret down the road.  I played a short sound test, and liked what I heard.  But this means I'm going to have to put the foot down on myself, and hold off buying guitars for a long time.  Let's see how successful I am.  Probably not much.