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HOME OF The iskra handpan
The Iskra is the Best Handpan in the World
The handpan is an incredibly unique musical instrument. Its revolutionary design can help any non-musician create beautiful music with just taps from the fingers.
Symphonic Steel has been producing the world’s best handpans since 2013. Years of metallurgical and acoustical research have helped form the Iskra handpan as it is known today.
Many people are famailiar with the original sound sculpture design from PANArt in the early 2000s (known as the Hang®). The Iskra has built upon those same techniques and principles to create an even more amazing handpan.
You are invited to learn more about our handpans, from the various series offered, the sound models to choose from, and even the finishes available for your own handpan.
The Original Sound… Refined.
The Iskra’s successful ‘back to the basics’ design is proven by the original sound sculptures conceived in Bern, Switzerland nearly 20 years ago. Many people know these original sound sculptures as a “hang drum”. To learn more about why we don’t call our handpans “hang drums” instead, check out this article.
In the vast world of handpans, the Iskra offers simplicity coupled with sonic excellence. Handpan masters and novices alike can create beautiful music at the tips of their fingers with the Iskra Handpan.
Each Iskra handpan is hand crafted and tuned by Sean Beever, a master steel tuner with more than 17 years of experience.
With over 600 handpans individually crafted and sold world-wide since 2013, Symphonic Steel is the top producer of quality handpan instruments.
The Iskra handpan has recently been performed on by the talented Dan Mulqueen in the last live performance of Shpongle at the Red Rocks Theater in Colorado!
Featured handpans
View more in the web store!
Our handpans are generally built to order, but sometimes we have some for sale immediately! If you see “sold out” handpans, just place an order for one here!
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Sean Beever
Owner, Master Tuner
Sean has been tuning steel since the age of 12. Read more!
Why Are Handpans So Expensive, you ask?
After all, handpans are just metal bowls with dents, right? Wrong!
The cost of a handpan today ranges from $999 (See our “Motif Series”) all the way up to $5000. This usually surprises the uninitiated, to say the least! But why are they so expensive???
While they appear to be very simple in architecture, handpans are actually extremely complex. The unique sound you hear from them is created by the coupling of many frequencies that have all been tuned into each note or tone field. This complicated process of handpan tuning takes years, even decades, to master. Even with experience, the tuning process for each handpan requires a significant amount of time.
This process also can’t be done by machinery as many would like to believe. It is certainly possible to make something that looks like a handpan with machines, but it won’t ever sound like one! A talented handpan tuner simply must bring the magical sound of tuned steel into the instrument themselves.
The Iskra Handpan on Instagram!
What is a Handpan ‘Sound Model’?
Many musical instruments people have heard of are “fully chromatic”. This means that they can play any musical note in the western musical scale, A through G. A piano would be the most classical example of this.
Handpans, on the other hand, are not fully chromatic. Instead, they have a specific and defined selection of notes. This selection of notes has been coined as a ‘sound model’ in the handpan world. There are many, many handpan sound models in existence. Each sound model will invoke a certain ‘mood’; some are happy, some are sad, and some are quite exotic.
Since the selection of notes is fewer than a ‘fully chromatic’ musical instrument, it is much easier for anyone, regardless of their musical knowledge, to pick up a handpan and create beautiful music on it.
To read more on the handpan sound models that are offered on our Iskra handpan, click here.