Well, here it is!

A few days ago, I made a post appealing for information relating to animal product usage in the music instrument industry. Historically, musical instruments have used animal products. Typically, drumheads were made of animal skin, piano keys of ivory, and violin bows of horsehair. A lot of these processes have been phased out (most drums use Mylar for their skins now, and ivory was banned for pianos in the 80s.)

Here are some patterns I’ve noticed while creating this sheet:

  1. Drums and harmonicas are the “most vegan” instruments
  2. Acoustic pianos are much more likely to use wool than electric pianos
  3. The violin industry is the worst for animal products. Most violin manufacturers still use bows with horsehair.
  4. Manufacturers specialising in introductory/student products, such as Sigma and Franz Hoffmann, tend to use animal-derived materials rather than synthetic ones.
  5. Actual saxophones are vegan, but a lot of manufacturers use genuine leather straps. All companies that use leather for their straps have been labelled as orange. Trumpets, flugel horns, tubas, and trombones are seemingly okay regardless of manufacturer. Some flutes used to use ivory but again, this practice was banned in 1989.
  6. I discovered that clarinets tend to use goat skin for their pads. Unfortunately, I could not find any information on exactly which companies use animal skin for their clarinets. Sorry.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that information relating to this topic is EXTREMELY muddy. I would often find a source claiming that a manufacturer did not use animal products only to double check their information pages and see that they use wool. I would find sources claiming a manufacturer isn’t vegan only to check their information pages and see that they seemingly use no animal products. For this reason, I cannot guarantee that the information in the spreadsheet is 100% accurate, but this is the closest to accuracy I have been able to get to.

This sheet compiles the top manufacturers in each category of instrument. If anyone has any other manufacturers they’d like me to investigate, please just say so in the comments.