harleyofdoom | 29 Mar 2010 15:24 | Quote> |
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I had 2 problems and some spare time: 1. Wanted to learn the cello but couldn’t afford to buy one 2. Had a guitar I mistakenly purchased on eBay (when it arrived I realized that the frets had apparently been installed by a blind person without thumbs) it was pretty much unplayable and had been sitting around for years doing nothing. Two problems with one solution, make my crappy electric acoustic guitar into an interesting guitar cello hybrid… If you want to give it a try its not to difficult if you have a basic understanding of carpentry here’s how I did it: 1. I started by removing the strings and the nut 2. then I pulled the frets off and sanded the fretboard (you don’t have to do this but my frets were soo badly installed that there were sharp edges sticking out along the neck) 3. draw around the neck onto a nice piece of ebony to get an outline of the shape of your new fingerboard ( I didn’t have any ebony lying around so I used a piece of pine from an old bookshelf) 4. cut out and carve the fingerboard until it is evenly rounded 5. using the same curve cut out a bridge that will stand roughly 5 cm tall just below the sound hole 6. I also used one of the frets embedded into a small piece of wood to make a new slightly raised nut 7. varnish, sand, varnish, sand, varnish, sand, polyurethane, sand , polyurethane, sand all your wooden parts 8. fix your fingerboard to the top of the neck (I used 2 screws roughly where the 3rd fret would be) at an angle of between 5 and 15 degrees depending on the height of your bridge. 9. string and tune 10. buy a bow and start playing and here’s the results surprisingly it sounds pretty nice and will hopefully sound even nicer once i get some cello strings and learn to play it better. comments, questions, criticisms, shoot "learning music is like climbing a mountain with no summit, sometimes its sheer cliff sometimes its a gentle incline but you continue with the knowledge that the higher you climb the more beautiful the view becomes." Harley |