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Andrew Victor wrote:

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"Her cellist career was very, very short-lived."

Well, what exactly where you expecting when promising her a cello and giving her a viola??

One of my students could start playing a 4/4 cello soon, so the parents where thinking where to get one. They told me there is still this cello in the family that used to belong to great-grandpa and stuff, but that grandma had had it stored in a room where the heating was located and that it had developed bad cracks and also, according to them, the varnish had started peeling off due to the wrong storage (I kept telling thm that is unlikely). Anyway, mother and daughter (my student) were in favour of restoring, father was not, and they decided to ask me. So yesterday they came in with this cello in a kind of ancient bag (one with a seperate compartment for th end pin) and took it out... I looked at the two cracks... nothing lethal, the peeled off varnish was only on the front because the middle joint had once unglued and some incapable lutier had tried repairing it not very elegantly and had put an extra layer of varnish on top to hide the ugly glueing job he did, and it is starting to come off (a good thing in this case, in my opinion, since the original varnish stays on the cello). But what I loved about this cello: all fittings seem to be original, I'd say about 120 years, give or take a decade or two, and in mint condition, because the cello has never been intensively played. The wooden endpin looks as if it was never used, very bautifully turned, no damage whatsoever. The tailpiece is one of the nicest 19th century ones I've encountered so far: very long and quite broad at the bottom, connected with a tailgut ofcourse, elegantly shaped. There was only one string on which held the (crooked) bridge and soundpost in place, so I strung it up.... It sounded fantastic and sounded better with literaly every bow stroke... This cello works so well with gut strings (it is almost as loud as steel, super responsive and with a wonderful, rich sound..).... I'm so jealous! I wanna have it!.... But well.... I was the nice guy I usually am and told them that in my opinion it is in fact very much worth a restoration and that it sounds great. But I kinda feel it is too bad to get anything altered to this cello... How often does one still find a cello in a (probably) over one hundred years old original setup? The repairing needs to be done, but the damage is not serious, although it may be good to redo the front plate joint repair, which would be quite a thing then. Still, they would fit a modern endpin and probably tailpiece, if they decide to go for steel strings (I did suggest the student could try gut, and she seemed to like the sound of the strings when trying it out, she is my best student and quite dedicated)... Too bad. On the other hand, I will probably be able to buy the end pin and the tailpiece if they decide to change them... hmmm....

I wish the cello was mine.