Old World or New, Sacred or Profane

Saturday, March 22, 2008

D-I-Y 5-string Conversion Pictures, part 1

Now before we get into this, understand that the first attempt snapped the neck off the cello. I fixed the neck, more on that later, but I don't suggest advise doing this sort of a thing with anything but a junker (See, junkers really are good for sump'n!).

Here's pictures of my for-fun conversion of an inexpensive laminate cello to a 5-string. The key (so to speak) of the whole thing a guitar tuning machine installed in the middle of the tailpiece. I got the tuning machine from a guitar repairman at a local "Guitars-R-Us", who gave it to me on the condition I bring the completed travesty for him to see:



And here's a picture of the tuning machine from underneath. Because the underside of the tailpiece is curved and irregular I used a free sample of kitchen counter laminate on the underside to provide a flat surface for the guitar tuning machine. I used rubber washers on the topside and bottomside of the tailpiece to stabilize it the tuning machine so it wouldn't rotate:



Here's a view of the bridge (same bridge as for 4 strings). I filed all new grooves for the new spacings. You can see the old grooves:



More pics to come.

3 comments:

Guanaco said...

Looks like a lot of fun...

Has anyone tried removing the C string altogether and moving each of the remaining strings over (so the G string would be wound on the "C" peg and so on), then putting an E-string where the A used to be?

gottagopractice said...

Pre-e-ety amazing...

Terry said...

Yes, I did have it strung up as GDAE for about a year. Although I didn't get around to playing it much, I liked it that way. But I was greedy. I wanted my C(ake) and E(at it), both.