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Gary Burton talked about cracked bars

wyndorps 8 December 2025

I think, I heard Gary Burton at the vibe hang talking that he had once cracked bars.

I got 4 cracked bars from a vibe player who mostly used the old allbright mallets and he likes to play with a lot of dynamic.
On my website I have fotos of one of these bars. www.wyndorps.de

Up to now I haven't jet found the time to sand down the broken anodized layer, but I will do soon. I will try to find out how deep those cracks go into the bar. May be it's only the anodized layer, then perhaps the bar can be retuned, reanodized, and fine-tuned again.

Supporting Files
cracked_bar.png

Comments

tonymiceli Fri, 12/19/2025 - 15:45

keep us posted about the bars. I'm curious to see if you can restore them. 

my buddy lived with Steve Nelson and said there were a pile of bars at the bottom of their basement stairs. Steve had broken a bunch of them! I have never broken a bar, but I do know people who have. You must have to be playing much louder than i play. or???? what if you hit them really hard and then they smack against the resonators or the disk in the resonators, would that do it? 

Vince H Sun, 12/21/2025 - 16:34

I remember talking to Nico vanderplas about bars breaking and going out of tune. He said some aluminum alloys are more susceptible to metal fatigue than others. He noted that he advised players not to use the heavy Albright mallets (and their clones) on bars as they could cause metal fatigue quickly. When it fatigues it can eventually go out of tune or crack as the alloy molecules line up into a more crystalline structure. I have never had this problem but I know a friend who destroyed several bars on his Deagan Aurora in the 70s, and I once went to look at some used marching band vibes--Adams, Musser Pro, and Yamaha--that had been severely beaten. The Adams had all gone out of tune, some of the bars beyond repair (like a minor third or more flat). With the Mussers and Yamahas I didn't see this (it was kind of cool to see all those vibes together). I would add that the Musser-Piper was suffering metal fatigue with the aluminum profile frame as that aluminum used was not strong enough to handle the field abuse it was subjected to. But the bars were fine. I have noted in looking at various vibraphones over decades that thinner cheaper bars (eg, some of the old Kosth or entry level Musser and Deagan) were more likely to be out of tune.
I don't think the bars hitting the resonators or disks are going to do much damage as the metals for those will deform before the bar. I do think whacking the bars hard with wide heavy mallets is going to do some damage. It may sound great, but there's a price.
It would be good to hear from some of the bar tuners as to their observations.

seneferu Tue, 12/23/2025 - 21:52

In my humble opinion, maybe these players are hitting the bars too hard. Especially with a harder larger mallet like an Albright. Whenever I'm practicing with a hard mallet, I try to hit the bar as soft as possible (pianissimo). It helps with control of my dynamics. Maybe these vibe players should switch to a medium to medium-soft mallet. Just my thoughts.

wyndorps Fri, 12/26/2025 - 13:28

Unfortunately, I cannot grind the bars down as planned because our university surface grinders have a magnetic chuck and therefore do not work with aluminum bars. 
The only option (apart from grinding by hand, but that would be too imprecise for me) would be to dissolve the anodized layer. Unfortunately, I do not have access to the technical equipment to do this.

All four damaged bars I have are original Musser gold bars. Therefore, I do not believe that the aluminum quality is inferior in this case.

I had two of the bars at home for a few days (both F6 – in jazz, you play a lot in F or Bb, and F is used very prominent) and was able to test them in conjunction with my really good Musser Gold set.
Neither bar is out of tune, but when struck harder, they produce a metallic buzzing sound, and the second bar also has a significantly shorter vibration duration.

I suspect that may be only the anodized layer has been cracked by the rather percussive use of Albright mallets, but not the aluminum base body . 
I hope to find inexpensive options for further analysis.

I wish everyone a happy and healthy New Year.
Paul

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