Part 7c - Refinements 3

This weekend's tweaks:

1. I did some shaping on the back of the neck, to round it, which turned out pretty well. The neck is pretty nicely rounded off all the way up to the butt, but it could stand a little tapering off at the headstock end.
2. Trimmed the fingerboard edges to meet the neck. Much nicer looking, and coupled with the neck shaping, improves playability greatly.
3. Made an endpin. I had ordered one from Zeta, and since they didn't know when they would get spares in stock, their Customer Service guy and I discussed ways to work around it. One way was to cut down one of those extenders that you get for paint rollers, and a rubber furniture foot (as in the feet that you see on crutches). So I did that, and after wrestling with the dilemma of "$99 to buy, $3 to make," I went with the $3 solution. Best three bucks I've spent so far.
   
4. I think I found the source of the buzzing on the F string. It appears to have been the string itself. When I took the F string off, and moved all the other strings down, and put on the high E string (from when I was in 6-string mode), the buzzing went almost completely away. There's still a little buzz, but I've isolated that to be in the nut, which isn't completely glued down. (I don't want to glue it securely, because I want to remove it when it comes time to finish the fingerboard.)

So, for the time being, this is going to be a 5-string cello with the range extended upward, instead of downward. I was really resistant to this idea, being a bassist, and therefore looking forward to a range extension downward into the bass range. After playing the E string, though, I must say that it has qualities of the harp and even the koto (to my ears) that I find intriguing.

Low notes? I've actually got plenty, between my fretless P-Bass (with an extender key on the E string that takes it down to a D), and my Stick (whose range extends to B below the E on a bass).