Adapted from comments made on
www.thevibe.netHere's a very subjective report of my PASIC '05 experience where vibes are concerned.
First a note on the venue: As always the PASIC exhibit hall is not the best place to hear the subtleties of a musical instrument, although they did have a "quiet section" for the marimbas and so on in addition to the main section, with some buffer area in between. Some mallet instruments were in the main section as they are manufactured by commpanies that make other percussion as well. Musser, Yamaha, Adams, and Ross are in this category. Some of the time there was a Yamaha 4 octave vibe at the Mike Balter booth which offered a little more isolation. In the quiet section were Bergerault and Van der Plas, and the were Adams vibes at the Encore Mallets booth and the Innovative Percussion booth.
My overall impression is that Musser, Ross, and Adams all have basically the same sound, and the major differences were in the frames, which differ quite a bit. I thought the Ross vibe, by a wide margin, had the least unnecessary frame design.
Piper's Problem
The Musser booth had a Piper vibe on display, which sounded fine and I am sure is very sturdy, but weighs so much that I have a hard time not lapsing into ridicule.
I recently listened to a podcast on Larry'sImprovPage.com that is an interview John Piper (two of them feature him I think), and he discusses the development of the Piper vibe at some length. I won't/can't paraphrase it here, but he said after all was said and done, he was still dissatisfied with some things and bugged Musser to change them, but they would no longer adapt the instrument once it was in production. He said that he has reduced his personal instrument by about 40 lbs. (taken unnecessary stuff off a production model). This indicates to me that while Piper as an individual is committed to continued improvement of the vibraphone's design, Musser, as a small part of a large multinational corporation, is not.
As to the question of application, for a gigging vibist, the Piper vibe would be a beast to transport, even with the modifications Piper himself has made. Since I have to disassemble my vibe to take it anywhere, a tank like the Piper is out of the question. But if you never take it apart and you're often going to be rolling the vibe over uneven ground or any distance greater than about 50 feet, then the heavier frames become more practical.
Some have commented that the Piper vibe is ideal for a marching band instrument because of it's sturdiness. It's hard to accurately second-guess Mr. Piper's intent in designing the his vibe, but I think that despite appearances, he didn't exactly have a drum corps application in mind. It certainly is solid, but I would submit that the all-terrain cart frames designed especially for this purpose might be a better and cheaper alternative. The Van der Plas frame, as another example, while extremely sturdy for any normal playing situations, is not designed to be an all-terrain frame. It can surely hold up very well with being rolled from the car to the gig, etc. but I wouldn't roll it across a vast parking lot, through the tunnels of a stadium, and halfway across a football field. This requires a specialized frame.
For school applications in Europe where Van der Plas instruments are more easily available, Premier and Adams make more suitable instruments with field-type frames. I would recommend VdP for more discriminating customers, unless Nico wants to get into that market and build vibes for marching band-level abuse. That's up to him, though.
Perhaps the jury is still out, but I think school concert ensembles may be the answer, as opposed to marching band, when it comes to the Piper vibes' niche.
Back to the convention hall...
The Adams frame is less unwieldy but still I wonder about their concept of the relationship between form and function. The Ross vibe frame is very similar to the Yamaha and is very simple, yet reasonably rugged. Since they all have a Musser-ish sound, I would probably opt for the Ross vibe out of those three (Musser Piper, Ross, and Adams), based on frame construction alone.
Yamaha has a brighter sound in general, especially the glossy bars. If you have experience with their pianos you may also notice this trend. Yamaha's brushed finish bars, are a little more similar to Musser. The 4 octave Yamaha vibe was respectable, though the upper extension sounded somewhat weak and the lower extension was a little boingy and neither extreme matched the sound of the rest of the instrument very well. Overall though, the Yamaha was high quality vibe in sound and construction.
Coming soonDoug DeMorrow did not have a vibraphone on display. He said he hadn't built another new one and was currently redesigning a frame for it. Those who have seen pictures of the DeMorrow vibe from previous PASIC's will remember that its frame was identical to the DeMorrow marimba frames. He also said he's working on some innovations, such as an in-resonator mic system and spiral-shaped rotor fans. We will stay tuned for further developments.
On the topic of future developments, Leigh Howard Stevens told me that Malletech was in the beginning stages of creating a vibraphone. He didn't have any details to tell me, but I would imagine with their attention to detail they will come up with a high quality instrument.
Worst In ShowSince I've stated above that this is in no way an objective journalistic account, I won't mince words in describing how I disliked the Bergerault vibe. For one thing, the frame design seemed pretty close to that of the old Leedy and Jenco vibes of the 40's and 50's, which made it look like a dinosaur while depriving it of any chance of being efficient or managable. It's not made to disassemble well, and it weighs a ton. To be fair, it was 4 octaves, but it's heavier than it looks. The sound of the Bergerault vibe was quite unsatisfactory to me. The same boingy quality the I heard in the Yamaha's lowest few notes existed to a much greater degree in the Bergerault, and across a bigger portion of the instrument. The highest notes up to C7 sounded very thin and whiny, and again this continued down into the standard range. I suppose I could say that whereas the Yamaha sounded good in the standard range (F3-F6) and only lost sonority in the lowest and highest half octaves, the Bergerault's sound was much more uniform in tone and balance across the the keyboard. It was all equally bad. IMHO, the Bergerault is not a professional quality vibraphone.
A digression on pedal width:I have a problem with sliding/swiveling pedals. Having adjustment options is one thing, but being veritably forced to adjust the pedal during a performance is another. When playing on a regular 3oct vibe, you're often playing in different places on the instrument, i.e. standing in different positions in space that can differ by a foot or more. I always had trouble keeping my balance while moving from one end of the vibe to the other while keeping my foot on the pedal, and moving the pedal while pedal is awkward and sometimes noisy. This is a problem on any vibe whose pedal is less than a foot wide (Musser, Ross, Deagan, Adams...). Add more notes to the instrument and it only gets worse. The best solution is to have a bar-type pedal that's as wide as possible, if not the width of the whole instrument. Those manufacturers who make them should continue, and those mentioned above should take a hint.
What the heck?The Gramorimba is basically a stone vibe, and it sounds kind of halfway between a marimba and a vibraphone. The guy wouldn't say what kind of stone was used, but said it's not granite and not marble. The bars were much longer than normal vibe bars are, and so the low notes look lower than they sound (the range of this instrument was F3-F7, compared with the standard vibe range of F3-F6). On the free demo CD I got, the harmonics of the instrument are such that it's sometimes hard to tell which octave you're listening to. This was a fun novelty kind of instrument and it was beautifully crafted.
The Midi ControllersI spent quite some time at the Malletkat booth playing with it and talking to Mario, and a little less time at the Xylosynth booth (maybe 10 minutes tops). To me, it's a little bit like apples and oranges, because they're good at different things.
The Malletkat no longer comes with sounds onboard, so they're both the same in that regard. The major difference in the features that mattered to me was the dampening modes. The Malletkat has a mode where you can draw your mallet or hand across a 'ringing' bar and dampen it just like a real vibe. The Xylosynth had a pedal (one of several) dedicated to dampening that worked like a shift-key on a computer keyboard. You play a chord, for example, and then slide your foot forward a bit to press the dampening pedal, while still keeping it on the sustain pedal. Then you can dampen any note currently sounding by touching it with the mallet. You can't play any other notes until your foot is off the dampening pedal though. So this feature requires practice and is not a transferrable skill from accoustic playing, which it is on the Malletkat. This was a big drawback of the Xylosynth for me.
Neither of them can do afterpedaling or halfpedalling to my knowledge.
Another thing that no one has ever tried, is a sostenuto function, like that of the middle pedal on a grand piano, where you play a note or chord and push the pedal, and then only those notes are held while the others are short. This is a CRYING SHAME, since we need that capability so much more than pianists.
The Xylosynth's bars also didn't seem to be as sensitive as the Malletkat pads. You had to use softer mallets and play a little harder. If I had a mallet synth I would want to be able to use the same mallets that I use for vibes, which is the case for Malletkat. Having said all of this, though, the Xylosynth did feel more like a real marimba, compared with the Malletkat, which feels more like a marshmallow-rimba. For me, though, the better feel of the Xylosynth doesn't outweigh the better features and intuitiveness of the Malletkat.
Drumroll please...And now for the main event (for me anyway): Van der Plas. Some of you know that I've been in contact with Nico for several months now, as well as on his Mallet Corner forum, pestering him about the particulars of tuning, damper and frame design, motor capabilities, and possible future innovations. I was pleased to finally meet Nico and play his instruments. He had an eVibe and a 3.5 octave accoustic vibe at his booth, and was right next to the Gramorimba, which deserves a few words of its own (see below). My prior experience with Van der Plas vibes is limited to Roy Pertchik's trichromatic instrument, and the sound of those bars is somewhat conventional, though not really a copy of any other sound. At the convention though, Nico had a set of his new HDS (High Density Surface treated) bars on his display vibe. Their sound is somewhere in between that of brushed finish bars and the high-gloss bars like Yamaha has. I should qualify that statement by saying it doesn't sound like Yamaha glossy bars, but has some of the same brilliance. It also doesn't sound like the Musser brushed bars, but has much of the same warmth. I wasn't able to verify Nico's claim of up to 200% longer sustain, but that may have been the hall. In terms of volume though, I could hear the VdP clearly from a couple aisles down, and had no problem hearing myself while playing it (no extra whacking required). I think with the HDS bars, Van der Plas had solidly established a sound of his own. The HDS bars look great too. Not a mirror finish, but shiny and reflective, almost like an oyster-shell effect.
Of course, if you are used to the other sounds and like them, it's possible you might not prefer the Van der Plas sound. However, I feel that the sound quality of the HDS bars possesses the best of both worlds. I was particularly happy with the lower extension, because it was very well balanced with the middle register, and it didn't require great care not overdrive the bars as is most often the case. A regular medium vibe mallet sounds fine on the low C, with plenty of fundamental and not too much upper partials. A slighty softer vibe mallet is even better, and you can play as hard as you want without it becoming pingy. I wish it had been a 4 octave vibe, so I could contrast Nico's highest bars with those of the Yamaha and (nose up-turned) the Bergerault. However, this is not as big a deal as the low bars, as they are musically more important and harder to make well anyway.
Regarding the Van der Plas frame, it's every bit as sturdy as the Piper, but doesn't weigh as much (even with the extra notes!) and doesn't look like a steam-shovel. The motor has probably more features than any other vibe motor (which honestly doesn't take much), including fan position memory, and switching between two preset speeds (done with the touchpad or his v-beam, which takes some practice to use).
The eVibe was fun to play with. It sounds just like an accoustic vibe with pickups (because that's what it is), and the onboard effects and mixer are very convenient to use. I am not an electronics buff, so I couldn't experiment meaningfully with all the instrument's possibilities, but it seemed that it would not be long before I could negotiate the effects processor and mixer with ease. I have always been a little suspicious of vibe pickups, and generally prefer the accoustic sound where possible, but I have been in enough loud playing situations to immediaely recognize the value of the increased power and control pickups afford. Even though I don't think the eVibe is exactly right for me, it is a great-sounding and versatile instrument, as others can attest.
Keep up the innovation, Nico! Remember, "Don't rest on your laurels; they are prickly when dry."
(click on the link at the top of this post for the full discussion)
