I was curious what folks have to say about Adams marimbas, particularly the Honduras Rosewood MAHV50 model... Tone and structural quality, durability, etc...

Thanks
Pat

Hi Pat,
I haven't played an Adams except at PAS conventions and you know what that's like, perhaps. But I've tuned a quite a few Adams in the last several years..more and more every year.. Their wood is of very high quality, and is, as far as I can tell, totally air-dried. I could be wrong, but this seems to be the case. This is pretty much the ideal way to dry honduras rosewood for instruments(Musser, for instance buys their wood already kiln dried)...although I feel it is better to do the last bit of drying in a kiln where there is better control of the drying process. (Kori dries this way and they have fantastic sounding bars) That said, I wonder if some of it isn't too dry. The bars are very light in weight...and on the instruments I've tuned, the pitch is all over the place, even on the newest instruments...within a single bar and between bars... as if the moisture content of the wood is not yet stable enough. (Pitch will always change with moisture and temperature changes, but some of these Adams' seem pretty extreme.) On several of the 4 1/3 marimbas the sound quality and resonance has been very uneven.
However, NEXUS now uses Adams. I've know those guys for 30 years, and their integrity would not let them choose an inferior instrument...so...good luck..
Bill Youhass
Fall Creek Marimbas
www.marimbas.com