making a baby bass from a cello

[hpeat@islandnet]

Heeeelllp. I've just bought an old Baliol Cello (student, plywood top) that I'd like to tune to bass tuning (up an octave I imagine, as with the Kay Baby bass). I have it tuned to straight fourths (ADGC) and it's a hoot to play pizz on but I'd like to get it down into EADG tuning but the present strings are about at their baggiest tolerable, so I need to find out what guage of strings might work for that. Does anyone out there have any experience with this or references for this sort of thing? I imagine one should be able to calculate the guage if you know other variables like density and length but I don't see how to figure out density of wound string without chopping off the ball end and and putting 'em on a weigh scale. Anyone have ideas or suggestions?

[Francois Blais]

Hi, and welcome on TB!
Don't forget you can search the forums for previously discussed subjects.
Searching this one with the "cello" keyword gave me:

tuning a cello like a bass- where to find strings?
and
set for cello tuned in 4ths?

Hope this helps!

[TheSuzie]

What is the scale length? Are you looking to play only pizz or arco too?

Bob G has Corelli 380s for 1/4 bass but that is for around 34-35" scale. There are strings out there for 1/8 and 1/10 sizes but probably a special order.

A cello is usually somewhere around a short scale electric bass or a baritone guitar (though extra non-playing length may be needed to string them up to tailpiece and pegs). Actually a cello is not much longer scale than a standard Stratocaster.

Some wild Ideas:
I'm wondering if a set of flatwound or groundwound electric bass strings would let you get a comfortable standard bass tuning on that instrument. You may need to use a heavier guage set or the lower 4 of a five string set. Figuring the reach to the tailpiece and pegbox, I would guess that a standard length set of electric bass strings may work and they would be cheap too. You may need to use washers on the ball ends to keep things in place at the tailpiece end.

If you want to go up an octave, see if you can find a set of flatwound baritone guitar or some electric piccolo bass strings.

You could try experimenting with some of the cheapo flatwound guitar strings from webstrings.com if they are long enough. This should let you get piccolo bass tuning but I don't know how they would arco. Still for $7 a set if they are long enough - worth an email to ask about the string lengths....
http://webstrings.com/flatwound_guitar_strings.html


have fun and let us know what you try.

S


B