Yes, what Bill said and:

Don't forget the importance of the accessory mallets, like timpani, bass/gong, snare sticks, multi-sticks, etc.

It is interesting to see how much a group frets about keyboard mallet selection and even battery implements, and then uses questionable tools for the percussionists in the front.

Look into having a good set of options there as well to color the great keyboard sounds you are making!

NL

Whichever series you choose, please try not to get them in a bright obvious color that matches nothing.

If its a good brand that'll work good, then fine, ignore it. but if you do like my school does and get a random multi-application kind from Vicfirth, get a darker color, or one that matches the theme of your show.

I cannot tell you how annoying and not-uniform it looked this year to look at our front ensemble and see half of us with bright pink mallets and the other half was just random assortments of colors. I dont know if this is an obvious post or not, but just a heads up.

Yeahhh....they're mallets. What they look like in relation to EVERYTHING is not even going to factor in to the judges minds.

If you're playing cleanly and with a good sound, your mallets could have flippin dead dolphin heads on them and it wouldn't matter. In my many years of teaching, I have never, EVER chosen mallets based on the color of the cord or yarn. I have always chosen mallets based on the sound that I need the keyboards at a particular spot in the show.

The IP Casella series are great for outdoor usage. They can produce a lot of sound.

For my high school Front, we use Innovative Percussion IP2002's (Soft marimba), IP2003's (medium hard marimba), and IP2004's (hard marimba) (part of the James Ancona series) for marimba and IP1005's (soft vibes) and IP1006's (hard vibes) (part of the Jim Casella series) for vibraphone.

Along with Marimba and Vibraphone, we also use Innovative for Xylophone/glockenspiel, Timpani, and our rack player.
Our xylophone player plays with IP ENS360's (hard rubber xylophone; part of Ensemble series) IP907's (small brass glockenspiel mallets), IP904's (very hard and bright xylophone, large hard plastic head.),( part of the James Ross series) and for chimes, we use CC-1 chime beaters (standard chime beaters).
Our rack player uses an IP CB-1 (standard X-Large concert/marching bass drum mallet) for the Contra bass drum and an IP CG-1 (X-Large, soft Gong mallet) for the gong. IP2002's for cymbal rolling on rack. Our pit timpanist uses a WIDE selection of mallets. The three best for what you may need are:
FS-T1 (soft, legato), FS-T3 (Medium, general), and FS-T5 (extra hard felt, staccato) All three of these are part of the IP Field Timpani Series.

Something to think about when buying mallets is the cost (of course!). For any brand and make of mallets (except cheap, low end mallets that I'm not going to bother mentioning), considering the size of your ensemble, is going to be rather high. Factoring in having to replace marimba mallets often (if your music includes dead strokes especially) makes it even higher. All of the James Ancona mallets run about $35-45 a pair.
Good price for the high quality of the mallet. Ultimately, it comes down to what you need in terms of sound. There are literally hundreds of choices to go through. Pick out what you need.
Just my two cents.

Justin
North Cobb High School Front Ensemble 2010-2012