Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Setting Up Your Kalimba
Fixing the Buzz - Intro

While the tone of a well-maintained Hugh Tracey kalimba is as clear as an angel's voice, the Hugh Tracey kalimba is subject to annoying buzzes. The buzzes will not happen on every note on your kalimba, but you will find that the same few tines give you problems over time.

A very few kalimbas are lucky enough to be buzz-free for years, but this is rare, so managing the buzzes will be one of the most important things you can do to keep your kalimba sounding good. Fortunately, there are some easy tricks you can learn to reduce or eliminate the buzzes.

For a well-played kalimba, I might spend 5-10 minutes a month keeping it in tune, and about half of that keeping the buzz in check. Come back over the next several Tuesdays to learn all my buzz-fixing tricks!

Note that when I send out kalimbas to customers or retail stores, I do my best to eliminate all buzzes from the kalimbas. If I can't remove a nasty buzz, that one goes into the "50% off" bin or goes back to Africa.

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