Johncee

Whereabouts in Oxfordshire are you? There are top bow people in Oxford.

Can you give more details about the "teaching" cello? Edit: It's OK, I found it on Musical Chairs. Pretty sure I could find a home for this in Sheffield, if you struggle to sell it locally.

Definitely some early 70s Hawkwind (!) and Iggy & the Stooges in there too.

I’m an orchestral strings luthier. I won’t comment on how much a professional colleague charges for their work, but for those who ask the question “how hard can it be” ? please consider the following: The trade price of a good quality cello bridge is about £45 (B—grade)£65 (A-grade). Fitting the bridge is rarely straightforward. Compensations have to be made for often-encountered non-standard situations, such as strange placement of the bass bar, misaligned and wonky necks, neck angles, strange body dimensions, etc etc. The feet have to fit perfectly for optimum sound and playability, and the right amount of wood taken off to leave the correct amount of wood above the heart (and to compensate for the problems above you might have to deliberately cut more wood off one foot than the other), and it has to stand at the correct angle. You have to know by how much to pre-tension the legs so that the bridge still fits when string pressure is applied. The top of the bridge needs to be shaped to allow clean bowing of all strings, and to avoid bow contact with the treble side c-bout in some cases. Using a template for shaping is just the starting point here- it needs to be dialled in for each individual case. The bridge needs to be arched properly to combine structural strength with best acoustic performance. Just the right amount of wood is removed from every single surface of the bridge blank. And if you’re working to professional standards, it has to look pretty at the end of it. All in all it’s a good half day’s work. Possibly more in tricky cases. So put in a reasonable hourly labour charge for work by a highly skilled craftsperson, and you can “do the math” yourself. 🙂

Great to hear new material from Mr Rodney. Still, for me, one of the greatest voices in all music….

I currently have a Snark and a TC Unitune, the TC is well worth the extra cost IMO. No problem reading mine in bright sunlight - Snark is much worse in this respect.

Bought a set of Thomastik strings from Kevin. He went to a lot of trouble to make measurements to make sure they'd fit my bass, and dispatched promptly. Very good all round!

Great buy. It's the more expensive swamp ash version and also seems to have had the horrible plastic knobs upgraded. I had a V7 for a while and although it wasn't for me (prefer closer string spacing and flatter fingerboard) it was amazing quality for the money.

Alternatively, take a look at the price of a basic Chinese cello bow, then find the price of a top end recorder.😋

I think the guy in the clip is using 3 finger plucking. Which just takes good old fashioned practice...🙂 I think this is the only way to play this finger style. Others may disagree, but it's the only way I can do it. "Everybody Dance" is (a bit) easier - you could try starting with that? Unfortunately, it'll never look as cool as chucking 😃

Started doing the north eastern WMC's at 14. Rest of the band in their early to late 20s. Was always the baby of various bands for many years. Now I'm the old fart. 😀

Both interesting. But what's shocking about them?

As a PS to this, I just wanted to point out the need to be aware of fake products, which abound on eBay and Amazon. If the price looks too good to be true, it probably is!

I use an Ashdown Tone Pocket for this purpose, and I've been very happy with it. Used ones come up on eBay from time to time at reasonable prices. There's one on eBay now for £68 + postage. I'd post the link (I'm not the seller BTW), but not sure if this is allowed.

Anyone know which (if any) Schaller, Hipshot etc models would be a drop in replacement for the tuners on a Ray 35? Mine are a bit backlashy. Which annoys me. Cheers!