ting ting tong....!
just a quick survey...who's using what marimba, what do you like or dislike...any reccomendations?

I use a Yamaha marimba, and I love it. Yamaha makes great marimbas all around. I also used a Premier when I was in Blue Stars, and they sound very good (especially when they are cold-they get a lot louder and they ring like crazy) but the bars crack and the frames are horrible. I really like the sound of rosewood, but at the same time the feel and durablilty of the acoustalon material are wonderful. They are a lot easier to take care of, too.

i have a standard 4.3 yamaha acoustalon. i actually love this type of synthetic. and since i have to travel a lot with my instrument, i'm glad i got the acoustalon rather than the rosewood because if i got the rosewood, i would probably have about 5 broken bars right now, so yeah. i would definitely recommend this marimba for young players like me because its pretty cheap moneywise, and it actually sounds fairly decent for a synthetic marimba, (at least, thats what i think.) the frame though...................eh. everytime i play on the instrument, it always makes this rattling noise. i've heard from people that yamaha frames do this often. ah well, its all good.

kyle
P.S. Hey kevin!

I"m still a high school student and so i haven't been exposed to every kind of marimba. My school has two 4 1/3 Yamaha Acoustalon's (one should be thrown away) and a rosewood (I think it's a musser) I prefer the Acoustalon just cus that's the one in the best condition at our school, and the rosewood sounds like crap. But that coul all be from always playing on one type.

I own a 5 octave Concert Grand Yamaha marimba. I have heard a lot of people complain about the brightness from Yamaha's bars, but personally, I think it's a great sound for playing Japanese music. This is probably due to the fact that Keiko Abe designed this model.