October 10, 2006
My Kalimba Kept Going Out of Tune

One of the kalimbas I sold kept going out of tune. This is very rare, as most Hugh Tracey kalimbas hold their tuning for months or even years, but this one customer complained that his kalimba was going out of tune every day. At first, I just thought his kids were messing with it (if you push the tines around or drop the kalimba, you will need to retune).

Then it happened to me! My son had found me a truly vintage Treble kalimba on e-Bay - the one I call "Blondie" that I've been raving about in the tips lately, the one that didn't sound good at first but now sounds great, the one that I've tuned to D minor. (OK, I admit it, I've fallen in love with this strange little instrument.) Anyway, I found that I would have to retune it about once a day. At first I thought I had just tuned it poorly (I am now in the habit of tuning by ear - as we age, our ability to discern pitch accurately decays, but I am doing what I can to fight this natural trend by demanding more and more precision from my ears). After a few weeks, I noticed that the bridge was slowly slipping down the kalimba - I noticed because it was doing it asymetrically, more on the left than on the right.

The bridge is not glued down (just like a violin), and is held in place by friction between the bridge and the kalimba face, induced by the downward force of the tines. You can affect the tone of your kalimba by moving the bridge, but you generally don't want to move it. But you also don't want to glue it down - unless you have a kalimba that just won't stay in tune because the bridge is drifting.

So, I straightened out the bridge and retuned the kalimba, and then took the cheapest Elmer's glue I could find, and dripped a few beads of glue such that they made contact with both the kalimba face wood and the bridge wood. This should not affect the tone at all, and I am thinking that it is little enough that if I ever need to, I will be able to remove it.

Did it help? You betcha! It has stayed in tune for two weeks now, long enough to write it up as a tip.