The story behind this article and the next, and indeed my whole trip to Neptune, NJ is that on November 22 I got a short email out of the blue from Leigh Howard Stevens. Apparently he's been reading my stuff on thevibe.net where I have been a vocal proponent of progress in vibes design and have put forth some ideas about user-controlled vibrato. He had attached a PDF file of the promotional flyer for the "Love Vibe" and invited me to come to the Malletech factory to see it. The stars must have been aligned, for it so happens that the factory is only an hour and a half away from New York city, and I happened to have family in town that week so I had already rented a car. So, on somewhat short notice I made an appointment with Leigh and drove down with my brother (a former mallet player himself) who acted as photographer, sounding board, and all-around critical thinker.
Malletech Factory Tour Upon our arrival we were greeted by Leigh Howard Stevens himself and we were shown around the premises, including the music library, the assembly room, the 'dirty' workshop where the CNC machines and other machining tools live, the tuning rooms and the mallet-making room with the computer controlled mallet-wrapping maching, which was the only thing he asked us not to photograph up close. Leigh was a gracious host and made us feel like big-shots.
(click on a photo to see a larger version) Assembly room with marimbas ready for final inspection.
A close look at the one of the CNC (computer numeric controlled) milling machine
Assembly room with a view of the epoxy coating booths and curing oven in the back
Leigh talking about the other CNC machine
Some good old-fashioned skilled labor
The manual bar cutting station. Future marimba and vibe bars will be cut with the CNC machines
The finisher working on the brass resonators
The mallet shop. She had the machine wrap a mallet before our eyes. It took about 30 seconds!
The tuning rooms... The piano tuner... ...and the marimba tuner.
The place where bars are selected and grouped into sets
Then at last we were brought to the room set aside for the vibraphone project, where our 'love story' takes place...
The author talking with Leigh Howard Stevens about the Malletech vibraphone
Foreword - Marketing Malletech has obviously chosen an amorous metaphor for their vibraphone's outstanding unique feature, the pedal-controlled shutter vibrato system. The literature has some fun explaining the origin of the "Love Vibe" name, but Leigh said that this was something of a working title, and the model name may change in the future. I may send them some naming ideas of my own, but the for this page I'll refer to it mainly as the Malletech vibe, since there's only one.
Note: To download the Malletech brochure in PDF format, click on these links. They are repeated at the bottom of this post.
Designer statement As Leigh says in his Designer Statement his main concerns in creating the Malletech vibraphone were creating a musical vibrato function, allowing for great dampening efficiency and adjustment, and reducing noise to an absolute minimum. These have all been thoroughly addressed, and since the shutter vibrato is the most newsworthy feature of the instrument, I'll start there.
Vibrato shutters The basic idea is that a long sheet of stiff material is passed over the resonators to completely close them off from the bars, as if you passed your hand between them. The shutters are fixed with Velcro at either end to a spring loaded shuttle which moves along rollers on the inside of the end blocks. The vibrato pedal pulls a cable affixed to each side. The cable tension is adjusted by guitar-style tuning machines on either end of a rotating lever pulled by the pedal. The aluminum shuttles that move the shutters back and forth
Pedal Technique As Leigh will be the first to tell you, new musical possibilities require new instrumental techniques. No short-cuts, folks; it takes some practice to use this thing. If that discourages you, or if you even wonder why you need this feature, let me comfort you by saying that in ten minutes I was able to get over the initial awkwardness, and in an hour I began to be able to do nifty things intentionally. It's not impossible to do. In fact, if anyone can make the argument that an innovative though difficult technique can be accepted and eventually become the standard, it's Leigh Howard Stevens. Damper down with vibrato in closed and open positions.
The technique for playing is either to work the damper pedal with the ball of the foot and work the vibrato with the toes, or place the foot slightly to the side and work the vibrato by tilting the ankle side to side. Some may get better leverage by swiveling the pedal to the left to create a better angle for their right foot. Some of this will be moot as of this writing, as they were already finishing a secondary pedal to add another (some would say easier) way of operating the vibrato. If I get the chance to play with the new pedal, I'll review it here, of course. The addition of the secondary pedal made me wonder why they didn't just go with that to begin with and have two wide bar-style pedals and have the vibrato pedal nesting inside the damper pedal. That way, the angle of the foot would be irrelevant, the position of the pedal wouldn't need to change, and it would be easier to operate the vibrato without pressing the damper (for use as a tone shifting tool like the left pedal on a grand piano). I have never been a fan of narrow, swiveling pedals but then again I can't understand why Dancing With The Stars was so popular.
Inherent Problems? Though I didn't play it nearly long enough to push the envelope much, I also wondered about the limits of the design. Vibrato in other instruments is accomplished either with the fingers or the mouth, both of with have many times greater motor control as the foot of even a very coordinated person. Granted vibraphonists must of necessity be fairly well coordinated and make deft use of their foot. But it's possible that creating a musical vibrato with it in real time while pedalling the damper and keeping balanced on the other (and hopefully playing something meaningful with the hands) may approach the limit of what the human foot and/or ankle can be expected to do. We will see how well this system catches on and how much practice is necessary to become proficient at the technique. For now, suffice it to say that Malletech's shutter vibrato system does work, and can be used musically. The T-shaped lever rotates and pulls the shutter cables. Damper Function and Adjustment Historically, when a vibes player wanted to fix dampening problems, all too often it involved bending things back and forth or shimming up the pad, so some such homemade solution. In the quest for the perfect damper operation, Stevens and company adopted the attitude that more adjustment is better. It certainly is. The damper itself is a model of bottom-up problem-solving and thoroughness. There are three adjustments for the damper bar alone (leverage, travel, and tension), independent of the pedal, which is adjustable itself in at least three different ways (travel, horizontal position, and angle). To put this in perspective, vibraphone pedals up until now have had two adjustments: pedal height/travel, adjusted at the pull rod, and spring tension/damper height, adjusted at the spring screw. To have three times more adjustment possibilities independent of each other, is a major breakthrough, especially the pull ratio feature. Instead of simply putting up with the ways in which the laws of physics limit your pedalling and dampening process, you can now take advantage of them and truly customize the damper operation and pedal feel. Three damper adjustment screws (on each side): spring tension, stop height, and pull ratio
The damper pad consists of a rectangular strip of silicone gel (manufactured by a company that also makes breast implants) with a thin layer of felt on top, which are Velcro-ed to the aluminum damper bar. The gel is solid and does not flow (and is hence not adversely affected by an unlevel floor), but is very soft and squishy and makes a great feeling and sounding damper. Keybed Adjustment Another innovation is the removable keybed (I dislike the term 'harp' since it's a nickname borrowed from grand piano construction where the cast iron support plate actually looks like a harp, which isn't true here), which rests at each corner on a hard silicone-tipped support screw, which can be adjusted up or down to level the keybed to the frame, and to fine tune damper function, i.e. to favor sharps vs. naturals. Once the shutters are removed with a quick rip of Velcro, the keybed can simply be lifted off the frame, with or without bars.
Progressive Dampening By now all their patents have been filed and Malletech will begin producing and demonstrating the Love Vibe with progressive dampening feature as advertised. When I saw the instrument the feature was still not on present because some design aspects of it had not been decided on, but they were manufacturing and contracting considerations, not really functional aspects. Consequently I can't comment on how well it works, but in theory it seems like a good idea to dampen the bars smoothly to keep the pedalling from sounding choppy.
Frame The design of the end sections is borrowed from the Malletech marimbas, with the rounded wooden blocks supported by three aluminum tubes. The vibe is not currently be height adjustable, but can be made to any custom height at no extra charge. The struts of the keybed are milled from solid aluminum with slots cut to reduce weight, an idea which they could reasonably take to the extreme on all other parts as well. In all the frame is extremely solid, and is the equal of the Piper and Van der Plas in rigidity. The casters are not unnecessarily large but lock down very well. With bars, the instrument currently weighs a reasonable 136 pounds, but Leigh said future modifications may shave as much as 12 pounds off that. The bottom crossbar locks in place with a sliding collar. The diagonal brace on the high end ca e used to support the instrument during setup.
Bars and Sound Now if you're wondering, "But will I like the sound?", rest assured you will. The Malletech Love Vibe features a set of black anodized, smooth-finished bars which are CNC machined and fine-tuned by hand. When asked about the development of their first-ever set of vibraphone bars, Leigh said, "The bars were the easiest part. We've been making marimba and xylophone bars for years. We knew we could make good vibe bars as well." And so they did. The black-colored bars are quite striking and look great with the black frame and resonators, and the color was surprisingly non-distracting while playing. Once I began playing and thinking about the music I simply forgot the bars were a different color. For anyone concerned about playing in low light, if there is enough light to play at all it should be enough to play on black bars as well. And because it is a flat black, these bars will not be susceptible to glare in bright stage lighting like glossy or polished bars may.
It should be no surprise that Malletech would produce high quality vibe bars on the first try. Aluminum is an infinitely more consistent material than rosewood, so every bar made behaves just as it should. As expected, the tuning is first rate. The sound can be characterized as very clean and unprocessed. This may be because they were made with the same dimensions and alloy as Musser bars (remember, Stevens used to work at Musser), but without the brushed finish and edge chamfering. Leigh said he knows of an alloy that will sound even better and plans to use that for production bars.
As good as these bars are though, the reason to buy the Malletech Vibe is the engineering and the musical possibilities it affords.
Other ancillaries The end blocks will be offered in a variety of electric guitar-style sunburst colors (the prototype is blue, but green, red, orange, etc. should also be available). The vibe has tunable resonators throughout the range, which are easily tunable by hand. I knew the benefits of tunable resonators on the low end but was surprised how much difference it can make on the high end as well, and that the small movements required are not difficult to do. A marked "dipstick" will be provided to help recreate the factory tuning, if necessary.
A Work In Progress As I played the vibe and talked with its inventors for the better part of two hours, it became clear that there is still much that is not set in stone. This is a good thing because Leigh was more willing to listen to and accept suggestions (after one comment I made they rushed over to the shop and tried it out).
Things that have not been finalized include: -the price (though Leigh said he it should be in the $7,000-9,000 range) -whether Malletech will sell the frame alone -whether Malletech will retrofit a shutter system on an existing frame -whether Malletech will offer extended range vibes
These questions make me wonder if they will meet their production deadline in March, but time will tell, and I wish them the best in making every improvement they wish to in that time. Even with a prototype that had this or that proverbial rough edge, I was uniformly impressed.
I'm pleased to present the glorious soapbox of the only living Vibraphonist/Piano Tuner/Music Critic/Humorist/Baritone/Archer/Man-about-town.
In short order this page will be filled with expansive ramblings on all subjects known to man.
Be advised, I am in the process of distilling some of my online writings and commenting into posts for this page, which I will backdate with their original date of writing, and catching up with some more recent things as well. Look for posts as far back as 2005.
