Where it started
The Gong Bar exists because of something I kept seeing at sound bath sessions: facilitators who had invested in beautiful, considered instruments — hand-hammered gongs, carefully chosen mallets — hanging that gong from a bike stand. Not through carelessness. Bike stands are simply cheap and easy to transport. But a bike stand clamp was never built to carry a gong's weight, let alone the swing and vibration of one being played, and the workarounds I saw — a gong resting directly on the clamp, or a piece of wood wedged in to help — rarely looked like they'd hold.
I looked for something built properly for the job, sitting between "cheap but unsafe" and "excellent but expensive." It didn't exist. So I made it: a solid steel bar, powder-coated matte black, fitted with two precision hooks, finished with black plastic end caps — handmade in England, and designed to clamp onto the stand a facilitator already owns.
Why we exist
Our purpose is narrow and deliberate: to give sound bath facilitators a genuinely safe, dedicated way to hang a gong, without asking them to spend hundreds of pounds on a full replacement stand. We're not trying to replace the gong stand industry — we're closing the gap between a £50 bike stand that was never meant for this job and a £300+ stand that many facilitators, especially those starting out, simply can't justify yet.
We stay small on purpose. Every Gong Bar is individually finished, not mass-produced, and every order leaves us with a handwritten note — because the people buying this have devoted part of their working life to helping others find stillness, and that deserves more than an anonymous parcel.
Where we're going
As we grow, we want to build a small, considered range of Gong Bar designs — different finishes and specifications for different gongs and setups — without losing the "one product, made properly" ethos we started with. Just as importantly, we want to build The Gong Bar alongside the community it serves: getting bars into the hands of the facilitators who inspired it in the first place, listening to how they're actually used, and growing through genuine relationships with that community rather than mass advertising.
Founder, The Gong Bar