King muttered vexedly holding learner instrument (10)
I believe the answer is:
kettledrum
'king' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both man-made objects as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'muttered vexedly holding learner instrument' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'learner' could be 'l' (as in a learner driver with L-plates on their car) and 'l' is located in the answer.
an anagram of 'muttered' is 'ettedrum' which is present in the left over letters.
A single letter 'k' remains which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for kettledrum that I've seen before include "Part of kitchen" , "thing to produce tattoo" , "17 instrument" , "One beaten by player" , "one beaten with sticks" .)