May 25, 2007
That's One Cracked Kalimba!

I no longer own my first kalimba. My music friend Devin Champlain's girlfriend Tasneem had become quite attached to it so I let her keep it. I purchased a replacement at The Folk Shop here in Tucson, but the face wood had a nasty crack. I turned it over and noticed the vintage lettering and bicycle spoke screws, which informed me that this one was made in the early 1960's, making it one of the first Hugh Tracey Treble kalimbas to come across from Africa to the US.

Later, as I started working in the kalimba business, people started sending me their old old kalimbas with a single dead note. By lengthening or shortening the dead tine so that it played the note below or the note above the "dead note," I found that the tine was perfectly fine - those bracketing notes rang true. But if I re-tuned a different clear-ringing tine to the dead note's pitch, this other tine would suddenly become dead. SO, it wasn't anything about the tines - the kalimba box was eating a particular note, no matter which tine played it.

I hypothesized that there was a hidden crack down the middle of the kalimba face, and this weakness was absorbing a particular vibrational frequency. Installing a post inside the kalimba largely fixed the problem.

So, why wasn't this cracked kalimba affected by the "dead note syndrome"? The first person who can discern the answer and email it to me will get a free Two Thumbs Up CD. Here is a big hint: the crack actually DOES affect the sound, but actually does so in a positive way.

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