Ok so i made 3 Kalimbas with small cigar boxes i had. I used car wiper blades for tines.
They sound so different. I'm not sure if it's the sound holes but only 2 were successful really.
From left to right:
Left Kalmia is the loudest but the box is a g
Read more…Not a cigar box, but what the heck... A top half of a gourd works, too.
Read more…For me best keys are mini hand saw blades right now. Metal saw blades didn't bent and braked easily.
I Snapped the saw blades half and made them safe for player. I tuned each key in right note with guitar tuner. I have seen that professionally made k
Read more…Started putting together a few kalimbas cause they're so much fun to build and ended up with a stack of them. Took them to the local flea market and sold (3), so I'm on a roll now and the inspiration came from this site!
The ones I'm working on now
Read more…I finished my long-threatened swiss-army kalimba today. The Rumba Stick (see the album for details on the pictures) is a rake-tine kalimba mounted on the top of a previously-rejected Carlos Toraño Ovation box. I rejected the box because the "pretty"
Read more…This guy made this one. (He also plays Hugh Tracys in many forms, with customized tunings)
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I just retuned one of these that I have:
to this tuning:
so I can play this:
So much more fun than the original tuning. You can hard
Read more…I pulled the tines off a vintage instrument, cleaned it up, burned on some designs (a la Tom Lanford) and reinstalled the tines. I tuned it pentatonic G, just like Maurice White of Earth Wind and Fire.
I'll likely try to flip it out on Ebay and try
Read more…I recently saw the Jamaican mento band The Jolly Boys and noticed they feature a sort of giant kalimba-type instrument as a bass. I thought people here might be interested. Apparently these things are known as Marimbulas or Rhumba boxes and were a co
Read more…Here's a guy on YouTube with an interesting idea -- run the tines between three rollers so the tuning can be easily changed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcuAk5UY5g8&feature=related
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gtMlygJfT0
Jamoflague has put
Read more…Here is a helpful link for cutting your own tines from Kalimba Magic, who also sells the tines.
For cigar boxes, it seems that the 3mm and the 5mm floppy are the best, the 5mm stiff does not do well on a box with a thin lid.
http://www.kalimbamagic.com
First off, there is NO STANDARD TUNING for these instruments. They can be found from the tip of South Africa all the way north to Ethiopia. If there's a dozen ways to tune a guitar, there must be thousands of ways for a kalimba.
I lived for a while
Read more…I've had this old mahogany chest I found in a thrift store, and was planning to build an upright bass with it -- but no more!
After trying the Sansula tuning, I am now so intrigued to try other tunings, like the major and minor pentatonics. Since ret
I have ordered tines from the fellow mentioned in this thread: http://www.cigarboxnation.com/group/cigarboxkalimbas/forum/topics/tines-1 I would be willing to trade tines, 3mm or 5mm for a box or two to build a CBG. You can email me at mookie1@autob
Read more…If you were wondering what this instrument sounds like, I present to you a song called "Passage" that features it. See what happens when you're stuck inside during a HEAVY snowstorm?...LOL!
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