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Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Sun May 01, 2016 11:18 am
by Rich Wickstrom
My son and I spent the last year building a concert grade xylophone from scratch (see photo). The bars are made from Honduras Rosewood. I am almost done documenting the project, including the bar construction and tuning, on my website at http://supermediocre.org/index.php/rich ... e-project/. I spent considerable time documenting it, because I didn't find much info on the web, so thought this was unique, and hoped that others might benefit from our efforts.

Incidentally, Fine Woodworking magazine is currently working up a story on us for their website. I expect that will be posted this summer sometime.

This being an instrument makers forum, I thought this might be of interest. However, I am new to the forum, so I hope this post is appropriate.

Rich

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Sun May 01, 2016 3:47 pm
by Barry Daniels
Yes, that is appropriate and also much appreciated. Welcome to the MIMF, Rich.

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Mon May 02, 2016 12:27 am
by Jason Rodgers
Totally appropriate, and totally awesome!

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Mon May 02, 2016 7:38 pm
by Rich Wickstrom
Thanks for the welcome and comments guys! I stumbled across this forum and had to say that it is super cool. I had no idea so many guys were building instruments. Kind of inspiring me to build a guitar. :-)

Rich

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Tue May 03, 2016 12:15 am
by Jason Rodgers
Just skimmed your site a bit. Very thorough and enjoyable to read.

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Tue May 03, 2016 10:37 pm
by Rich Wickstrom
Thanks Jason. I hope a few folks will find it useful. I was surprised at how little info there was out there on building a xylophone. I know it's kind of a niche, but the internet's a big place! Also, it was cool to build this with my son and show him what regular dudes can do if they put their minds to something. Hopefully he'll be one less kid staring at his phone and actually doing something instead.

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 12:28 am
by Chuck Tweedy
Very cool! Anything made from Honduras rosewood it cool!
Thanks for sharing Rick

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 1:56 am
by Bill Raymond
Very, very nice, indeed.

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Sat May 21, 2016 10:57 am
by Rich Wickstrom
Thanks for the comments guys. My son continues to enjoy playing it. Attached is a sound file of a song that he is learning. My woodworking skills are definitely better than my recording skills, so the recording is kind of so-so, but you get the idea.

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Sat May 21, 2016 11:29 am
by Rich Wickstrom
Oops. Just realized I cannot upload sound files. Duh.

You can hear Jack playing it at: https://soundcloud.com/rdwicks/xylo-demo

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Sat May 21, 2016 3:45 pm
by Jim McConkey
You can upload sound files, but they have to be less than 200K, see here: http://www.mimf.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1656

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Sat May 21, 2016 8:29 pm
by Eric Knapp
One of my daughters asked me if I could make a xylophone. I said I had no idea. Now at least I see it can be done. Thanks!

-Eric

Re: Concert xylophone finished

Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 9:40 am
by Rich Wickstrom
Jim - Good to know I can upload audio files. Thanks for the info.

Eric - If you do decide to make one, there are full size PDF templates on the website for each bar. You still have to tune the bars because wood varies from piece to piece, but at least they provide a good starting point for the shape. Because I am a geek, I used some software to tune my bars, but most people use a strobe tuner.

Rich