August 4, 2006
Dead Tines on Old Kalimbas

I've seen a number of kalimbas in the 20-40 year old range that have one or two dead tines that just don't resonate. If you read the tip for Wednesday, August 2, 2006 , you know how to fix a buzzing tine. Well, I initially thought the problem was with the tines, so I tried a bunch of tine-oriented fixes, but nothing would fix the problem.

Now, every once in a while, people do something really smart. The key is to learn to recognize when that happens and to capitalize upon it -- nothing like doing somthing really smart and being too oblivious to recognize it! My really smart thing was really an accident - I pulled the tine back and forth, trying to smooth out any imagined problem between the tine and the bridge. But I accidentally pulled the tine too far, and made it a half-step flat. Whoa dude! I FIXED the dead tine! It rang clear again! But if I retuned it to the pitch it was supposed to have, it was dead again.

Ahh -- what happens if I take a perfectly good tine elsewhere on the kalimba and tuned it to the pitch the dead tine was supposed to be at? It sounded dead too! Light dawns. The dead tines have nothing to do with the tines, it is the BOX that is dead, but only to that one note -- and it often isn't the highest note!

Look back at last Friday's Tip of the Day. We looked at the spectrum of one of my Alto kalimba's notes, and we actually found an absorption feature that was just about a half-step wide (i.e., exactly one note wide).

If you buy a brand new Alto or Treble Hugh Tracey Kalimba, you will notice that it is heavier than the old ones from 20-40 years ago (hey, AMI will turn 50 years old in a few years -- watch out, we'll have to have a PARTY!) The main difference is that the face wood is significantly thicker on the new kalimbas. I don't know this for a fact, but I am pretty sure that the thicker face wood is a way to address the dead tine problem. If you investigate a kalimba with a dead tine, it usually has an unseen weakness in the face wood - stick your finger inside the hole and feel the back side of the wood underneath the tines, and you should feel the wood is slightly bulging away from the tines. (You've got to hand it to AMI, the makers of the Hugh Tracey Kalimba: they have a great, time-honored product, and they are always working to make it better.)