Hand Percussion · Makers

Maker

Remo

Models: 15 · Categories: 3

Remo Belli's Mylar drumhead, introduced in the late 1950s, ended the era of calfskin and made drums that stayed in tune through weather and travel. The company went on to build world percussion with synthetic shells and heads — djembes, frame drums, and the tunable Roto Toms — and remains the largest drumhead maker in the world.

Maker

Latin Percussion

Models: 12 · Categories: 1

Martin Cohen founded LP in 1964 after failing to buy decent congas in New York, and the company effectively industrialised Afro-Cuban percussion: consistent, tunable, durable instruments where the tradition had relied on hide, rope, and luck. LP hardware — the Jam Block, the Cyclops tambourine, the Aspire student line — is standard equipment worldwide.

Maker

Meinl Percussion

Models: 12 · Categories: 1

Roland Meinl founded the company in Bavaria in 1951, and while the cymbal side is better known to drummers, the percussion division is one of the largest in the world: congas, cajons, djembes, and an enormous catalogue of small instruments. Meinl's cajon range in particular is the widest of any maker.

Maker

Contemporânea

Models: 4 · Categories: 1

Contemporânea makes the instruments of the Rio bateria — surdos, repiniques, tamborims, caixas, and pandeiros — in Brazil, and supplies escolas de samba as well as the European samba scene.

Maker

Schlagwerk

Models: 3 · Categories: 1

Schlagwerk turned the Peruvian cajon into a mass-market instrument in Europe, adding snare wires, adjustable corners, and playing surfaces in a range of timbers. The company also makes udus, frame drums, and a long list of small hand percussion.

Maker

Gon Bops

Models: 3 · Categories: 1

Mariano Bobadilla began building congas in Los Angeles in the 1950s and the drums became the West Coast standard in Latin jazz. The brand went dormant and was revived, now under Drum Workshop, with the original shell profiles reissued.

Maker

Tycoon Percussion

Models: 3 · Categories: 1

Tycoon manufactures congas, bongos, cajons, and small percussion in Thailand, with its own factory and Siam oak as the house timber. The prices are low enough that Tycoon instruments fill a great many school percussion cupboards.

Maker

Rhythm Tech

Models: 3 · Categories: 1

Rhythm Tech's contribution is redesign rather than tradition: the crescent-shaped tambourine that removed the dead hand position, mountable shakers, and hardware-friendly versions of instruments that had always been held.

Maker

Toca Percussion

Models: 3 · Categories: 1

Toca covers congas, bongos, djembes, and cajons at prices that put a serviceable instrument in a school or a rehearsal room. The Freestyle series, with synthetic shells and heads, is the line most often seen where instruments have to survive being moved.

Maker

Cooperman

Models: 3 · Categories: 2

Cooperman builds historically accurate rope-tension field drums and fifes for reenactment and early music, and a widely used line of frame drums and bodhráns. The shop has been in Vermont for three generations.

Maker

Asano Taiko

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

The Asano family has made taiko in Ishikawa for four hundred years, hollowing single trunks of keyaki and stretching cowhide over them by hand. The workshop supplies temples, festivals, and the touring taiko ensembles that carried the instrument out of Japan.

Maker

Gawharet El Fan

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

Gawharet El Fan builds tablas (darbukas), riqs, and frame drums in Cairo, inlaid in mother-of-pearl and shell, and is the name most often seen on Egyptian percussion sold abroad.

Maker

Emin Percussion

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

Emin makes darbukas and frame drums in Turkey in cast aluminium and copper, with the sharp, ringing tone the Turkish and Arabic idioms ask for, and supplies most of the darbukas played outside the region.

Maker

Bina Musicals

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

Bina makes tabla, dholak, and harmoniums in Delhi for students and performers, and is one of the few Indian instrument makers whose work is distributed widely outside India.

Maker

Hugh Tracey

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

The ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey spent decades recording southern African music and then built a tuned, durable version of the mbira for players outside the tradition. The instruments are still made in South Africa and are what most of the world means by "kalimba".

Maker

Miyamoto Unosuke Shoten

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

Founded in Asakusa in the nineteenth century, Miyamoto Unosuke makes taiko, festival percussion, and the portable shrines they are played beside. It is one of the two names most associated with the instrument outside Japan.

Maker

PANArt

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

Felix Rohner and Sabina Schärer built the first Hang in 2000 from two nitrided steel shells, and created an instrument with no ancestor: tuned, played with the hands, and impossible to buy on demand. PANArt stopped making the Hang in 2013 and the world filled the gap with handpans, a whole instrument family descended from one workshop's object.

Maker

Nazareth

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

Nazareth builds berimbaus, atabaques, and pandeiros in Brazil for capoeira and candomblé, where the instruments are made to be played hard and outdoors rather than recorded.

Maker

Sela

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

Sela makes cajons and little else, including build-it-yourself kits that ship as flat-pack shells with the snare system pre-assembled. The Snare Set mechanism is the company's signature.

Maker

Panyard

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

Panyard builds steel pans in Ohio, including chromatically tuned instruments for school programmes and the Jumbie Jam, a small student pan that made the instrument teachable outside Trinidad.

Maker

Gope

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

Gope builds samba and capoeira percussion in Brazil — surdos, pandeiros, atabaques, and berimbaus — and is one of the names most often seen outside the country.

Maker

Ayasa Instruments

Categories: 1 · Models: 1

Ayasa is one of the workshops that grew up after PANArt stopped making the Hang, tuning nitrided steel shells to named scales rather than to a single fixed layout — which is how handpans are bought now.

Maker

DG De Gregorio

Categories: 1 · Models: 1

De Gregorio builds cajons in Spain in the flamenco tradition, where the instrument entered European music, with an emphasis on the sharp slap and controlled bass that flamenco accompaniment needs.

Maker

Natal Drums

Categories: 3 · Models: 1

Natal started in London making congas and bongos and became a familiar name on British stages before moving into kits. Marshall bought the brand in 2010 and reintroduced it with maple, birch, and acrylic shells.