Heka Handpans

The idea I am sharing here is called HTM, which stands for Half Tone Magnets 🧲.

It comes from a mix of an older accidental observation and a more focused exploration. I had noticed before that a magnet can affect the field, and that if you find the right spots it can still allow vibration and harmonics without creating problems. When working on the instrument you see in the video, I had a specific need to lower the central bass note, the ding, by a semitone, and that pushed me to give this idea a real place in the project.

While tuning some instruments I had come across this effect by chance. It is possible that other makers have noticed similar things but did not pay much attention to it. For me this opened a starting point and I wanted to share it in case it gives ideas to someone else and grows into something new.

The goal is always the evolution of the instrument with techniques that make it more musically complete, especially since we all know how important the “issue” of limitations can be for some players in this community. 🛸

I have already started applying this technique, not with great success yet, as you can hear in the video the sound is still not very full or warm, but for now I am fine with that because everything has to start somewhere. 🧬 I recorded this video months ago and kept it in my workshop and finally decided to come out and share some thoughts. 😊Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this.