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...