Collection: Guiros

Guiros from Groove Masters Percussion, EMUS and NINO, in wood, plastic, metal and animal-carved forms.

A guiro is played by dragging a stick across a ridged surface. That makes it different from almost everything else in a percussion set, because the sound has a length the player controls. A fast scrape gives a short rasp, a slow one gives a long grinding creak, and short taps between the ridges give clicks. One instrument covers a lot of ground.

It comes from Latin America, where the guiro holds a steady scraping pattern in son, salsa and cumbia, and it is the only classroom instrument that does that job convincingly.

Animal-carved guiros are the ones children go for. Frog guiros come in nine sizes and as a three-piece family, and the ridges along the back mean a scrape produces a genuinely frog-like croak. Cat, pig, crocodile, iguana and fish guiros work the same way.

Plain forms cover the rest. GMP wooden fish guiros in two sizes, plastic and gourd-shaped plastic models, and metal guiros in three sizes, which are louder and brighter than wood. The EMUS guiro tone block combines a scraping face with a struck block, and the NINO wood guiro shaker adds a shaker head.

Replacement scrapers are stocked separately, which matters because the scraper is the part that goes missing.