Special Santur with Sharping Levers: Unleash Your Musical Freedom
Special Santur with Sharping Levers: Unleash Your Musical Freedom
When aspiring musicians search for “where to buy a santur” or “santur with levers for scale changes,” they want versatility, ease of tuning, and rich sound. Tapadum Ethnic Music Store’s Special Santur Enhanced with the Mandal System for Sharping Levers delivers on all fronts, allowing both novices and professionals to explore new tonal landscapes without the hassle of retuning each string.
If the instrument itself is new to you, our complete guide to the Persian santur covers its seventy-two strings, its movable bridges and the two tuning families in depth.
Why Choose the Special Santur with Sharping Levers?
Effortless Key Changes: With strategically placed sharping levers, you can raise any string by a half step in an instant—no more tedious retuning between pieces.
Mandal System Innovation: Leveraged from the Celtic harp’s flexibility, the Mandal System offers precision and reliability, making this santur ideal for live improvisation and studio recording.
Twelve-Bridge Design: A santur’s strings run in courses of four over small movable bridges, and this build uses twelve of them rather than the traditional nine — adding range and string count, with the lever system working across the whole compass, from Middle Eastern and Persian repertoire to Indian and Western fusion.
Innovative Mandal System for Sharping Levers
Traditional hammered dulcimers require manual detuning and retuning—a slow process that interrupts creativity. The Mandal System Santur places compact, ergonomic sharping levers close to each string’s bridge, enabling you to:
Shift Scales Seamlessly: Transition between major, minor, and modal scales with a simple flip of a lever.
Add Expressive Nuances: Tweak individual notes on the fly, enriching improvisations with microtonal ornamentations.
Maintain Tuning Stability: Engineered for precision, the levers hold tuning under vigorous playing, ideal for touring musicians.
The lever santurs in this range are built in the Tapadum Strings & Percussion Workshop in Izmir, where every instrument is checked for bridge geometry and tuning stability before it ships. The most specialised variant goes further still: its sliding mobile-mandal system, which can stop between the semitones rather than only on them, was developed with Behrad & Zolani — the Tehran-trained santur master Kourosh Zolani and the inventor Mohssen Behrad.
A Universe of Harmonic Options
The Special Santur’s distinctive timbre, produced by high-quality mallets, offers both rhythmic drive and lyrical melody. Explore:
Middle Eastern Maqams and Persian Dastgah
Indian Ragas and South Asian folk traditions
Folk Fusion and contemporary cross-genre compositions
That range is the point of the lever system: a player working inside the Persian dastgah tradition can stay in one modal world all evening, while a cross-genre player can move between them without stopping to retune.
Healing Through Music: Santur in Therapy
The Special Santur’s warm resonance and smooth lever action have made it a familiar presence in sound-work settings. Our field guide to sound healing instruments sets out what each instrument in that group actually does — and what it does not. In this context the santur can:
Induce Deep Relaxation: Its ethereal tones calm the nervous system.
Alleviate Stress & Anxiety: Gentle playing encourages mindfulness and emotional release.
Facilitate Group Workshops: Easy key changes accommodate singers and instrumentalists of all levels.
What to Look for When You Buy Santur Online
If you are still weighing where the santur sits within the Persian string family — beside the setar, tar and kamancheh — that comparison is worth reading first. Once you have settled on a santur, keep these three points in mind:
Quality of Materials: Look for seasoned hardwood bodies and corrosion-resistant strings.
Lever Mechanism Reliability: The Mandal System should operate smoothly, without rattling or slipping.
Included Accessories: A complete set—gig bag, traditional mallets, and a tuning key—ensures you’re performance-ready from day one. Our step-by-step guide to tuning a santur walks you through that first session.
Tapadum Music Store bundles all of the above, so you can start exploring the Special Santur with Sharping Levers right out of the box.
Enhance Your Performances Today
Whether you’re a beginner seeking your first santur or a seasoned artist craving new sonic horizons, the Special Santur with Sharping Levers empowers your musical journey. Its combination of mandal lever mechanism, complete accessory set and rich tonal palette is what carries that flexibility, ease of use and sonic depth.
Ready to hear it for yourself?
Browse the current santur range at Tapadum — traditional nine-bridge instruments alongside the lever and mandal builds described here.
