LingTing Kalimba 34 keys Thumb Piano Mbira Finger Piano Gift for Adult Beginners Professional（LT-K34V,snow whisperer)

Beautiful Kalimba. Inexpensive for the great quality received. Easily portable thanks to the case included. Perfect for beginning and the sound is so beautiful and calming.

I got the 34 key which is the chromatic. You get your sharps and flats where you dont with the smaller instrument, giving you a wider selection of songs you can play or adapt. I have a smaller, hollow bodied 17 key that I enjoyed, and while the hollow body is louder, it also buzzes and vibrates more than this solid body. Still plenty loud enough! But without that terrible buzz. Also the highest keys dont make that ugly plonking. They actually ring. I did have to adjust slightly as the leftmost key was muted, but with a bit of trial and error I got it done. This does tune a bit differently from the hollow body ones you see more commonly. But there are instructions and even video links to help. Overall the sound quality is so much better with this instrument and the wood and construction are definitely worth the price.

This is a very special kalimba! First, it is made out of Purple Heart wood (violet wood). It has the most amazing natural purple color to it. It is a dense wood, so produces fantastic sound and tone. The wood is very well finished. This kalimba is easy to hold. The tines are very smooth and easy on the thumbs. There are NO dead tines. Resonance is very good. Ling Ting kalimbas come with more accessories than others do. Really like that. Love this kalimba!

The instrument is beautiful...the tunning is pretuned everything is well done... The beads for the bag however are broken, and I was kinda expecting to at least get a tuning hammer but it didn't come with one. So I'll have to get one when I'm ready. Everything else is superb, from the quality to the craftsmanship.

I bought this for the chromatic capabilities but ended up absolutely falling in love with the clear, ringing sound of each note! My other kalimba that I adored is now feeling neglected due to the fact that I cannot put this one down. It is not as loud as my other one that is hollow and has a hole in it. However, the amazon box it was delivered in makes a great amplifier. Also set it on any table or desk, and that will become an amazing amplifier adding to the already rich tones of the instrument. I highly recommend this instrument.

Great gift for musical children.

It plays like it looks, beautifully. Perfect tune out the box, good weight, solid tines, it's my goto kalimba and i have 7.

This is a review for the 34 key version of their kalimba. Its important to know that because the 17 key version (K17A) is quite different. Its almost impossible to tune. With a hammer tuned version you can slowly creep up on the note in question and test the entire way. With the hex key version you have to just guess if you are in the right place and tighten it, test, find out you are still off, and repeat that over and over till you have blindly landed it in the correct place. This kalimba arrived slightly out of tune and I can see why. To do a proper job of it would take hours and hours. You also cannot tune the lower key rack unless you completely remove the upper key above it, so you basically have to tune 2 keys for every lower key. It does seem to stay in key once tightened. The upper row of keys is a total disaster. Its got this awful buzz to it whenever you play a key, like all the other keys on that row are buzzing just slightly. I cant seem to make it go away. Because this one does not depend on spring tension maybe? There is no wood to absorb the buzz? On top of that a bunch of the keys flat out do not resonate properly. Probably about a quarter of the upper row don't work correctly at all. No tone, just a flat clang. I cant seem to fix them. In addition to that the design of this thing is awfully questionable. They have it set up for each upper note is a sharp of the lower note. The problem with that is not all lower notes have a sharp. There is no such thing as B sharp for instance. They solved this by just having another C key on that note. I've got 3 duplicate C keys on this kalimba. They could have simply removed 2 of them and spaced it better in such a way that you don't have to remove the upper keys to tune the lower keys. Pianos simply skip those keys and this should do the same. Its also quite heavy. About twice as heavy as the 17 key version. Enough to be annoying. Its also not balanced, with all the weight towards the upper end of the kalimba. It makes it hard to hold. In addition to this the entire kalimba ecosystem is designed around the 17 key version. My tuner app can only do 17 keys for instance. It took me a while to even find a tuning key for the 34 key version. It turns out there is one in the book they sent with it. See attached image. Its a shame it worked out like this. The lower row is quite nice and sounds just fine to my ear. It also doesn't have as much buzz. I don't know why the upper row is so broken. I have the 17 key version as well and that was fine. No buzz, easier to tune, no broken keys, not as heavy, etc. It solves almost all of these issues that the 34 key has. I wish I could review them separately but they are both on the same page.

I am not a particularly Kalimba player but this is a very special piece since it is chromatically tuned (two rows of keys). One could play a lot more Melodies. Love it. Sadly ther is no tunning hammer included on the pack, though there is a place for that in the case.

Good Service

I bought this thing as my first Kalimba and when it arrived it was badly out of tune with some dead tines and buzzing. The screws are slightly smaller than the wrench provided at times and you really have to force it into the screw when trying to get to the lower set of tines. I think the biggest failing point is the screws. Most of the tines were extremely over tightened when I went to tune it. I had to use a lot of strength to get the screws loose. All of them. I think it being machine tightened damaged some of the tines as I can't get them to ring true at all. There was metal shavings and indents in the tines at the contact points. The damaged tines get -close- to being in tune but there are problems even getting close. The dead tines have no sustain. They buzz and that buzz can only be minimized and not eliminated. The lack of sustain and the slight buzz can be heard on any recording. The lack of sustain makes the tines have an... innate vibrato(?) Hard to describe it but it makes it very hard to tune. For example the D# tine will start off at D and go to D# for a bit then go to E then drop off to nothing. It is repeatable and I have tried it at all variations of tightness on the screw but I think the factory tightening damaged it too much. There are about 7 or 8 tines that all do it and have the dents on them and they all do the same thing. I'll try tuning it down a whole step across the board to get away from the indents but I don't have much hope for it.