About Punjab Music House — Handmade Tabla from Khamanon, Punjab

Punjab Music House is a tabla manufacturing workshop in Khamanon, District Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab, India. We have been making handcrafted tabla sets here for over 20 years.

We are not a store. We are not a distributor. We are the people who make the tabla.

Where We Are

Khamanon is a small town in the heart of Punjab, about 60 km from Ludhiana and 80 km from Chandigarh. It is not on the main tourist map. But from this workshop, tabla sets travel to students, teachers, and performers in cities across India — Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Amritsar, and increasingly to buyers internationally.

The workshop is at the same address it has always been. The karigars who work here are craftsmen who have spent years developing their skill. Some of them have been with us since the beginning.

How We Make Tabla

A tabla is not a simple instrument to make correctly. There are components that can be machined — the initial turning of the dayan shell on a lathe, for example. But the work that determines whether a tabla sounds like a musical instrument or a noise-maker cannot be done by a machine.

The syahi — the black composition disc on the playing face of the dayan — is applied by hand, in layers, with the karigar testing tone at each stage. The target is not a standard thickness or a standard formula. The target is a specific tonal character for that specific drum, based on how it resonates at that diameter and shell thickness. This takes years to develop the ear for. It cannot be automated.

The leather head of the dayan is stretched and fitted by hand. The tension is set before the tabla leaves the workshop, to the pitch the buyer has specified or to our standard learning pitch (C# or D) if no preference was given.

Every tabla we sell was touched by a human being at every stage that matters.

Who We Sell To

Our customers are students starting their first tabla lessons, parents buying a first instrument for their child, advanced students preparing for stage performances, professional musicians, music schools, and gurugharhs.

We also get calls from people who bought a tabla somewhere else and want to know why it sounds wrong. Usually we can diagnose the problem in a two-minute conversation. Sometimes it is a tuning issue. Sometimes it is the instrument itself — a factory-produced tabla that was never going to sound right.

We do not say this to sell more tabla. We say it because it is true, and because buyers deserve to know what they are purchasing.

What We Believe About Tabla

Tabla is one of the most technically sophisticated percussion instruments in the world. The physics of how the syahi controls tone, how the two drum heads interact in a performance, how a student's ear develops over years of practice — it is genuinely complex. And beautiful.

The instrument deserves to be made correctly. A student who starts on a badly made tabla is at a disadvantage from their first lesson. They cannot hear the sound they are supposed to be producing. Their technique develops around compensating for a deficient instrument rather than expressing the music.

This is why we care about craft. Not as a marketing claim. As a practical matter for the people playing our instruments.

Get In Touch

WhatsApp is the fastest way to reach us: +91 88722 71507
We also answer calls at: +91 62398 43298
Email: baljinder4747@gmail.com

If you have a question about which tabla to buy, we will answer it honestly — even if the answer is that we don't have what you need right now. If you want to visit the workshop in Khamanon, WhatsApp us first to arrange it.

We ship across India and internationally. Most orders are processed within 1-2 working days.

Browse our handmade tabla sets or contact us directly.

Punjab Music House | Khamanon, District Fatehgarh Sahib, Punjab, India