The Instrument

I have never used the vibration device in the past because I don't like that extreme wah-wah sound. Now a friend really wanted one of my folding frames, but with a vibration device (he plays stylistically like Milt Jackson).

So I did look into it after all.

While testing, I came up with the idea that you don't have to align the fans exactly in a row if they can be removed as easily as with my frame. Therefore, I arranged them in a rotationally offset manner.
Because I wanted a realistic statement for myself about the resulting sound, I recorded the test.

V6 - Upcoming soon
Here you can see a simulation of my next frame variant. This is especially intended for
* for very quick and easy assembly and disassembly
* low weight (frame approx. 15 kg, resonance tubes approx. 9 kg)
* high stability due to aluminum welding frame

Towards the end of the video you can see my newly developed vibration unit. This enables space-saving pipe-in-pipe transport, i.e. the individual removal of the resonance pipes, as well as the folding of the units. The shafts are magnetically positioned and coupled.

The short answer is that it isn't just that they make you louder. They do make you a bit louder, but loudness is a psychoacoustic phenomenon. There is more to it than just that. In the Saturday session I mentioned the principle of acoustic masking. That's a big piece of it.

The tool I used for this (Insight) is part of Izotope's mastering suite of software. This is not its normal use, but it provides a nice visualization of acoustic energy in real time across the frequency spectrum. Something went awry with the way that Quicktime did the screen capture, so by the end of the video, the waveforms are appearing significantly later and out of sync with the sound, but you will be able to still associate them and see the differing harmonic content. The frequency is represented along the bottom of the graph.

This is the final step of our DIY vibraphone bar project.
http://www.wyndorps.de/E_index.htm

Summary:
At first I was most afraid of fine-tuning and in the end it is a very simple process that follows logical considerations.

We actually only "lost" one bar when trying to tune at all - just by testing different things.

Here are the informations to step 6 of our DIY bar production.
Please go to
http://wyndorps.de/E_index.htm
and follow Step 6.

In this post I am focussing on anodizing of the bar.

Here are the informations to step 5 of our DIY bar production.
Please go to
http://wyndorps.de/E_index.htm
and follow Step 5.

In this post I am focussing on milling of the bar.

Here are the informations to step 4 of our DIY bar production.
Please go to
http://wyndorps.de/E_index.htm
and follow Step 4.

In this post I am focussing on our material selection.

Here are the informations to step 3 of our DIY bar production.
Please go to
http://wyndorps.de/E_index.htm
and follow Step 3.

In this post I am focussing on the detailed bar geometry. Now we are getting the bar into the sound spectrum.

Here are the informations to step 2 of our DIY bar production.
Please go to
http://wyndorps.de/E_index.htm
and follow Step 2.

In this post I am focussing on the bar macro geometry, because it has a big influence on sound and frame.

What do you think about the idea to create an about 10% lighter bar set using the same width graduation as M55 or Omega instead of keeping the bar width constant on a minimum of 1.5" for youth vibraphones?