For one of my students in the Betuwe teaching group, I did a balafon overhaul. A support beam in the frame had broken. In addition, there were many side noises and some of the gourds were actually too long and were touching the ground and then pressing against a sound bar.  All in all, plenty of reason for repair and improvement! During the work, I consulted with Marlies about how far I could go with the approach. She chose to give me a free hand and let me determine the cost. In the photo, you can see that by installing a second crossbeam, I raised the frame a little on the outside. This made it possible to attach the sound bars in a different way; instead of tying the sound bars to the frame individually, I could now make a mat of sound bars and have it ‘float’ suspended above the frame. The mat is stretched on the outside of the frame. In the end, it led to a complete balafon overhaul, a little more than replacing one bar….

Here the balafon with the sound bars removed, under the black cord there should be an elevation so that a free-standing mat of sound bars can be applied.

In this picture, you can see that an elevation on the wide side of the balafon has already been made; the rope on which the sound bars lie has now been raised.