Music & Techniques by Chris Vaisvil

Solo For DIY Electric Cello in D Harmonic Series

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the score

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Solo for DIY Electric Cello in D Harmonic Series the main point was to explore what I could do with only one note and its octave. I do cheat at one point because I bow behind (or one could say below) the bridge. The piece is in a sense minimalistic and microtonal since it is built on the harmonic (and inharmonic) series of the strings (depending on bowing technique).

The pictures of the instrument shows it is derived from a butchered electric bass married to a cello fingerboard bought on Amazon that is only missing a functional end pin that I need to get around to assembling. (I have the necessary parts)

Some construction details

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Comments

4 responses to “Solo For DIY Electric Cello in D Harmonic Series”

  1. admin

    Hi, don’t worry about cutting the width of the bass neck. Simply align the cello fingerboard against the playing side and leave the flat on the far side exposed. Just be sure to sand down the sharp edge. I used standard wood glue with clamps. My cello strings are about 3 or 4 cm away from the hum-bucking pickup and works fine for me.

  2. amalthea

    Hey,

    I also want to try rebuilt a bassguitar to have a cheap electric cello solution. I measured that usually the bass fingerboard is ~55mm longer than 4/4 cello fingerboards. Also i have fears about, i have to cut down from the side of the bass’s neck ‘couse it has a width with 44-74 mm and cello is 32-62,5 mms. The head-bridge distance had to be 680 mm. But in this case, the pickups will be to far from the bridge (in case of 2 humbuckers). What do you think? (and what type of glue you used to the fingerboard? Thanks a lot!

  3. admin

    It was moderately difficult since it involved a lot of sawing. I just added a link to some construction details. Take a look and you may get a better idea on the difficulty.

  4. rikhi

    This is very awesome. Was it hard to build?

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