This work wants to provide insights on the coupling between contact behaviour (local scale) and vibrational response (global scale) which brings to different contact scenarios arising in dry frictional systems. A newer setup, named TriboWave, has been developed in order to reproduce and investigate the system response to frictional contact, under well-controlled boundary conditions. The experimental results highlighted how a simple frictional system can switch from stable friction-induced vibrations to unstable vibrations, i.e. either macroscopic stick-slip instabilities or mode coupling instabilities. The effect of the contact surface roughness on the reproduced frictional scenario has been investigated too. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.