Kiu accompanies his santour with a drum called the tombak, which has been the principal percussion instrument of Iranian classical music for centuries.

The tombak is played under the arm, while it rests on the musician's leg. Its base is hollow and open, the skin braced with glue. It is carved out of a single piece of mulberry wood.

The santour, a native Persian instrument, is often defined as the box zither of the Middle East. In Iran the santour is an important instrument in the traditional orchestra. The santour consists of a trapeziform case made of walnut wood, approximately 90 cm wide at the broad end, 35 cm wide at the narrow end and 6 cm deep. The sides form an angle of 45 degrees to the wider end. The strings are fixed to hitch-pins along the left-hand side and wound around metal wrest-pins on the right by means of which they are tuned with a tuning key. Each quadruple set of strings rest on a movable bridge of hardwood (kharak). The right-hand rank corresponds to the bass strings and that on the left to the treble strings. In the center of the santour the low-pitched strings on the right cross the high-pitched strings on the left. The santour has a range of three and a half octaves. It is played by striking the strings with two hammers or mallets called mezrab which are held in three fingers of each hand. Kiu Haghighi uses two santours. Both of these were hand-crafted by Barbad Workshop in Muncie, Indiana, U.S.A.

Kiu accompanies his santour with yet another percussion instrument, the Daf: consisting of a skin membrane stretched over a frame. The wooden frame is usually fitted with metal rings on the inner surface and in many cases with cymbalettes.