According to Atlanta Magazine¹⁾-

The primitive appearance of strings stretched across a wood-topped steel bowl is deceptive. The 36 strings are doubled up, with half the strings played by a mallet while the other half resonate in harmony beneath. Plus, the Salimbaa is chromatically tuned, which means that the player need only turn the instrument a few degrees to change key.

Byerly says that the idea of the Salimbaa came to him in a dream while he was doing mission work with the indigenous Manobo in the Philippines. As it turns out, his vision closely resembles an ancient Philippine instrument that had been lost to time. Now, Byerly runs a nonprofit that works with tribal peoples to “redeem” long-forgotten flutes, drums, and stringed instruments.

“This stringed lyre is a beautifully handcrafted instrument that has been designed and crafted by Caleb Byerly. He used the essential design of the Hebrew lyre that King David would have played.” ²⁾

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Byerly's company Evergreen Instruments makes copies of many different world instruments including Native American style flutes, Filipino boat Lutes, and bukkehorns.

Here is a commentary on a video ³⁾ about Byerly's instruments by Musicologist Hans Brandeis ⁴⁾-

Dear watchers of this video, please, don't fall for this nonsense. I'm an ethnomusicologist by profession, and I have been researching on the traditional music of the Philippines for more than 40 years. I conducted four years of on-the-spot field research, collected almost 500 musical instruments from all over the Philippines, from the Visayas, Luzon, Palawan and, first of all, from Mindanao, I have most of the books and articles on Philippine musical instruments in my library, examined collections of Philippine musical instruments in many museums…

In another video, Mr. Caleb reveals that the tribe he visited were the Tinananon Manobo. The Tinananon Manobo are a subgroup of the Matigsalug Manobo. They are only called by this particular name because they are living along Tinanan River, nearby the Arakan area of Mindanao. In his video here, Mr. Caleb is making incredibly shameless claims, saying: “A number of years ago, I was living with a tribal group in the Philippines, and I noticed that they did not have any musical instruments. And they told me that, many, many years ago, their instruments were lost, they were somehow taken away from them, and they were asking me to help them to redeem them. So, I went on a journey with them, re-creating their musical instruments.”

Well, I made a thorough research of the traditional music of the Matigsalug Manobo, and I'm also connected to a Tinananon Manobo instrument maker. It's an absolute lie that the Tinananon Manobo “don't have any musical instruments.” This is absolutely not true, and I know very well, which musical instruments they are using. I absolutely NEVER saw an instrument that was constructed like this alleged “salimbaa” made by Mr. Caleb, and nobody ever mentioned that term to me, as the name for a musical instrument. There is no mentioning in the literature and no such instrument exists in any collection of Philippine musical instruments, in any museum, worldwide. But, first of all, the construction of this “salimbaa” and the manner of playing it does not fit into Manobo culture at all. This thing looks just like a round version of the Indian dulcimer santoor or of the Persian santur or similar instruments.

And how can this Mr. Caleb make up this story that the musical instruments were taken away from the Tinananon? In fact, he obviously hardly understood anything what they were telling him, because he was even taking the “salimbaa” for a musical instrument. Among the Bukidnon, Higaonon, Talaandig and related Manobo groups, the term “salimbal” is used in the old epic songs called ulaging. The SALIMBAA (or SALIMBAL in Bukidnon) is a mythological vehicle that was sent down by God to earth to bring the cultural heroes, Agyu and his family, up to heaven, after they had been immortalized by eating a kind of magic meat. And this Mr. Caleb didn't even get that story and thought it is a musical instrument…

For me, personally, this whole story is complete nonsense, and I don't understand for whatever reason other people (aside from Mr.Caleb who simply wants to sell his instruments) are propagating the hoax of an alleged “lost instrument of the Philippines”…

official youtube channel ⁵⁾
official website ⁶⁾
Personal website (mirrors the Evergreen Instruments website ⁷⁾