Q.  Are the bowls guaranteed?

A.  Yes, if for any reason you are not fully satisfied with a bowl you may return it for another bowl or your money back within the three months time of purchase.

Q.  How old are the bowls?

A.  Please note our buyer is conservative when dating bowls. He uses is extensive knowledge gained from 39 years of experience traveling to the Himalayas and from dealing with the bowls over that time, to estimate the minimum age for each bowl. You may find similar bowls dated much older by other dealers who may have different experiences. The most important thing to remember is not how old a bowl is, but it's sound and how those sounds affect you.

Q.  I noticed that my bowl sounds a little different at home (San Francisco) that it does on your website... the tone it plays here seems to be a tiny bit lower than on the sample.  Why is this?

A.  Great question!  Sound waves are made of compressed air - in this case, the vibrating bowl "pushes" the air into little waves which travel outwards at a certain speed.  The speed that a soundwave travels is directly related to its tone; higher tones travel faster than lower tones. 

So, anything that affects the speed of a soundwave is going to affect its tone.... and there are two main things that do this.  These are air temperature , and air pressure .  Sound travels slower in cold air than in hot air, meaning that a bowl will play slightly lower tones on a winter night than on a summer afternoon.  Sound also travels slower when the air pressure is greater, meaning that a bowl will play slightly lower tones at sea level (where the air is denser and air pressure is higher), than it will where the air is thinner -- say, at the top of a mountain, or in an air balloon (not that we necessarily expect you will be playing your bowl in an air balloon!). 

In the case of your bowl, you have noticed that it seems to play a fraction lower at your home that the recording on the website.  That is because you are playing it at sealevel, whereas Melanie recorded the bowl at an altitude of ______ higher than you . 

Q.  I thought you said that tone depended on TWO qualities -- what about the effects of air temperature?

A.  Another great question.  Actually, in the grand scheme of things, temperature is a more important factor affecting tone that air pressure.  (For those mathematically-minded, this is because tone is linearly related to temperature, but related only to the square root of the air pressure).  So you are likely to notice more change in tone playing inside in a warm room versus playing outside on a very cold day than you are in altitude change.

In the case above, I'm imagining that the bowl is being played inside at pretty much the same temperature, and so here the difference in air pressure (caused by the altitude difference) is the only thing that you will really notice affecting the tone. Since you live where there is higher air pressure, you can expect that the same bowl will sound lower at your house than it did on the recording.

Q.  Can you explain WHY the tone is changed this way by air temperature and air pressure?

A.  I can give you some cool-looking physics equations, but let me try and give you an intuitive way to think of it.  In the case of air pressure, we have a bunch of air sitting around the bowl, waiting to be "vibrated" into soundwaves.  Each little air molecule has some mass, which means that it takes some energy to get it moving.  The more air molecules there are sitting around the bowl, the more energy it takes to push them all into action.  We call this "inertia" -- it's like a "heaviness" that has to be overcome before something will start to move when you push it.  Just think of it like this -- it takes a lot more energy to drag Uncle Larry off the couch than it does your six-year-old nephew.  So the more air sitting there, the more inertia.  This means that the soundwave gets going a little slower... and, presto!  You have a lower tone.

Air temperature changes the amount of energy the air molecules already have.  When you heat up air, each molecule gets its own little "care package" of energy, which gives it some zoom!  This little energy boost (think of it as Red Bull for molecules) overcomes a lot (maybe all) of the inertia we mentioned before... so when it comes time for the air molecules to "vibrate" into waves they do it extra quickly.  The waves go racing out faster, boosted by the extra energy in the air.  Once again, presto!  You have a higher tone.