Steel tongue drums
What steel tongue drums are, who makes the well known ones, and how they compare to a handpan as an instrument and as a purchase.
Related instruments
Everything that sits near the handpan: the steel tongue drums it gets confused with, the steelpan it descends from, PANArt’s later work, the clay pot vessels that share its acoustics, and the marketplace products that borrow its name.
What this section is for#
Handpans are surrounded by instruments that look similar, sound adjacent, share a shop category or share a search term. Some of those relationships are real and technical, such as the steelpan. Some are real and acoustic but not historical, such as the udu. Most are marketing.
The questions below sort them out. If you are trying to decide what to buy, start with REL-01 and REL-07. If you are trying to work out what an instrument you have seen actually is, start with REL-12.
Contents#
Steel tongue drums#
| ID | Question | Level |
|---|---|---|
| REL-01 | What is a steel tongue drum, and how does it differ from a handpan? | beginner |
| REL-02 | What is a RAV Vast, and is it a handpan? | beginner |
| REL-03 | Guda, Hapi, Zenko, Idiopan and Beat Root: what is each one? | beginner |
| REL-04 | Do steel tongue drums go out of tune? | beginner |
| REL-05 | Is a tongue drum a good cheaper way to start? | beginner |
| REL-06 | Can you play handpan technique on a tongue drum? | intermediate |
| REL-07 | Which should a beginner actually buy? | beginner |
The wider family#
| ID | Question | Level |
|---|---|---|
| REL-08 | What is the Caribbean steelpan, and how is the handpan related to it? | beginner |
| REL-09 | What is the Gubal, and what else has PANArt built since the Hang? | intermediate |
| REL-10 | What is the Halo, and why do early handpans have their own model names? | intermediate |
| REL-11 | What are the udu and the ghatam, and are they handpan ancestors? | beginner |
| REL-12 | Where do the cheap “hang drums” on Amazon and AliExpress fit? | beginner |
| REL-13 | What is the difference between a handpan, a hank drum and a propane tank drum? | beginner |
| REL-14 | Which instruments get confused with the handpan? | beginner |
Related sections#
- 02 History for the steelpan to Hang to handpan chain in full.
- 06 Buying for evaluating an instrument once you know what category it is in.
- 16 Myths and misconceptions for the naming and origin confusions that this section keeps running into.
The wider family
The steelpan the handpan descends from, PANArt’s later instruments, the early named models, the clay pot ancestors, and everything else that gets mistaken for a handpan.