My new electric cello - The NS NXT

I have been thinking about getting an electric cello for a long time (...years definitely!). They are so much more manageable than an acoustic one - no need to annoy the neighbours when practicing and no buying extra plane seats to prevent your musical instrument getting damaged by incompetent airline staff. Of course they will never sound as good as a nice acoustic but given that they are about the same price as a typical "student" cello I could not resist getting one. Also if you want to record music an electric cello that you plug directly into your audio interface/mixing desk is very useful.

The problem is there are not so many choices. Yamaha's Silent Cellos are a popular option but I liked the idea of something more minimal. There are some more "boutique" companies around such as the Bridge Draco cellos, and the Jensen cellos but it is hard to go into a shop to play these. The best option was looking like Ned Steinberger's range of electric instruments. I tried playing their CR model cello when I was in London and enjoyed it a lot however the price was too high for me to just buy it there and then! Luckily they then brought out the NXT model which is basically identical but with passive pickups rather than active, and is about half the price. So I got one.

Here are some pictures...

As you can see I decided on the 4-string version in black. I have played a 5-string cello but it just confused me and would probably have been unnecessary!

So how does it sound? Well it is actually surprisingly volume-ful even when not plugged in, which is a good sign. I hooked it up to my Line 6 TonePort UX2 just as I would with my guitar and opened Gear Box. Using the basic Piezoacoustic 2 amp model on low Drive settings with a bit of compression and reverb sounded really nice. The cello itself has a switch for optimal arco and pizzicato pickup, a simple tone control and a volume knob. Here is a quick (and not very polished!) recording of me playing some stuff. The final clip has some tube screamer distortion to demonstrate some of the fun things you can do when your cello is electric...

Smashing Pumpkins, Chicago

So I'm not even going to apologise for the lack of posts - this is just a sporadic blog. And it has been a while since I have gone to any big gigs. However this has been made up for by going to see the Smashing Pumpkins at the Allstate Arena in Chicago last night.

Firstly let me moan about the venue. Being a public transport aficionado in a country built around cars can be challenging and getting to the arena was no exception. After taking a bus and the L almost to the airport I then still had to wait for one of only four shuttle buses. However, I can see why they only run four since there were a total of six people on the bus. As an aside none of them were wearing Smashing Pumpkins t-shirts which worried me for a second but it turned out to be the correct bus! The Allstate Arena itself is not brilliant in terms of acoustics even after they basically divided it in half - it would have made so much more sense to use a smaller more intimate venue downtown.

Anyway, now the good stuff... The support were Anberlin who had a lot of energy and are well worth checking out; it was a shame that the venue was only half full at this point. The Smashing Pumpkins were of course excellent. The new line-up seems to be working out and Jeff Schroeder has some mad guitar skills. What amazed me was how many songs they got through, the entirety of Oceania made up the first half of the gig and then they went on to play a good selection of classics: XYU, Disarm, Tonight Tonight, Bullet with Butterfly Wings, Zero, Cherub Rock... The encore was particularly awesome with their rockier version of Ave Adore and Mayonaise to close.

Also they had a massive sphere above the stage with some sort of crazy projector on the inside - it was good.