If you like Hang Drums, there is a very inexpensive alternative you might consider. "Hank Drums" are variants of Hang Drums made from old propane tanks. Dennis Havlena invented the instrument, and wrote a
great how-to article detailing how he built it, along with a
video of him playing the drum.
After seeing a review and videos of the instrument on
Odd Music.com last summer, we decided to make one. We followed the instructions in Havlena's original article. Following the instructions in the article, it was pretty straightforward to make. It took about an hour to empty the tank, remove the valve and the bottom ring, and grind off the welds. Then about another hour to cut out the rough shape of the petals. After that, the most time consuming process was tuning the petals. This takes some patience, some cautious precision, and a chromatic tuner (a cheap one will do just fine).
It may take quite a while to really tune the drum precisely. But the best part of the Hank Drum is that once you tune it, it is pretty much tuned for life (assuming you don't beat on it with a ball peen hammer).
Total cost to make our copy of the Hank Drum: $0.00 for the spare propane tank we had sitting around for fueling the forge, $7.99 for a set of metal cutting jig saw blades, and $2.50 for a bungee cord. A much, much better price than the $2200 or so to get an original Hang Drum (not including the flight to Switzerland to pick it up when it is ready).
-dave
.