Suppressors
Most repairmen suggest that less is more—so don’t put on a heavy wolf eliminator if you can get by with something less intrusive. Van Zandt notes, “Wolf eliminators take care of the wolf tone, but they also act as filters and can dampen the sound of the instrument. Just about any good instrument has a wolf. Any solution takes away from the voice of the instrument in one way or another to a lesser or greater degree.”

If you truly “eliminate” the wolf, according to Dungey, you will be eliminating other resonances as well. “You remove all the supporting overtones that help to color or enhance this note and other related notes. Attaching any wolf eliminator/suppressor that will directly affect a specific pitch or note could be the reason some players feel a loss of tone, vibrations, or color from their cello. The end result should be the least invasive to the whole acoustic system and still retain a high degree of success with the end user (the musician).”

A single rubber mute is one of the cheapest and easiest wolf suppressors you can use—and chances are you already have one. Since the most bothersome wolf usually hovers around fourth position on the G string, put your mute there (between bridge and the tailpiece).

Meyer points out that for any type of string-placed wolf suppressor, including a mute, you need to find just the right place between the bridge and the tailpiece to get rid of the wolf. This involves plucking or bowing on the “wrong” side of the bridge. Meyer recommends that you match the pitch of the string between the bridge and the mute to the wolf tone, or to a harmonic of the wolf. “This will get you the right position. Usually this is about three-quarters of the way towards the bridge.”

If a mute doesn’t do the trick, there are wolf suppressors that fit on one string—in that same area between the bridge and the tailpiece. The usual on-string suppressor consists of a brass tube encircling a rubber tube, held on the string by a screw.

As with the mute, match the pitch of the string below the bridge to the pitch of the wolf. According to Dungey, a wolf suppressor “works better on the C because you allow the G string behind the bridge to enhance or vibrate sympathetically with other notes of the musical scale. Plus, with G strings made smaller in diameter these days, they aren’t able to add mass (along with the suppressor) to help with the suppressing job.”

Leslie Moye prefers the New Harmony wolf suppressors devised by retired scientist turned cello-builder and cello-innovator David Bice. These are brass wolf suppressors that fit directly on the string without using either rubber or a screw to affix them, and they come in different weights (thanks to a suggestion from Dungey). Says Moye, “The New Harmony suppressors come in a choice of five, seven, nine, 11, or 13 grams. A heavier wolf eliminator gives a punchier sound on the instrument, so for a dark-sounding instrument, you might need more mass on the wolf eliminator.” (The New Harmony suppressors cost a mere $16 per weight.)

Anton Paar entered the wolf-suppressor market recently with another metal on-string contender that’s considerably more expensive (€178, available through Schubach Violin Shop), and not yet widely available in the US. This one is small but very heavy. According to product manager Siegfried Hollerer, “[Because] we keep the contacting area between mass and string very small, the influence on the resonance frequency is very narrow banded and one can filter out the wolf resonance precisely without badly influencing other frequencies—especially all overtones.”

Eliminators
If the on-string suppressors don’t work well for the wolf on your cello, you may want to try a wolf eliminator that affixes directly to the top of the instrument. San Francisco Bay Area cellist Paul Hale prefers this type—what he called “the German counterweight gizmo that one sticks on the top of the cello near the bass bar. Once you find the magic spot, you can have a luthier place it inside the cello out of sight.”

Tao agrees that this alternative can work well, “This involves adding a tuned resonator to the top of the instrument—typically somewhere in the lower section on the bass side. But the service of a skilled violin maker is required.”

I personally experienced this alternative: I had a Baroque cello with a pronounced wolf an octave below the usual wolf area—it was on the lowest F of the instrument, fourth finger on the C string. This note is one I used with great frequency, and I just couldn’t avoid or tame it. After trying various solutions, I took the cello to my repairperson, and while I sawed away on the low F, the repairman moved his fingers around the top of the instrument below the f-hole near my bowing hand. It was like magic when he found the right spot—the wolf just plain disappeared. Then he carefully affixed a dewolfer with putty to that exact location. While I preferred to keep it on the outside of the instrument for ease of adjustment later on, it can be placed on the inside in the same spot with a special tool. It didn’t look authentically Baroque, but it worked wonders, and it didn’t substantially change the rest of the cello’s sound. The WolfResonator comes in three specific ranges (D to E, E flat to F, E to F#) and costs about $52.

And, as I learned from Anner Bylsma some years ago, you can lessen the severity of a wolf tone by placing an available left-hand finger on another string at the pitch of the wolf or an octave of it.

While trying these various wolf-quieting options, keep in mind Dungey’s conclusion, “What seems like a simple attempt to tame the wolf is in fact a very complicated matter that is unique and individual to each cello and cellist.”