Great job!” your teacher exclaims at a recent lesson. “Your tone has really improved, but I think that old rental is beginning to hold you back. Time for us to talk about buying a step-up instrument.” Indeed, that old beat-up, but nice-sounding rental from a local dealer has served you well—but now your skills as a player are beginning to develop and your teacher senses that you’ve become a serious student. It is time for an upgrade. After a couple weeks of research and a handful of phone calls back and forth to your teacher, you set off to visit several dealers in search of a cello equal to your needs. But after your first shop visit, you find yourself feeling woefully overwhelmed and still underprepared for the daunting task of selecting a step-up instrument.

Adult beginners and younger students alike face a unique set of dilemmas when shopping for an instrument, especially if they do so without the advice and experience of a seasoned player. Instrument setup can make or break even the best cello, and knowing what to look for and what will best suit your needs is not as easy as it sounds. Additionally, budget constraints, teachers who suggest only particular brands (be sure to read the Strings article on teacher commissions, “An Elegy for Ethics?” in the May/June 2002 issue), and not knowing what the market has to offer or how to best evaluate instruments, can contribute to the difficulty beginners face when shopping for that first step-up cello.

But don’t despair. You can find a decent step-up instrument for between $895 and $5,000. First you’ll need a primer in craftsmanship and some tips on how to shop and what to look for. Armed with this knowledge, you should be able to walk into any shop in the world and identify the best cello in your price range.

At First Glance
Strings contacted several leading cello manufacturers and requested their best-selling cellos priced under $5,000. In all, we received instruments from 13 different manufacturers—most, but not all, tailored specifically to the student player. We then invited an expert panel composed of four musicians (Sandy Walsh-Wilson of the Alexander String Quartet, classical and Celtic cellist Natalie Haas, Mark Summer of the Turtle Island String Quartet, and period instrumentalist Paul Hale of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra) and one luthier (cello maker Peter Van Arsdale) to evaluate the instruments on three main points: craftsmanship, quality of sound, and playability.

Upon reviewing this collection of readily available instruments, it’s obvious that you can find well-crafted, good-sounding, and easy-to-play cellos in this price bracket—cellos some of our panelists confided they’d happily perform on in concert, and might even be interested in purchasing for outdoor performance or as a second instrument.

“Really cheap instruments don’t want to be played up [in the upper positions], but these instruments don’t seem to have that problem,” observes Summer. “Compared to rental instruments I’ve seen,” he adds, “some of which are less than acceptable, these are all good instruments. Any one of these test cellos could make some player happy. They are all good value.”

So here are 13 pointers on purchasing a step-up cello, inspired, coincidentally, by the 13 cellos our expert panel reviewed.