When is a Cello Worth Restoring?

“Restoration” , as we’ll use it in this text, refers to the act of bringing a stringed instrument as close as possible to new condition using as much of the original material as is feasible.

A full restoration normally results in all of the repairs being made invisible (a very time-consuming and expensive process), and having the original varnish looking as unblemished as possible. Missing exterior wood is in some instances replaced with wood removed from the inside of the instrument, or if that is not possible, replaced with wood of the same age, from the same geographical area, and visually similar if not nearly identical.

Full restorations incorporating the above are usually reserved for important Italian instruments, and undertaken only by the handful of luthiers qualified to do them.

Restorations, however do not have to this extensive, and in fact can encompass only what makes sense for the instrument and its owner. A few years ago it didn’t make a great deal of sense to restore, or in some cases even repair, 100 year-old German commercial instruments. Now that they have become scarce, and in many cases their old sound more mature and desirable than anything new, their current value suggests that it may make sense to consider at least a partial restoration.

Here are a couple examples. A cello was sent to us from the Midwest: a nice maker-instrument from early 1900’s Germany, purchased at a good price from a reputable auction. Excessive use of dampits (read the Cello Chatter on humidifying your instrument) caused extensive warping and even rotting damage in the lower bout area near the endpin, and invited a colony of woodworms to take residence there. The worms gradually ate most of the wood between the varnish and the inside of the rib area near the endpin, leaving almost no structure to the wood. Any small trauma, like a bump or even a tap, caused cracks and just general collapse. Outside this area however, the cello was in very nice condition.

We removed the part of the two lower bout ribs that could not be repaired, grafted new (actually old but solid) wood onto the good part of these ribs, varnished to match (the splice was almost unnoticeable), did a few other repairs and the cello was in great condition. Even with the cost of the repairs and the cost of the cello at the auction, the Midwest customer paid far less than the cello was worth when it was done.

What about an older cello whose accepted monetary value in repaired condition (remember that great sound has little to do with a cello’s net worth) is, let’s say $3500. You paid $3000 for it, the neck is loose and needs to be reset, there are some cracks in the ribs where your 8 year-old brother (or son) inadvertently dropped a baseball on it, and you’ve noticed another crack in the top because you thought that you really didn’t need to humidify the cello’s living space this winter. Your luthier said that it would cost about $1000 to fix what ails it, and you would then have more into it than it is worth. But you love the sound: in fact you played some new cellos in the local shop and you hated all of them, and they cost $4000 - $7000.

My thought is that if you have an older instrument that works for you, it makes sense to consider repairing and/or restoring it as long as it doesn’t outlandishly exceed its current appraisal. As shop owners, we would make far more money selling you a new $4000 cello than we would restoring yours. But old sound is lovely and increasingly hard to come by. And instruments with properly-done repairs play as well as those without repairs at all. They just aren’t worth as much.

Other than the restoration cost grossly exceeding the instrument’s value, when is it not a good idea to restore a cello? Recently we were offered a German cello from the 1920’s. It was in decent condition, although it began life on the other side of the tracks with a thick sprayed varnish (somewhat unusual in my German-commercial experience), and somewhat rough workmanship. It played ok, but what finally held us back was that the top had been regraduated (its thickness reduced), fairly recently judging by the color of the interior wood, to the point where it was simply too thin in critical places. The purpose of regraduation is usually to try to darken the tone but the effects, if the procedure goes too far, are usually temporary if the process works at all. The weakened plate eventually can produce less and less sound, and be vulnerable to cracking and sinking. Instruments sometimes survive excessive thinning, but in our opinion it isn’t worth the risk. And it doesn’t make sense to restore one of these unless it is fairly valuable and worth the high cost of a chest patch which may or may not rescue the tone.

As mentioned, older cellos are not as easy to find as they once were. If you have one, find a luthier you feel good about and discuss it with him/her. It might be worth some work and you might end up with a cello that is not only structurally better and much more pleasing to look at, but one with a sound even nicer than it had.

Facts & Fictions About Bows

Instruments in general and cellos in particular are often a mystery to their players. And even luthiers who claim to know everything about cellos cannot consistently craft or adjust a cello to sound terrific. Bows, however, have a mystique all their own.

If you’ve ever sat in a room and listed to a cellist try a variety of bows, you know that different bows can make remarkably different sounds on the same instrument. Which leads to several questions: 1. will a bow a that makes a better sound on one cello than bow b, also make a better sound than bow b on another cello? 2. Will the same results with the same bows and cellos occur if the cellist is different? 3. Will a bow that makes a better sound also feel better to play? 4. Does more money always buy you a better bow?

Let’s start with #3, since it has the shortest answer. A bow that feels good in your hand will often sound better on a given cello than one that doesn’t feel as good, but there are lots of exceptions. We had recent first-hand experience with two cellists, one an intermediate amateur, and one a young national contest winner headed for a career. Both tried bows that felt slightly less good in their hands but produced much better sound to all who were listening, including musicians the cellists brought with them. It’s important to have a bow in your hand that feels good, but make sure it produces the best sound for you.

In regard to questions 1. & 2., a cello needs to fit the cellist: make the sound the cellist is looking for, project and be heard in the situations in which the cellist plays. A bow has to go one step further: it has to fit the cellist, but it also has to fit the cello. Many cellists are surprised to discover that the bow that played just fine on their old cello doesn’t do as well on the cello of their dreams that they just purchased; they find that a different bow makes that better cello even better. And a bow that works great on a particular cello for one person, very often doesn’t do so well on that same cello for another.

What makes a bow work. Like a cello, great workmanship counts big-time. An important goal is to make a bow produce great sound over the entire length of its stick, and not have “dead spots” at any point (which can convince the cellist that his or her technique is faulty, possibly unfixably so, and therefore depression medication is called for). The skill required here is that which cambers (bends) the bow uniformly, much more difficult at the ends than the middle, so that there is uniform flex at all points. Obviously a great piece of wood helps also. A maker bow graduates and cambers the stick according to the characteristics of the piece of wood she or he is working with, and gets the maximum from that particular stick. Less expensive, more commercial bows graduate and camber everything the same: if the planets are all in the right place, you can occasionally find a great playing commercial bow: the cambering was done more uniformly and the graduation happened to match the wood that was being worked. Probably more than cellos, more money can buy you more bow, and it’s good to support fine bowmakers who make their living providing the world with a top-drawer bows; but if you’re on a budget, look around. The commercial companies are getting better at their product, and we’ve sold some amazingly inexpensive bows to national-class cellists who rejected bows costing literally 50 times as much.

Your Cello in Summertime

Summer in Vermont is beautiful: hot, but much less so than most of the rest of the country, lush vegetation and – we are in the east after all – humid.

It is the humid part, probably more than heat, that will affect our beloved cellos. As we talked about in the Cello Chatter on humidity (mostly winter conditions), the wood in our instruments expands in moist conditions, and shrinks in dry conditions.

In the summer, the various pieces of wood in your cello expand in such a way that they cause the angle of the neck to lower, resulting in an increased string height above the fingerboard. The amount of increase varies greatly from cello to cello, but most players find it necessary to have a second, shorter, bridge for summer playing. At the same time, the top and back are expanding in a direction perpendicular to the grain which, because of the arching, causes them both to pull away from the soundpost. A complicated way of saying that if you loosen your strings yourself to change to your summer bridge, your post will likely fall, causing you to use inappropriate vocabulary and necessitating a trip to your luthier before you can play again.

It’s not any better for your post to be this loose in the summer than it is to be tight in the winter, so June is a good time for your cello to visit the shop and have both the bridge changed and post adjusted. You may be amazed at how much more easily and beautifully your cello plays after you do this.

Another humidity-related annoyance is your pegs. In the winter, dry conditions can cause the pegs to shrink (it’s a little more complicated than that but it suits our purposes here) and you take your cello out of its case only to discover than all your strings are loose and your bridge is laying in the bottom of the case. Summertime is worse for pegs though. They swell, essentially, and when your fine tuners are maxed-out, requiring tuning from the pegs, you find them completely unmovable, stuck in their pegbox as solidly as if they were put there with Gorilla glue.

There are a number of wrong moves you can make here. The first is the "I’m stronger than any stuck peg" approach where you grasp the peg and exert the full force of your entire body on it. It may, on rare occasions, actually free the peg. It may, on not so rare occasions, break the peg, and/or pull a shoulder muscle (this happens more frequently than you might expect). Another is the tool approach – if I can’t turn it with my hand, by jiminy my new Sears vise-grips will get it. This almost guarantees a broken peg, a crushed thumbpiece and afterwards one of a number of possible mental states ranging from mild remorse to full suicide. My recommendation is to take the instrument to your luthier. If, in your mind, circumstances dictate that the problem MUST be fixed right now, take a piece of 3/8” dowel about 3” long, and gently tap it with a light hammer against the end of the peg, driving the peg out of the pegbox. Don’t get too aggressive or you can break the pegbox. A luthier is much more likely to be successful at this.

Leaving your cello in your car on a sunny summer day can cause serious problems also. The heat though a car window, absorbed by a dark colored case can reach temperatures hot enough to bubble varnish and/or do nasty damage to the wood. All involve costly repairs.

If you play outdoors (weddings, parties, outdoor concerts), you may want to consider a second cello, probably new and not hugely expensive, so that you’re not taking your 150 year old beauty into a lot of direct sunlight or sudden rainstorm (you can write anything you want into your wedding contract and still end up exposed to an unexpected downpour). Look in the $2000-4000 range: there are some perfectly fine-performing new instruments here. You may also want to consider an inexpensive composite bow for the same use.

The upside to all of this is that many, if not most cellos tend to sound better in the summer than winter: richer, fuller. And, at least in Vermont, most everything is nicer in the summertime than the winter.

Looking for Cellos in the $2000-$7000 Price Range

LOOKING FOR CELLOS IN THE
$2000 - $7000 PRICE RANGE

No matter what cellos we have in inventory at any given time, the bulk of requests from customers comes for cellos in the above price class.

Which brings us to an oft-asked and somewhat sensitive question: how much do I have to spend to get the really great sound I want?

As dealers who have specialized in cellos for nearly 20 years, it is certainly in our interest to tell you that the more you spend, the better sound you will get. But from what we’ve experienced, this doesn’t necessarily follow. Are the great Strads out there in the performing world great players? You bet. But of the 60-some extant Strads, only a handful are considered concert instruments, although all will command big prices at auctions or private sales.

What really determines a cello’s financial worth is a combination of two things: pedigree - who made it (including when and where the maker worked) and its condition. Other things being equal, it is almost always financially better for a cello to be Italian than French, French than German etc. It is usually better to be older: 1700’s is more valuable than 1800’s etc. Please notice that nowhere is mentioned how an instrument sounds or what it’s like to play it. Not that these things aren’t hugely important to a buyer of a cello of any ilk: but it has little to do with the price.

Some years ago a group of people performed a trial in which three violins: a concert Strad, a new violin by a very reputable maker, and an early 1900’s German commercial violin where played on stage in a large hall by the owner of the Strad who was a concert violinist. A number of people, including the owners of the other two instruments, stood in the back of the hall facing AWAY FROM the stage so that they could not see the instruments. The listeners then rated each violin, and were asked which violin they thought they were listening to each time one was played. Interestingly all three violins received about equal ratings, and almost none of the listeners could identify which instrument they were listening to including the owners of the two non-Strads.

Many times in our shop, there is a cello which to almost all ears outplays all the others. In most cases, it is not the most expensive cello there, in some cases it is a fairly low priced one. It bears mention here that we do most of our “sound tests” so that the listeners are not facing the cellos.

Melissa, Rob and I have all gradually come to the conclusion that there can be something of a myth surrounding “important” instruments. That if a cello possesses the right pedigree, it will have a certain quality of sound. String players speak of the “Italian sound” and the “French sound”, neither of which I’ve ever found to be unique or even common among cellos with those specific ancestries. A number of years ago, a fine professional cellist I knew was performing on a late 1600’s Italian instrument. She spoke of its power and tone which was unique to its maker and that no cello that she had ever heard or played on had ever come close to it. A few years later she took it to a shop in New York to have some work done on it, and the shop’s expert informed her that her cello was actually a 150 year old German instrument with an Italian label. Crushed, she started to realize that she had indeed been mistaken about the sound: that it wasn’t the dark Italian tone that would only come from an instrument with that history, and that its power maybe wasn’t that large. Some time after that, another shop told her that it was actually what she first believed, and she resumed performing on it, confident in its Italian sound and power.

Another story involves a fine cellist in the southern U.S., a soloist and principal cellist for a major symphony. He came to us looking for a good playing cello to replace his current instrument, a fine French cello, which he had played on for years. He ended up purchasing an early 1900’s German commercial cello which played so well that his conductor, and a number of others believed had to be Italian. The cost of the cello was $5000.

Money can buy you pedigree (if you’re careful) but not necessarily sound. If you want great sound and are on a budget, look at cellos, especially (but not limited to) older ones, in the $2000-$7000 range. If the cello is old, the lower the price, usually the more repairs are in it. If the repairs are done well, the dealer should be able to guarantee them – fix them for free if they fail – for as long as you own the cello: which takes the fear out of them. Also, a cello with a lot of repairs doesn’t necessarily mean it is fragile, it may just have been treated roughly. Also, our experience is that great sounding cellos are often that way because the wood, especially the top, is brittle. And brittle wood cracks more easily than soft springy wood. But don’t shy away from these either, just treat them carefully as you would any cello.

If you spend time and look in the right places, you can eventually find a great player for less than $7000. Maybe a lot less.

Climate & Your Cello

My family and I live in Vermont. There are places in the continental U.S. and elsewhere in the world where the variations in climate can have a more pronounced effect on your cello, but not many. It's a good test ground for maintaining instruments: although most places have enough changes in weather to affect cellos in some way.

The effect of humidity on bowed instruments is a subject that, for some reason, has been discussed publicly only recently. Resulting studies indicate that a large percentage of cracks in violin-family instruments are weather related. It certainly seems to be true of instruments that come to our shop for repairs.

Here's what happens. Wood (all wood) swells when it absorbs moisture and shrinks when it loses it. Let's say your cello is very comfortable (at equilibrium) on a Vermont early-fall day: the temperature is in the high 60's, the humidity is 58%. The in February, you spend some serious time with below zero temperatures and humidity less than 10%. (If no humidity is added to your living space your cello is experiencing less than 5%). The wood in your spruce top slowly shrinks laterally – that means that the distance between the grain lines gets smaller – and the top pulls the ribs, or sides, with it. Only, after a short distance the ribs won’t go any further and one of two things happen: either the seams (where the top joins the ribs) open, or if the glue is too strong the top splits (cracks) causing a somewhat expensive repair and a lessened value for your instrument. This same scenario can occur on the ribs or (less frequently) the back.

It is encouraging to note that most tops are attached with an intentionally weak enough glue to, under weather stress, separate before cracks occur. Trouble is, you never know which will happen until something does. But it is also encouraging to realize that there is something that can be done to prevent either. ADD SOME HUMIDITY!

Forget the green plastic snakes you soak in water, wring out, then hang into your cello through the f-holes. As mild as their dampness seems, the water will collect at the bottom of the snake, then drip into the inside of your cello , almost always in the same place since you store your cello in the same position every night. Over time, sometimes several years, this water will rot blocks, dissolve glue, warp ribs, and do several other things that will necessitate costly repairs and make you think about shooting yourself. I still know people who swear by them: but using green snakes is a little like smoking – you’ve been doing it for years and everything seems fine.

I’ve noticed an impressive array of inside-the-case humidifiers on the market recently, some complete with digital hygrometers. And although I haven’t tried them, I have no reason to believe they won’t work: except that every time your instrument comes out of its case for practice or rehearsal, it is plunged into ambient humidity conditions.

Still the best system I know, and it’s not perfect, is to buy a room humidifier ($30-$150 at the hardware store; $1-$15 at a yard sale) and humidify your practice/cello-storage room. Buy a digital hygrometer. They’re not cheap but the pretty brass dial gauges almost always stick, usually at 50% which leads you to feel great about the humidity level while your cello is cracking in several places. Monitor your humidity level daily and don’t let it fall below 30%: not below 35% if possible.

Next time we’ll talk about some of the other effects of weather changes, and how to keep your cello playing great in all conditions.

More About Weather & Your Cello

A cellist (L.H.) from Minnesota writes: “I get all the stuff about humidity, in fact I’m a bit over the top in keeping my cello room as close to 40% as I can. I lug literally buckets of water a day there – spilling as I go – and I still have two problems. 1. At least once a season, I have seams open and need to be re-glued, and 2. My strings are always too low at this time each winter and too high in August. What am I doing wrong?”

Dear L.H.

Both things you describe are actually normal in your climate, or at least are not preventable by normal efforts. Remember that in the summer your humidity reaches 70-80%, and right now you are 40% at best, according to your letter. Your cello is gradually losing the moisture it acquired in August and depending on the sensitivity of the wood in your instrument – they do vary – things are going to contract. Hence open seams.

The string height question is an interesting one. Some people blame it all on the bridge shrinking, and to a minimal degree the bridge does shrink in the winter, but the bigger series of events is the combination of woods – top, back, ribs, block, all moving, or not moving relative to each other to force the neck angle to be higher in the winter than in the summer. Most cellists in Vermont have two bridges to allow for this: some have three. As the string height reaches critical numbers – too high or too low – a more appropriate bridge is put on.

By the way, like heart surgery and bungee jumping, I don’t recommend trying this at home. If you loosen all your strings to replace your bridge, your sound post can fall, or at least move. Have your luthier do it for you. At the same time he can do your seasonal post adjustment – critical in northern climes – and check for open seams and other cello misbehavior.

Next time we’ll talk about a topic with a little controversy – old vs. new cellos.

Your Next Cello: Old or New

Most photographs of any great cellist include a fine old instrument, usually Italian, usually 200-300 years old. Many players come to our shop specifically to try older instruments. Often people who do buy newer cellos prefer them to be antiqued so that they at least look old. Yet there are some great makers working today: are their instruments always going to be inferior to older ones, or is the old-instrument belief a myth?

Certainly an instrument dealer who sells only new cellos will be tempted to tell you that the old ones are fragile, any repairs will come apart, that you will have nothing but trouble, etc. A dealer of only older cellos will often distain new instruments as having a “new” (read tinny, not rich, inferior etc.) Is either right?

As dealers with an inventory of about equal numbers of new and old cellos, we have quite a bit of experience with both and it isn’t our financial interest to convince you to buy one over the other. Here are some facts that we believe to be true based on a lot of years working with both newer and older cellos:

1. There is a physical difference in new wood and old wood. Here’s an experience that we think is telling. A few years ago a customer’s 100 year-old bass had an accident in which the top was destroyed beyond repair. I first called colleagues looking for a good piece of wood to make a new top from; I didn’t find the wood I was looking for but did, almost unbelievably, locate a “new” top, which by some miracle was adaptable to the bass. The amazing part was that the top had been sitting in a shop for almost 100 years. What I learned from the process of cutting the purfling channel was that unlike cutting through wood a few years old, which the cutter goes through relatively easily, in the old top each winter grain (the grain lines you see in your cello top) almost completely stopped the cutter which had to re-sharpened with almost every grain. The winter grains in old wood are much harder than in new wood.

2. In my experience brittle wood sounds better than springy wood. Older wood is more likely to be brittle than new wood but this is not always the case.

3. There is in general an “old sound” and a “new sound” that is discernable when you try the two side by side: especially in a smaller space. Many people prefer the woodier sound of the older instruments, usually darker and, well, older. Interestingly this difference seems to diminish somewhat as the size of the performing space increases.

4. New-makers with supplies of old wood have eliminated some of the distinction between old and new sound: though not entirely since wood that has been vibrated for 100-300 years will sound “older” than wood of the same age that has not been vibrated.

5. Newer instruments (good ones) tend to have a slightly bigger sound than comparable quality older ones although there are a lot of exceptions to this..

6. Older cellos can be expensive, especially if they’re made by the right person from the right part of the world. Less expensive older cellos are becoming more difficult to find, but they do exist and some of them are great players.

7. Good sounding new cellos under $5000.00 do not all come from Europe anymore.

Next time we’ll talk specifically about cellos in the $2000-7000 range, both old and new: what to look for, and how to find a treasure.