Traditional styles with modern materials.
Our Ashiko drums are handcrafted from the finest hand-picked lumber available. With careful precision they are shaped into elegantly tapered tubes and often inlaid with contrasting wood.
More... Buy Now!After much experimentation we have found that synthetic heads have superior performance and durability over the traditional goat-skin heads that are found on most Ashiko drums. Each of our drum shells and the metal retaining rings are carefully shaped to fit the standardized sizes produced by Remo, LP, Evans and other big-name percussion manufacturers.
What does this mean for you as a musician? If your drum head becomes damaged or you just want a different sound from your drum, you can easily and quickly change the head with another one that is readily available! Synthetic heads are also very durable and strong, and not as prone to tone changes due to cold weather and moisture.
"Dude! These things are the bomb! I took a couple of my karzan ashiko drums on a weekend camping trip to a big beach party. When I crashed for the night my friends spilled drinks on them, left my drums out in the rain, filled them with sand and gravel, and one of them even had a small hole burned in the head! Because of the synthetic heads and the "bomb-proof" shells, I was able to dump out the sand, shake them off a little bit and we had a kicken' morning drum jam around the campfire while they were still wet! It was awesome!"
-- Erik, Olympia WA
A note from KARZAN: We do not recommend or endorse the usage of our drums in this way, but it's nice to know they took the beating you put them through. Thanks for the feedback Erik!
Our new design gives you two drums in one box. The top chamber has a crisp and snappy snare sound, like a sizzle-snap! The lower chamber has a clean deep thumpin' bass sound with no rattle from the snare.
Buy Now! VideoWatch the video below to listen to a sample played on one of our two-chamber cajons. For best results use headphones or a decent set of speakers so you can hear the bass notes. Phone or tablet speakers just don't do it justice.
Many cajons are a simple box with a single bass-note chamber. Some of them incorporate a permanent internal snare wire so that your drum always has a sizzle-snare sound. Sometimes the builder will install mechanisms that allow you to enable and disable the snare if you want.
Finding that it was often difficult to turn the snare on and off while playing we decided to design a cajon that is split into two chambers, one with snare, and one without. This gives us the best of both worlds without having to fumble around on the side of the drum in the middle of a groove!
The final result is a little taller than a traditional cajon, but the two chambers ensure that the snare effect is isolated and you get two clean and distinct sounds from the cajon. The snare wire can even be removed if desired, and you still have a great sounding two-toned drum!
When you are playing one of them it will give you the feeling that you are playing a small drum kit... which is why we've nick-named it our "drum kit in a box."
In addition to the 20-inch two-chamber cajon we also make a more traditional 18-inch single-chamber version that you can order with or without snare. We also have a twelve-inch chair-backed kids version that's great for the smaller drummers out there. Various colors and stencil artwork are available and each one can be customized to your tastes. Shop our current inventory, or place a custom order.
"These new cajons sound light years better than any of the crap you can get at the music stores. Crisp snare chambers and clean bass drum chambers. Very versatile percussion instrument. Karl only employs the most knowledgeable elves in his studio so you know they are made with love."
-- Rick (Denver, CO)
