c.1850 Mittenwald (lion's head)

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No label, but must be Mittenwald made with a beautifully carved lion/human sort of head as a scroll. The top is very fragile and very low arch, the sides are unstable and it has a very rich warm tone. This one very rarely leaves the house.  It has a little bit softer and beautiful tone - I love this cello!  Just very slightly under sized (15/16?) - it fits my hands perfectly.

'c.1900 possibly German - fitted with 5 strings (the 'easy' way).

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No label other than a 1910 San Francisco repair label) - this may be something like a student cello, I don't know. It was not in good shape when I got it, I had it professionally repaired and then I spent a day myself widening the fingerboard and adding a 5th (middle string by turning that string upside down and putting a guitar tuner for it in the tailpiece - quick and easy 5 string! And fairly non-distructive (you get a hole in the tailpiece and I nail hole inside the pegbox where a nail holds the end on this center string).

You can see the widened fingerboard overlapping the standard 4/4 neck from the back view.

Krishna Mondal (2008 Kolkata)

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This has 5 playing strings and 11 sympathetic (jawari) strings (identical to sitar sympathetic strings).

​Two tunings I like to use for the bowed strings are:
CGDAE & DADAD.  The sympathetics are usually retuned for every piece of music, or, when lazy, I tune them as a chromatic scale.

I commissioned the cello from Krishna Mondal of Kolkata - He comes from a few hundred year family line of violin making in Kolkata. An amazing workshop they have there!  

Portacello - England c.1960
This was made so English kids can take the cello on the school bus!
This actually sounds only somewhat horrible ... amazing!

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