Customise your shruti box
Every box we make can be adapted before it ships. Ask us when you order and we will confirm the cost and the timing before you pay anything.
Tuning pitch. Every box ships at 440 Hz, which is standard concert pitch and matches other instruments and recordings. 432 Hz costs nothing extra. It adds a few days while the box is tuned for you. Just tell us when you order.
Note range. Standard boxes run C to C, a full octave of all twelve notes. A different range, G to G for example, is a custom build. The reeds have to be sourced separately and the box is built differently, so it is around $50 more and roughly three weeks.
Foot pedal. A foot pedal lets you hold the drone hands free while you play another instrument or use both hands. It is $129.
Pedals are fitted to our large boxes, the 16 x 12 inch models. That is where they work best, because a large box has the bellows capacity to feed a pedal without you working at it.
We can fit one to a medium box on request, but we would rather talk to you first. Message us and we will tell you honestly whether it suits the box you are looking at.
We do not fit pedals to small boxes. A small box needs the bellows pulled right open to hold a full drone, and a pedal does not leave enough room to do that well. We would rather say so than sell you something that disappoints.
Which size should I buy?
The bellows is a set of lungs. A bigger set of lungs holds more air, so it breathes out for longer before it needs to breathe in again. That single fact explains every difference between the sizes.
| | Small | Medium | Large | |---|---|---|---| | Drone stability | Needs frequent, steady pumping | Comfortable rhythm of pumping | Steadiest, longest breath between pumps | | Volume range | Least control | Good control | Widest, from a whisper to filling a hall | | Tone | Brighter, lighter | Balanced | Fullest, most low end | | Where it sits | Lap, knee, or held | Lap or floor | Floor in front of you | | Travel | Easiest | Manageable | Possible, but it is a commitment | | Best for | Travel, small rooms, personal practice | Most people, most uses | Teaching, groups, recording, performance |
The honest recommendation. If you are buying your first shruti box and you are not travelling with it every week, buy the medium. It is the size most people end up wishing they had bought.
Buy the large if you teach, lead chanting for a group, record, or simply want the deepest and most stable drone available. The extra low end is not a small difference. It is the thing experienced players talk about.
Buy the small only if portability is a genuine requirement. It is a lovely instrument, but it asks more of you. You pump more often, and you have less room to shape the volume.
A note on small boxes. A small box needs the bellows pulled all the way open before you start. It has less air to work with, so it needs all of it. Do that and a well made small box behaves beautifully. Skip it and the drone will stutter.
Teak or pine?
Teak is dense and heavy. It gives a rounder, warmer drone with more weight in the low notes, and it is the traditional choice. Teak also handles humidity changes well, which matters if the box travels between climates.
Pine is lighter to carry and gives a slightly brighter, more open tone.
Neither is better. It is the same distinction as a guitar in rosewood or in maple. If you sing low and want warmth, take teak. If you want the lightest box that still sounds full, take pine.
*Short, scannable. Helps the page rank for use case searches and helps the buyer place themselves.*
Who a shruti box is for
Singers. The most common use by far. A steady reference pitch under your voice is the fastest way to train your ear, hold a note cleanly and find the edges of your range. You hear immediately when you drift.
Kirtan, mantra and chanting. The traditional home of the instrument. One hand pumps, the other is free for a shaker, a bell or a gesture.
Yoga and meditation teachers. It fills a room without a speaker, it needs no power and it does not go out of tune between classes.
Sound healing and sound bath practitioners. It pairs naturally with singing bowls, gongs and chimes, and it gives the session a continuous floor.
Instrumentalists who need a reference. Bansuri and other flutes, handpan, guitar, piano, cello, voice in harmony practice. Anything that benefits from a fixed tonal centre.
People who do not play anything. This is a real category. The shruti box may be the only instrument in the world where a complete beginner can make a genuinely beautiful sound on the first attempt.
What is a shruti box?
A shruti box is a drone instrument. It is a wooden box with a set of metal reeds inside and a bellows on the back. You pump the bellows, air passes over the reeds, and the reeds sound. Slide open the stops on the front and you choose which notes sound. Leave them open and the drone holds for as long as you keep pumping.
That is the entire mechanism. There is nothing else to it.
What is a drone?
A drone is a foundation note, or usually a small set of notes, that sounds continuously underneath the music. Everything you sing or play rises out of that foundation and settles back into it.
Music built this way is called modal music, and it is far older and far more widespread than the music most of us grew up on. Western pop and classical music is mostly tonal, which means the chords keep changing and there is no single home note. Modal music has one home and stays there.
You have heard drones all your life without naming them. The didgeridoo of Aboriginal Australia is a drone. The Scottish and Irish bagpipe carries a drone alongside the melody. And in Indian classical music there is always a drone running, traditionally from a tanpura.
Where the name comes from
Shruti is Sanskrit. It means that which is heard.
It is not a casual word. The Vedas, the oldest sacred texts of India, are called shruti, because they were not composed but heard by the rishis who received them. The same root connects to nada, the idea that vibration is the fundamental principle underneath existence itself.
So the instrument is, quite literally, a box of that which is heard.
The instrument goes by several names. Shruti box is the most common in English. In India you will also hear surpeti, sometimes written sur peti, which means roughly "box of notes". Some sellers list it as a shruti petti or simply a drone box. They are all the same instrument.
How it came to exist
The tanpura is the older Indian drone instrument and it is still the classical standard. It is a long necked, gourd bodied instrument with strings that are plucked in a cycle, and it takes real skill and constant retuning.
The harmonium arrived in India from France in the nineteenth century and became far more popular there than it ever was in Europe. Indian makers adapted it, and out of the harmonium came the shruti box: the reeds and the bellows kept, the keyboard removed, the whole thing made small enough to carry.
The point of removing the keyboard was not to simplify. It was to commit. A harmonium invites you to change chords. A shruti box will not let you. It holds the drone, which is exactly what the music it serves is built on.
Tuning, and the 432 Hz question
Is a shruti box tuned?
Yes. The reeds are tuned at the workshop and they hold their tuning far better than any stringed instrument, because there is nothing under tension. A shruti box does not need tuning before each use. Many players never tune one at all.
Check it when it arrives. Put a tuner app on your phone, sound each note in turn and note what it reads. This takes two minutes and it tells you what you have.
Two outcomes matter:
The box is in tune with itself but slightly off from concert pitch. This is common and it is not a problem if you are singing over it, or playing it with a guitar or a harp that you can tune to match. Set your tuner's calibration to match the box and tune the other instrument to that reading.
A single note is out while the rest are fine. That is worth telling us about. Write to us before you do anything else.
Can a shruti box be retuned?
It can, by scraping a small amount of metal off the reeds. Filing near the fixed end of a reed lowers its pitch, filing near the free end raises it. It is done in small passes with the plate removed, checking after each pass.
It is genuinely doable, and it is also genuinely easy to overdo, and metal does not go back on. If you want a specific pitch, ask us before you order rather than after.
Looking after it
There is very little to do.
Keep it out of direct sun and away from radiators. Wood moves when it dries out.
Let it acclimatise for a day if it has arrived from a very different climate.
Store it with the bellows closed, in its bag if it came with one.
If it has been unused for months, pump it gently for a minute before playing. The bellows and reeds settle back quickly.
No oiling, no restringing, no maintenance schedule. It is a box of reeds and air. Played daily, it will outlast most of the instruments you own.
No shop near you?
That is the normal situation outside India. There is no shruti box shop in most cities, and the few that exist tend to carry one or two boxes at whatever tuning happened to arrive.
Here is how we handle that.
You pay nothing when you order. An order with us is a request, not a payment. We confirm the box is available, and only then do we take payment.
You see your actual box before it ships. Not a catalogue photo. We film and photograph the specific box going to you, and you approve it first.
Free insured express shipping to 38 countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia and New Zealand. Canada, the UAE, Thailand, Poland and Czechia are charged by weight and quoted before you pay.
Duties explained up front. We tell you what you are likely to owe before you commit, rather than letting it arrive as a surprise.
Talk to us on WhatsApp before you buy. No pressure. If a smaller box suits you better, we will say so.
Why these boxes
The most common problem with a shruti box is not the wood or the finish. It is air. A poorly made bellows does not move enough air, so the player has to pump fast and constantly, and the drone never settles. It is the single thing that separates an instrument you keep from one you put away.
The second most common problem is tuning. A lot of what is sold online is tuned approximately, and one note being a few hertz off the rest is enough to make the whole drone sound uneasy.
We build in our own workshop near Delhi and we play through every reed before the box is closed. We have been making and shipping Indian instruments since 1999. If a box arrives and something is not right, write to us and we will deal with it.
Questions we get asked
What is a shruti box?
A shruti box is a drone instrument from India. It is a wooden box with metal reeds inside and a bellows at the back. You pump the bellows with one hand, air moves over the reeds, and you get a continuous sustained note. Sliding stops on the front let you choose which notes sound. You sing or play over the top of it.
Is a shruti box the same as a tanpura?
They do the same job by completely different means. The tanpura is the older Indian drone instrument, with long strings plucked in a repeating cycle. It has a shimmering, complex sound that a shruti box cannot copy, and it demands skill and constant retuning. The shruti box holds an absolutely steady drone, needs no tuning, and can be played by anyone. Most people who want a drone to sing over want a shruti box. Most classical performers want a tanpura.
Is a shruti box the same as a harmonium?
They are relatives. The harmonium has a keyboard and is played melodically, with changing chords. The shruti box has no keyboard and cannot change chords. It holds a drone, and that is its entire purpose. Historically the shruti box came out of the harmonium. The harmonium reached India from France in the nineteenth century and became far more popular there than in Europe. Indian makers stripped out the keyboard and made it portable, because the music being played needed a drone, not chords.
Which size should I buy?
Medium, for most people, most of the time. The bellows is a set of lungs. A larger box holds more air, so the drone is steadier and you pump less often. A smaller box is easier to carry and hold, but it asks for more frequent pumping and gives you less control over volume. Buy large if you teach, lead group chanting, record or perform. Buy small only if you genuinely need to travel with it.
Teak or pine?
Teak is denser, warmer and rounder in tone, and handles humidity changes well. Pine is lighter to carry and slightly brighter. Neither is better. Pick teak for warmth, pine for a lighter instrument.
Should I buy 440 Hz or 432 Hz?
Buy 440 if you play with other musicians, with a piano, or along to recordings. 440 is the international standard and it will sit correctly with everything else. Consider 432 if the box is for solo voice, meditation or sound work where nothing needs to match. Some players find it warmer. Whether it is better is a matter of taste, and there is a great deal written about it that is stated far more confidently than the evidence supports. Listen to both and pick the one your voice settles into.
Can I get a foot pedal with my shruti box?
Yes. A foot pedal is $129 and it lets you hold the drone hands free, which matters if you play another instrument at the same time. We fit pedals to our large boxes, the 16 x 12 inch models, because those have the bellows capacity to feed a pedal comfortably. We can fit one to a medium box if you ask, though we will want to talk it through with you first. We do not fit them to small boxes, because a small box needs its bellows fully open to hold a steady drone and a pedal does not leave room for that.
Can I get a different note range?
Standard boxes run C to C, which is a full octave of all twelve notes. A different range such as G to G is a custom build. The reeds are sourced separately and the box is put together differently, so it costs around $50 more and takes roughly three weeks. Ask us before you order rather than after.
Do you ship worldwide?
Yes, from India. Our main markets are the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
How does payment work?
You place the order without paying. We confirm availability, usually within one working day, and then send you a payment link or bank details. Nothing is taken from you until we have confirmed we can actually ship what you ordered.
