Okay, I’m in a educational mood this morning. I’m also going to geek out on you. Hold tight.

Since most of you have never (and likely will never!) hear me mess about alone with the cello, you can hear the individual strings and basic sounds here. (If you’re curious about the physical construction of the cello, and how it all goes together, check out this exploded print of a cello.) The A string is the thinnest, the highest, and the one that breaks the most often because it’s under the most pressure. The C string is the lowest, and it’s a heavy string. To give you an idea of the tension on each string, a medium-gauge A string will place about 35 lbs of pressure on the cello, a D string will press around 32 lbs, a G string will press about 29 lbs, and a C string will press about 28 lbs. Go ahead, add it all up and marvel at the feat of engineering that keeps a curved box of thin wood encasing about six inches of air from exploding into matchwood.

My particular instrument is picky about what A string goes on it. Most brands that I’ve tried sound sharp (as in painfully hitting your ear, leaping out when the other three strings sound nice and warm, not as opposed to flat) and a bit nasal. I chose Pirastro Aricores last time, a perlon core aluminum and silver-wrapped string, and the whole set sounded pretty impressive. They have a nice dark sound that I enjoy a lot. They’ve stood up well, too.

Hmm. More background necessary, methinks. String instruments used to be strung with gut, which produces a very soft warm sound. Obviously with larger concert halls and most recording sessions we can’t do that any more, and gut is horribly unstable in humid climates (like, well, Montreal). So strings diverged, and now can roughly be split into two categories: synthetic cores, which sound warmer and softer, and steel cores, which sound brighter and more brilliant. I have an innate fear of being heard, and besides, I like the warmer tones, so I opt for synthetic cores. Perlon is one such core. People still use gut, of course, it’s just less reliable. In fact, there’s a couple of brands from Pirastro string that uses a real gut core and winds it with aluminum (for the two higher strings) and silver (for the two deeper strings). On top of materials used in composition, there’s the whole problem of what grade to use: light, medium or heavy. (I usually stick with medium; nice, safe, middle of the road.)

I’ve tried Thomastik Dominant strings (icky A strings that are wound with a flat ribbon of chrome that breaks all the time and slithers down the Perlon core), Larsen strings (swanky steel strings that sounded lifeless on my cello), a sleek steel Jargar A string that snapped three times in two weeks, a Thomastik Precision that wasn’t very memorable, and now the Aricores. The staff member at Shar tried to talk me out of synthetic core Pirastro Aricores and into steel core D’Addario Helicores, but mindful of my pocketbook I held out for the Aricores. I was rather smug when he’d strung it, played it and admitted my victory; they sounded terrific.

Now, I could order a set of Aricores from Toronto, but I don’t feel like it. I like Wilder & Davis, and darn it all, I want to support them. They don’t sell Aricores. So…. I embark again upon the Great String Adventure. I’d love to try a wound gut string; I think it would be very interesting. They sell Pirastro Eudoxas, which would set me back around $185. If I want to keep on with a synthetic core, a set of Pirastro Obligatos is $220, but I suppose I could put the less expensive Thomastik Dominants on the G and C (a C string that costs $44 is easier to justify than one that costs $70), and use the Obligatos on the A and D. I really would rather not use Dominants again, though. Or, I can just buy one Eudoxa at a time, starting with the A string. I’d jump at Pirastro Gold, which like the Eudoxa is aluminum or silver-wrapped gut and is less expensive, but Wilder & Davis doesn’t stock it.

Selecting strings is kind of like a puzzle; you can mix and blend brands, according to your instrument’s peculiarities and you pocketbook, or you opt for a set where each string is designed to complement the others. It’s a hit and miss sort of enterprise, though. You can hit on a brilliant combo, or it can fizzle. Price desn’t seem to really indicate quality very well; those three Jargar strings that snapped were quite expensive and enjoy an excellent reputation overall (although other cellists have indicated that they’ve had a similar problem with thse particular A strings). A sentence of description is hard to go by too; anything that uses the words “loud” or “brilliant” usually get crossed off my list right away. I want a mellow, rich, dark sound. From the research I’ve done this morning, it looks like Eudoxas are my pick if I want to support my local luthier of choice (and they have a string sale on right now, so I’d save around $16 off the set which would basically save me the taxes and bring my cost down to about $167). I could always order a new set of Aricores ($99) or a set of Golds ($129) from Toronto (shipping is free, after all, and I wouldn’t pay PST).

Argh. Decisions, decisions.

I have my cello back again!

I met Ceri for dinner and sangria, and then we took the metro up to Mont-Royal and walked down St Denis (mistake, mistake, mistake – look, there’s Valet de Coeur, let’s look at miniatures. Look, there’s Excalibor, and the new Fall line is out, ooh, microsuede… no! No! Must pick up cello!)

We got there, and I gave the young man my name and claim sheet (different anxious young man – this one was Anglophone); he brought it in from the back, and I experienced the expected “Yay!” feeling, but something else, too. I saw my cello almost as if it were the first time… and it was, well, beautiful. Aesthetically attractive, I mean. I’ve always slightly regretted the fact that the varnish is orangey, instead of more brown or red. Not that the colour matters, of course; it’s the sound that you’re focused on, after all. When he carried it out, though, I knew it was mine right away (I’ve always been slightly afraid that if someone had a score of cellos, I wouldn’t be able to pick mine out by sight alone). Then, of course, I was swamped by the “Mine! Mine!” feeling, and he gave it to me, and all I wanted to do was hug it.

“It’s so small!” said Ceri.

“Well, that would be because I don’t have the endpin out,” I said. The endpin adds a good foot to the length of the instrument.

“And you’re not sitting down,” Ceri said with a grin, “That makes a big difference too. Usually it looks huge next to you.”

There was a gentleman there with a bike helmet who had been asking about violin rental while we’d waited, and he was still there as I put my cello away in the case. “That’s a cello?” he asked, partly to me, partly to the young man. “My middle son wants to play the cello, but we can’t seem to find a teacher.”

Now, I just so happened to have a slip of paper in my back pocket with the name and number of a cello teacher on it, which I had picked up in another music store a couple of hours earlier. I pulled it out and gave it to him; he needed it more than I did. I don’t remember what I said to him, really, only that if a child of ten is asking for lessons on a string instrument, for God’s sake, give him lessons. Music can only enrich, and the whole process of learning to read and play music trains a different part of the brain than does regular reading. What I didn’t say aloud was that it was refreshing to find a child who wanted music lessons, instead of feeling like s/he’d been forced into it. Cultivate that, says I.

So I got home and opened the case and oooh, the new bridge is twice as thick and arched higher and my strings rest on it beautifully, and it’s shaped, they actually sanded parts away in places for the more delicate strings to resonate better, and the sound is fantastic. If I seem a over-excited, you should have seen my last bridge – it was half this thick, only slightly rounded, and certainly not shaped so attentively or with consideration for the individual instrument. But then, this only confirms my general not-impressed-ness with Jules St-Michel, and increases my admiration for Wilder & Davis.

The luthier made a note on the work report that my A string is beginning to unravel as well, but I knew that already. It needs to be replaced before orchestra begins. Actually, all the strings are two years old (possibly three, goodness) and they saw more playing last year than I usually do, so they technically should all be replaced. My poor husband last night nearly choked when he asked how much an A string would cost, and I told him in the neighbourhood of thirty dollars. Good thing I didn’t tell him that C strings go for about fifty or sixty. A full set will cost between one hundred and one hundred and seventy. Guess I know what I’m doing with my next EI cheque…