Made a 3.3 octave marimba for my toddler after he showed interest in mine
A few years ago, I decided to build myself a marimba - and I've been enjoying it ever since. My son is about 1.5 years old, and has made a habit of pushing his toddler tower over to my marimba to play on it, so I decided to make him his own marimba to play on!
I made the keys out of white oak, and dyed each note a distinct shade for a kid-friendly, rainbow look - with the added bonus that later on, if he shows interest in learning music, the color coding can help him learn the placement of the notes
Despite looking like a toy, it's a fully functional, properly tuned marimba - I was actually quite surprised at how decent the white oak keys sound compared to Padauk or Rosewood - they have a very bright quality to them that's actually quite pleasant. They're a lot quiter than Padauk or Rosewood, but since they're being "played" by a toddler, that's a feature, not a bug lol
This time around, it actually only took about a month start to finish to build, compared to the 8 months it took to build my 5 octave. A feat that was aided in part by the fact that my woodshop has expanded over the years to now include tools much better suited to marimba making (a band-saw, spindle sander, drill press, etc), partly because it's only a 3.3 octave, and partly because now I actually know what I'm doing lol
I also built a web-app to help with the tuning of the bars which was a huge help, it uses a fast fourier transform to break down the sound of the bar being struck, isolating all overtones at once and with the tuning being specifically built for short-lived strikes - as I found that most off-the-shelf tuners do very poorly with this kind of tuning, as they're more built around the expectation of long sustained notes for tuning. I plan on making a post here about that later once I've finished refining it, in the hopes that it can help other aspiring marimba makers!
The suspension system is also a 3d-printed design that I came up with for this build, it uses stainless steel dowels to keep them in place on the board, and the 3d printed suspension posts have both faces lined in felt, which keeps the keys from ever touching the rigid plastic