Woodstock DCS17 Encore Collection Silver Chimes of Mars Windchime

I use wind chimes not in the standard way (I live in a small flat in a social housing scheme), but I take them out to wild places and make professional grade recordings of natural soundscapes including the wind chimes. The Chimes of Mars were among the three different really small and light sets of chimes that I bought in the spring of 2013 to take out on some of my Cornwall coast path hikes, to suspend on tripods on clifftops so that I could have the chimes sounds in soundscapes of often really interesting and sometimes dramatic sea action.The Mars chimes are actually the next-to-smallest / highest-pitched of those that I bought. To my ears they are getting close to as high as a set of chimes could go while one would still be able to clearly hear and differentiate between the pitches of each note. Go anything much higher and one would hear rather undifferentiated tinklings. Their sound is more penetrating and 'carrying' than that of various other similar-size Woodstock chimes, apparently because the walls of their tubes are a little thicker relative to their diameter - which can be an advantage or a nuisance, depending on one's own situation. For my purposes I put the small chimes relatively close to the recorder and the larger ones further back, in order to get a good balance, but the Mars chimes always need to be a bit further back than the Mercury or rather larger Polaris chimes.The tuning of these chimes is to a really strange scale, which you may or may not like. I wasn't too sure of it myself at first, but it did actually come out with a strange beauty all of its own in the various clifftop soundscapes that I recorded. It also made an incredibly beautiful and musical combination with any of the pentatonic chimes, such as the Woodstock Pluto, Polaris and Mercury chimes. The only thing is that these bronze chimes are rather shrill toned. If I'd wanted the Mars chimes for more normal use I would have chosen the silver finish version, for that finish has a smoother and more refined tone. However, I deliberately chose the bronze finish version of this and the Mercury chimes in order to have some variety of tone in my chimes ensemble recordings - and I think that worked extremely well.Actually I have made available a lot of CDs of my 'Wind Chimes in the Wild' series, which include Cornish clifftop recordings some of which use the Mars chimes - all of which you can find if you Google "philip goddard e-store" (not in quotes).

We have a few windows that we open at home which are still without wind chimes so we have about 6 or 7 now and always looking for another one. Thankfully these days you can usually find previews of the chime sounds online to give an impression of what you will hear (in a decent breeze, at least).I tend to prefer larger chimes and usually rate smaller ones less highly simply because they can all start sounding alike at the smaller sizes (the longest tube on this one is 7 inches, but we have others with longest tubes at 15 inches that produce nice comparatively deep resonant tones). The length of the tube influences the harmonics that it can produce. So, for me, buying a smaller chime becomes more of an exercise in colour matching! Having said that, the bronze tubes seem to be slightly mellower than silver tubes, slightly less bright-sounding, but at these sizes that difference is small.The Amazon description for some reason says 6 tubes, but the chime is pentatonic (5 tones) and therefore has 5 tubes. Larger chimes will also have room for more tubes, and our two largest chimes cover an octave (8 tubes, obviously) which does wonders for the variety of tones and chords the chime can produce.For a nice background sound, all chimes work for me, and as a small 5-tube chime, this is amongst the best, since Woodstock make efforts to tune their tubes and create pleasant harmonious chimes as opposed to some of the nasty discordant ones you can still find if you look hard enough.

The sound these chimes make is crystal clear and very tuneful but I want to mention that they are tuned to a minor key. If you know the song "The Rains of Castermere" then you will get a better idea of my meaning as these chimes hit almost all those notes. That is something I would have liked to know before I bought these chimes so I thought I might pass that tidbit on.Now, it's not unpleasant but I think I would have preferred something a bit more upbeat in my garden rather than the Theme to the Red Wedding!That said, it is a beautiful sound - almost ethereal - and I won't be returning the chimes. They are sturdy and well made so it looks like I'm going to be pottering around in my garden whilst humming in the minor key for a long time to come!

My husband is a musician and he has pitch perfect hearing. He said this is stunning sounds beautiful and it’s not too long either. I would give it five but there is a card but hands from it and when I gently tried to pull it off it pulled a piece of wood away as well. But I just tied delightful tune back on and they sound absolutely gorgeous. I am going to buy again for gifts

I already had some Woodstock chimes so knew the beautiful sounds that come from them.sounds great with the other chimes.personally I would rather pay a bit more for Woodstock as not tinny like cheaper versions.woodstock every time for me.i even brought my neighbour 1as she always commenting on the sound of mine.. 1 happy neighbour.and a happy me.my original 1 I have had for about 15 yes an still going good.great value in the long run

I bought this item for a friend as a birthday gift and it really is gorgeous; she was thrilled to bits with it. It comes with a full guarantee and is extremely well made and a lovely unusual colour. Loved it. To keep it looking its best she has taken it indoors for the winter and will put it back out from spring until the frosts return late autumn, but that is personal choice.

Woodstock Windchimes are a joy to listen to.

Nice, solid and good quality. So pleasant having a gentle tinkling around the garden. As others have said, it needs a decent breeze to get going but that would be easily fixed by popping on a larger bit of wood to catch the wind. No complaints and reccomended