After many years of activity with pan and pan making (since 1975) a name finally occurred in 1989. Scarlet Roots Pan Company. This was a result of brain storming for a band name by Junior Gill & his friend Mikey. I lept on the name as soon as I heard it and asked their permission to use it as a business name. We all have Scarlet Roots, red blood, Pan Company is self explanatory.
Since moving to Switzerland in November of 1991 it has been possible to realise my dreams and pursue a wide range of activities regarding pan. Importing the instruments from both the UK and Trinidad, arriving at a sole distribution agreement with a UK based instrument case manufacturer, to designing and producing essential accessories such as sticks & stands.
In 1999 SRPC brought the tuner, the late Lenox Lewis, better known as “Darkie” to Switzerland for three months to produce a complete set of “background pans” for Funland Serenaders steelband which are still in use today.
Finding a tuner to maintain these instruments was a greater challenge but finally this was resolved in 2005 when it was possible to bring Rudy “Two Left” Smith from Copenhagen not only to give a concert in our location, ”The Panyard”, but also to tune and maintain our stock of steel pans and Funland’s instrumentation. This relationship has flourished since then to the point where all of Funland’s front line of double tenors and tenors have been made by Rudy and most recently he persuaded me to replace two sets of bass.
Rudy continues to work even more closely with us and is very happy with the opportunity to provide very high quality instruments and a reliable tuning service.
At the beginning of 2017 we were asked to sponsor a "Pan meets Pan" weekend in May 2017 with Hand Pan performances on the Friday evening with two of the top exponents both from France followed by Funland Serenaders and Bijlmer steelband from Holland on the Saturday night. The event proved to be both interesting as well as successful. Discussions resulted in further research into the sheet steel for making both steel pans and hand pans.
By the beginning of 2018 further experiments were being carried out with different shells for making hand pans.
At meeting on 15th May 2018, it was decided that Scarlet Roots Pan Company GmbH would expand it’s portfolio to include the making and selling of Hand Pans.
After a period of significant capital investment and development of theinfrastructure we are pleased to be able to offer hand pans in a range of popular scales and the ability to make any scale to order supported by essential accessories. In addition we are pleased to be able to also offer a comprehensive tuning service.
One of the distinguishing characteristics that the hand pan community is proud of is the commitment to “sharing”. We have had mixed experience of this but to those who we have come across who are actively supporting the policy of sharing we are most grateful to and appreciative of. With this attitude in mind we have an active policy to contribute as much as we can to this commitment to “sharing”. All the designs, tools and materials that we use for achieving our instruments are available from our website.
For information regarding where you can find our instruments local to you in Switzerland as well as information regarding hand pan lessons and workshops please visit www.the-handpan-shop.com.
For those of you with interest from outside of Switzerland please get in touch with us by email so we can deal with your inquiry.
All prices published on this website are exclusive of MWST (VAT).
The Website
As you have discovered the home page is simply the logo with a click button named “Shops”
A click on this button will open up a page of logos, names and contact details of the music shops where you the customer can find our instruments locally to where they live.
Development of the menu bar and the contents of the various choices are on going but we’ll get there.
“The concept”, “about us”, ”instruments”, “photos”, “accessories”, “services”, “news”, “contacts”