The Story of Yudin Workshop

My name is Maksim Yudin. The journey began in 2009 at the Polytechnic University in Kemerovo — a choice made more out of social convention than passion. My real obsessions were threefold: coaxing sound from anything at hand, building mechanisms, and writing code. Days were for lectures, six nights a week I rehearsed bass guitar with three bands, studying just enough to avoid expulsion.

On a musicians’ forum I met a percussionist named Anton. He showed me a video of the Swiss handpan. After PanArt ignored his letters, he vowed to craft one himself. A garage at –30 °C, two hammers, a sheet of steel — that is how our experiments began. With no blueprints we worked blind, yet the process mattered more than the outcome.

Military service interrupted us, but Anton managed to assemble the first sounding prototype. Back home, I took a job as a design engineer, th ough instruments still haunted my thoughts. Anton suggested a more affordable route — a steel tongue drum. My father-in-law lent money for flanges, steel, and power tools, and after work I returned to the garage. The first drums earned more than my monthly salary, so I quit the office.

Dissecting a handpan piece by piece, I realized its magic lay in precisely tuned harmonics. They could be unlocked in a tongue drum as well. After many trials I developed an overtone-tuning method, by 2013 only three makers worldwide had mastered it.

By 2016 Anton and I parted ways, and I chose to start from scratch. In spring 2017, sitting on the floor of a rented room in a furniture factory, I drew out the first shell of a new instrument — that became the Pulsar. Its “cosmic” sound attracted a queue of customers, and by late 2018 I needed help.

The dream of living in Europe led both family and workshop to Poland. In autumn 2019 we relaunched in Poznań, where fate introduced me to Slava. He began with shell forming but quickly mastered note cutting, heat treatment, and fine tuning. Today Slava handles every metal task, turning raw steel into an instrument signed Yudin Workshop. I mark layouts, apply finish, install pickups, develop the product, and speak with musicians.

We remain a small workshop where every decision is personal and every instrument marks another step in understanding sound and steel — from a Siberian garage at –30 °C to a Polish studio where the metal still sings.