Post #280250 by tiki mick on Mon, Jan 22, 2007 2:13 PM

Vampiress, I am no expert, but I have played vibes before (college jazz band) and marimba in high school.

Can I give you a honest piece of advice? If you have no prior musical experience, get an electric keyboard and learn the basics before you dive into mallet percussion. I have a very good reason for that: Anything under 5000 dollars will probably not be the kind of machine that travels well. These are fairly intricate machines, and the ones under 5000 are just not all that road worthy. That means they cannot be played professionally. So if you spend almost 2000 dollars for one, and then find out that you are really, really good and want to stick with it, and join a band, you will then have to spend another 5000 to get a "real" vibraphone.

Anyway, just my 2 cents. Before I get jumped on for this, I am a regular on Talkbass.com, which is a bass player's forum just like this one. This is the same advice most people give when a beginner decides to take up a really expensive instrument. They almost always say "spend no more then 300 dollars". I realize you can buy exactly one rosewood marimba bar for that amount, but you might want to seriously consider just getting an electric keyboard first.

Another thing, if you are really jonesing for a mallet instrument: Go to tijuana and buy a cheap fully chromatic marimba. Practice on that first, then move up to the big leagues.