Single coil pickup cigar box kalimba

Constructed with some parts I had lying around and a few from the hardware store. As you can hear, the dry sound is a little bass heavy. I might try adding a few tines and tuning to a different scale.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• electric
• kalimba
• cigar
• box

[myfriendscallmenikko]

Nice! What did you use for the tines?

[rudeog]

Thanks. It's called fish tape. You can get it at the hardware store in the electrical section.

[greybluemist]

Have you experimented with pickups or pickup locations? You might get better tone with the pickup closer to the bridge. You also might try using a piezoelectric pickup.

[rudeog]

Before I built it, I mounted the tines on a vice and played around with pickup locations. Either end it came out very bassy. I'm not sure what could be done short of rolling off the lows with EQ.

[KofiNateDogg]

I like the bass notes it hits. Would make a great reggae dub instrument because it would bring back a little of reggae's mento based pedigree in an up to date way.

[frankensteinmoneymac]

Very cool....I made a midi compatible one, with little robot "fingers" that would play it according to the Midi Notes.....also I modded an E-bow, so that it would vibrate each individual 'key' with the press of a button, giving it a less intense, more organic, 'cello' sort of sound...it was really cool! Plus with the e-bow mod I had unlimited sustain...It was amazing! .....OK I did none of those things..... I did once build a model airplane!........no I didnt....My dad built it for me :(

[endahseni]

great ! really great....

[Betterburg]

Thank you so much! 5*.

I have one, but without any pickup.

How did you tune it?...

[GaryGarrett]

AWESOME!!!

[ovuori]

Very nice design and video. Thank you for sharing this!