There are different woods which Dayans are made of. The most used and well-known kind of woods are Shisham, Neem, Mahagony, Babla Wood. Basically it is not possible to choose a good Dayan only from the kind of wood it is made of. Of course the wood is important for the continuous sound of a Dayan but also other factors as the quality of the skin, the quality of the Gab and of course the manufacturing is important. When the manufacturer chooses the wood then 1st priority is that the wood is completely dry. As the situation in India is that the manufacturers of Tablas have worldwide orders for many months they get not enough good wood. They send abroad whatever they can get. The wood very often is not dry enough. This is a very big problem.

Another important factor is the density of the wood depending from which part of the tree the wood is taken (upper or lower portion of the trunk) or if the wood is taken from a thin trunk at all. The thick trunk, which is the good wood, mostly is used for the furniture industry specially if its a treasured wood like Shisham or Neem. This results in the fact that it is mostly better to use a good dry wood with good density from a no name wood instead of a well-known wood as Shisham or Neem. It needs a well experienced man to evaluate what really is a good wood for good sound in Dayan. It can be that one gets a Shisham-Dayan which signalises that it is a good Dayan, and finally it comes out that it is a terrible Dayan.

One can see that Name of the Wood, which a Dayan is made of, gives not really an objective evaluation. Sometimes a no name wood of a Dayan which is completely dry, has a fantastic density, a good skin and gab and is made of a good experienced and faithful maker is much better then a treasured wood.

Due to the big effort of Tabla Maestro Sajal Karmakar we always get best quality of wood for the making of the five star Dayan. He by himself is looking for the right wood. and even he already buys best available wood he is drying it by himself for several months in a special procedure only to make sure to get high professional instruments.