RP Collier's Hand-Made Thumb Pianos

Bryan Day writes:

Here's an old friend of mine from Oregon - builds Kalimbas from just about anything, they are absolutely beautiful.

I cannot disagree! (And there are many more in his Flickr gallery.)

kalimba mbira sansa likembe thumb-piano lamellaphone [Flickr.com]

[#1 posted by Bruce Arthurs , April 7, 2008 9:03 PM]

I agree that these are lovely, but I wonder how they sound. I'd suspect that some of the nice boxes/bases don't work all that well as resonators.

I have a mbira made from a coconut shell rather than the traditional gourd resonator; the sound produced by the coconut is much sweeter and clearer than from any gourd-based I've heard.

[#2 posted by Eloine , April 8, 2008 5:15 AM]

I agree about the coconut shell mbiras, they sound great. A lot of these are piezo'd electric kalimbas, so the sound isn't too dependent on the resonators. Quite a variety of sounds in fact. Hav e you heard the electric likembés on Konono no. 1?