The rise of the handpan movement

HIS-16Who were the first makers outside PANArt?#

intermediate

Short answer. Pantheon Steel in the United States is the best documented of the first wave. Kyle Cox founded it in 2005, coined the word “handpan” around 2007, and released the Halo in 2009. Others emerging in roughly the same window include Bellart in Spain, Metal Sounds with the Spacedrum in France, and Bali Steel Pan in Indonesia. Saraz followed in the United States in 2012.

Reconstructing this period precisely is harder than it should be, because much of it happened on forums and blogs that have since disappeared, and because several builders were experimenting privately for years before selling anything. Treat any tidy chronology, including this one, as approximate.

Pantheon Steel. Founded by Kyle Cox in 2005, joined by Jim Dusin in 2006. Dusin remained with the company until his death in 2016. The Halo was first released in 2009. Cox’s coining of “handpan” around 2007 gave the whole emerging field its name. Pantheon Steel was the first American maker and among the longest running anywhere; it closed on 17 July 2025.

Bellart. Luis Martin Eguiguren Garrido in Spain, one of the earliest European builders outside Switzerland, active from around the same period.

Metal Sounds. The French maker behind the Spacedrum, associated with Philippe Maignaut, and one of the first to reach a wider market with a named model of its own.

Bali Steel Pan. Building in Indonesia and covered in the handpan press by late 2010, the first significant maker in Asia and an early demonstration that this was going to be a global craft rather than a European one.

Saraz. Founded by Mark Garner in the United States in 2012, and one of the makers that helped establish the professional, waiting list driven model that dominated the 2010s.

There are also earlier and murkier claims. Marco Della Ratta is reported to have been attempting instruments of this kind as early as 2002 or 2003. Given how little of that period is documented, it is safest to say that several people were trying independently and that Pantheon Steel was the first to arrive with a finished instrument, a name for it and a route to market.

See also: FUN-10, HIS-18

HIS-17How did the internet and YouTube drive demand?#

beginner

Short answer. The handpan is a visual instrument with an immediately arresting sound, and it arrived at exactly the moment video sharing became universal. YouTube did for it what no distributor could have, and it did so entirely outside PANArt’s control.

Consider the timing. The Hang debuted in 2001. YouTube launched in 2005. Between roughly 2007 and 2012 the platform went from novelty to default, and in that same window the number of people who had heard a handpan went from thousands to millions.

The instrument was almost designed for the format. It looks strange, which stops the scroll. It is played by hands on a shining metal dome, which is satisfying to watch. It sounds good through bad phone speakers, because the pitches are consonant and the attack is soft. And it can be played solo, outdoors, unamplified, by one person sitting on the ground, which is exactly the video anyone can make.

Busking footage did much of the work. Daniel Waples, who plays as Hang in Balance, is the most frequently cited example, with a body of street and outdoor performance video that has accumulated tens of millions of views over the years. There were many others, and the cumulative effect was that a global audience discovered an instrument that perhaps two people on earth were making.

The consequences were not all comfortable. Almost every one of those videos was titled “hang drum”, which is why the wrong name is the one the world knows. Demand exploded against a supply that PANArt refused to expand, which pushed secondary prices to absurd levels. And the visual grammar of those early videos, sunsets, beaches, closed eyes, set expectations about what the instrument was for that many players have been pushing back against ever since.

The internet did something else too, less visible and arguably more important. It let would be builders find each other. Forums and later Facebook groups were where the craft knowledge that PANArt kept private was slowly, imperfectly reconstructed by people who had never met.

See also: HIS-18, Community and culture

HIS-18How many handpan makers are there now?#

beginner

Short answer. Nobody knows exactly, and published estimates vary from around a hundred established workshops to several hundred builders in total. What is certain is the shape of the change: from two people in 2006 to a global craft in under twenty years.

The reason no one can give a firm number is that “maker” has no agreed boundary. It covers one person hammering shells in a garage and selling a dozen instruments a year, professional workshops with staff and multi year order books, and factories in China turning out hundreds of units a month. Counts also depend on whether you include everyone who ever sold an instrument or only those currently trading.

The estimates that circulate reflect that ambiguity. Public directories such as Master The Handpan’s list on the order of a hundred makers, while handpan publications writing in 2026 put the global figure at over two hundred once small solo builders are counted. Surveys of the field put the number whose instruments are considered professional quality at a fraction of that. The World Handpan Map and similar community directories list makers, players and teachers by region and give a rough sense of density without settling the question.

What is not in dispute is the trajectory and the geography. In 2006 there was one maker. Around 2012 there were perhaps four or five whose instruments were widely regarded as good. Through the second half of the 2010s the number grew rapidly across the United States, western and eastern Europe, Israel, Russia, Indonesia, Australia and increasingly China.

For a buyer the count matters less than the distribution of quality, which is very uneven. A large number of makers means a large number of ways to spend a lot of money on a mediocre instrument. It also means, for the first time, real choice: several makers will build almost any reasonable scale, and there are usually instruments in stock somewhere.

See also: HIS-19, Buying

HIS-19How did buying one change from lottery lists to instruments in stock?#

beginner

Short answer. Supply caught up. In the late 2000s a handful of makers faced global demand and rationed access through waiting lists, lotteries and application forms. By the early 2020s there were enough builders that most instruments could simply be bought, and several retailers now hold stock.

The old system is worth remembering, because it explains a lot about the community’s culture. PANArt required handwritten letters and invited selected people to Bern. Pantheon Steel accumulated a waiting list reported at around thirty thousand names and abandoned strict chronological order in favour of other distribution systems, precisely because a queue that deep is meaningless. Other makers ran periodic sales that sold out in seconds, or drew names at random from applicants. Some still do.

Several developments dismantled this.

More makers. The single biggest factor. Hundreds of builders competing for buyers is a completely different market from four builders rationing scarcity.

Better process knowledge. Shell forming, heat treatment and tuning are still skilled hand work, but they are far better understood than in 2010, and a competent new maker reaches sellable quality faster than they used to.

Retailers. Specialist shops emerged that buy from multiple makers and hold inventory, so a buyer can compare several instruments in a room and walk out with one. That was unimaginable in 2010.

Factory production. Serial manufacture, largely in Asia, put playable instruments on general marketplaces at prices that undercut the craft sector by a wide margin.

Two things survive from the old world. Sought after individual makers still have waiting lists, sometimes long ones, and people still queue for them. And the community retains a strong preference for buying directly from the person who made the instrument, which is unusual in any instrument market and is a direct inheritance from the scarcity years.

See also: HIS-21, Buying

HIS-20What changed technically over the first 25 years?#

advanced

Short answer. More notes, more materials, more consistency and better bottom shells. The core method, hammered and heat treated tone fields with tuned octave and fifth partials, has not changed at all.

Materials. PANArt’s nitrided Pang steel was the only game in town until other makers had to find their own answers. The field split. Nitrided mild steel remains widely used and is closest to the original. Various stainless steels became popular for their corrosion resistance, tuning stability and characteristically longer, brighter sustain. Some makers use proprietary treatments and refuse to specify. Players argue about the resulting timbral differences constantly and the argument is not settled, partly because maker skill swamps material choice in most comparisons.

Note count and layout. From eight or nine notes to instruments with a dozen or more, achieved by adding bottom shell notes around the Gu and by tightening top shell layouts. Bottom notes went from an oddity to a standard option. Layouts that break the alternating left right circle, sometimes called mutant layouts, appeared as makers explored what else the geometry permits.

Range. Both ends extended. Bass instruments with very low dings on large shells, and high pitched compact instruments, both became normal categories rather than experiments.

Consistency. This is the least glamorous and most important change. In 2010, two instruments of the same model from the same maker could differ noticeably. Good workshops now produce instruments that are genuinely repeatable, because shell forming, heat treatment and tuning have all been systematised, and because analysis software lets a tuner see the partial structure rather than infer it.

Tuning practice. Electronic analysis is near universal, which is a divergence from PANArt’s final position of tuning the Free Integral Hang entirely by ear. Most makers use both, checking by meter and deciding by ear.

What has not changed. Every tone field is still shaped by a person with a hammer, and tuning still takes hours per instrument. Nobody has automated it, and the attempts that have been made produce instruments that experienced players identify immediately.

See also: Making and tuning, Anatomy and construction

HIS-21What did affordable factory made handpans change?#

beginner

Short answer. They dropped the entry price by roughly an order of magnitude, brought a very large number of new players to the instrument, and split the community between people who see this as democratisation and people who see it as a flood of poor instruments.

For most of the instrument’s life the cheapest realistic route in was a used craft instrument, and the price was a serious barrier. Serial production, largely in China, changed that. Playable instruments now appear on general marketplaces at prices comparable to a mid range guitar, and community sources describe a current market spanning from a few hundred to several thousand pounds depending on maker and specification.

What is genuinely good about this: a great many people who could never have justified a craft instrument now own one and play it. Teachers report that beginners arrive already able to play. Festivals and local groups have grown. And competitive pressure has pushed some craft makers to be clearer about what their price actually buys.

What is genuinely bad: quality at the bottom of the market is highly variable and frequently poor. Common problems include tone fields whose octave and fifth are not properly tuned in, so notes sound thin or beat unpleasantly, unstable tuning that drifts within months, crosstalk between fields, poor shell sealing, and instruments that arrive already out of tune. Because the marketplace listings look identical to good instruments in photographs, a first time buyer has almost no way to tell.

The honest position is that both things are true and the sensible advice is procedural rather than tribal. Judge the individual instrument, not the category. Listen to unedited recordings of the actual unit if possible. Prefer sellers who will accept returns. Understand that a cheap instrument may not be economically worth retuning if it drifts, because the tuner’s time costs more than the instrument did.

The category has also had a second order effect worth noting: it makes it much easier to try the instrument before committing, which used to be nearly impossible.

See also: HIS-19, Buying

HIS-22Where does the instrument seem to be heading?#

intermediate

Short answer. Toward a normal instrument. Wider availability, a proper teaching tradition, more serious repertoire, and an unresolved legal question about who owns the shape of it.

Several trends look reasonably clear.

Normalisation. The handpan is losing its exotic status, which is good for it. It appears in film and television scoring, in ensembles with strings and voice, in electronic production, and increasingly in music education. The exotic phase produced a great deal of sunset improvisation; the normal phase produces players who can actually read a chart.

A teaching tradition. For most of the instrument’s life there was nobody to learn from. There is now a body of online courses, an international festival circuit, workshops and a slowly emerging consensus on technique. That is how an instrument builds a repertoire rather than a mood.

Instrument design. Expect continued work on range, on bottom shells, on layouts that are not simple circles, and on making instruments that play well with other instruments rather than only with themselves. Multi scale and modular designs surface periodically; none has yet become standard.

Market bifurcation. The gap between factory instruments and craft instruments is likely to widen rather than close, with the middle squeezed. That is what happened to guitars and it is what usually happens.

The legal question. This is the genuine wild card. PANArt’s copyright claims over the Hang’s design have been upheld repeatedly in Swiss courts, with the Bern Higher Court ruling in their favour on 2 July 2024, the Federal Supreme Court dismissing an appeal by Handpan Community United on 27 February 2025, and a further Bern Commercial Court decision on 16 June 2026 finding the large majority of around 250 submitted designs infringing, with substantial costs against the HCU parties and a right of appeal. Reporting notes that designs departing from the protected features, for example a concave rather than domed central note, or non circular tone field arrangements, fall outside the protected scope. If those decisions stand, they could reshape what makers in the affected jurisdictions are able to build.

Predicting the outcome would be foolish. What is worth saying is that the instrument itself is now far too widely made and played to disappear, whatever any court decides about its silhouette.

See also: FUN-13, Business and legal