A New Mallet Wrap Material

I had a student come in for his lesson yesterday and he brought me 8 skeins of Alpaca wool. It was put in the trunk of his car to donate about a year ago, but when he saw them he decided to give it to me to wrap some mallets.

It is slightly thicker than the #1 (Baby/Fingering) yarn that I normally use, but I wanted to try it and compare it to the sheep wool that I have. 

I've found that 300 wraps for the #1 yarn works very well for general playing, but as I continued wrapping with this yarn I realized that 300 would make this too large. I stopped at 200. The result was a mallet that brought out a full fundamental (similar to my Balter Grandiosos at 300 wraps), but even less ictus on the initial contact. The finished head weight was 29g. This is the most beautiful sounding mallet that I have ever wrapped!

Putting it in perspective: I've found that 28-32g. is the optimum head weight for my playing. Wool or Acrylic produce less ictus than Cotton.

Here is a break down of the mallets from Left to Right:

#                       Head weight        Head shape         Head Size          # Wraps

Original                   16.6g.               Disc                       1"                     N/A

Unwrapped

Wrapped                  22g.                  Disc                    1 3/8"                 300

#1 Sheep wool

Wrapped Alpaca      29g.                  Disc                    1 1/2"                 200

#3(?) Alpaca

Balter Grandioso     29g.                 Round           (1 1/8") 1  7/16"       300

#1 Sheep wool

I'm not sure why I've never tried Alpaca wool before. My wife and I have gone to Peru 4 times and on each visit we have bought Alpaca sweaters. They are warm and extremely soft. When you buy them on the street from vendors they tell you that they are 'Baby Alpaca'. In reality they are not 'Baby Alpaca' but rather 'Maybe Alpaca'. It doesn't matter, we still love them.

I've found that Sheep wool doesn't wear as well as Acrylic for my mallets so time will tell for the Alpaca wool, but for now they have a beautiful sound.