Buying advice, scales, care and first songs for handpans and steel tongue drums. A new article every morning.
Two steel instruments, two very different worlds. We compare the handpan and the steel tongue drum on sound, price, learning, care and who each one suits best.
A steel tongue drum if you want to be playing today: forgiving, hard to damage, and it starts at $149.90. A handpan if you want the sound that brought you here in the first place, played with your hands alone. Tell us how you'd use it and we'll narrow it to one.
None. Every instrument we sell is tuned to a single scale, so there is no wrong note to play. Most people arrive somewhere they enjoy within the first hour.
Free on every US order, with tracking as soon as it ships. Steel tongue drums leave the workshop in 1 to 3 business days and travel by air: 2 to 3 weeks to your door. Handpans are built to order and travel by sea: 3 to 4 weeks for the Essential and the Signature, 4 to 5 weeks for the Master, which comes by air. Every parcel is double-boxed for the trip, and we don't ship outside the US yet.
Send us a photo and we replace it - no return to organise. Just check the instrument when it arrives, and keep the packaging until you have.
Yes: 30 days from delivery, with the packaging still sealed, for a full refund. That is why we would rather talk first - nine times out of ten a two-minute exchange about size or scale is what stops a return being needed at all.
Yes, on every handpan and steel tongue drum, counted from the day it arrives: one year on the Essential models, three years on the Signature and the Master. It covers the instrument itself in normal use. If something isn't right, send us a photo or a short recording and we will sort it out with you.
Yes, it's the part we enjoy most. Tell us what the instrument is for and roughly what you want it to feel like, and we'll recommend one and explain why.