Agner Swiss Drumsticks

This company was brought to my attention from a friend of mine. He couldn’t stop praising their sticks so I thought I’d check them out.

Agner Swiss Percussion has been in business for over 25 years. Based out of Switzerland (obviously) and an American team has opened up shop and started distribution of these Swiss sticks to the North and South America.

This review is for the 2B American.  I normally use 2B nylon tips but as of this writing, those are not available from Agner….I was skeptical.

Ok, the 2B, straight as an arrow (as expected), I noticed that they are lighter than my other 2B sticks on hand (Kit Tools, Capella and Truline). A bad sign? A LIGHTWEIGHT 2B stick in the hands of a metal drummer? This looks ominous. So I received my sticks around January/February time frame. It is now the middle of April, I am currently practicing like a madman for my reunion with Voodoo Temple so I’m hitting the drums 2-3 days a week and at least an hour each day…I’m still on my first pair. I normally go through a stick or two a week practicing, even more when I’m playing out, and here I am two MONTHS and no breakage! I am impressed! Especially for such a lightweight stick. It’s lightweight enough I can even get some dynamics and that’s saying a lot considering my playing style.

Now I’ve used nylon tips for at least the past 20 years because I like the ping it give off the ride so I was disappointed to hear that they don’t have a nylon tip for their 2B sticks, but after using these wood tip 2Bs for two months, I don’t’ even miss the nylon tips. These sticks get their own nice ping off the ride with just a wood tip, plus it’s nice to not have to worry about getting a tip in the eye!

So check out Agner Sticks, you won’t be disappointed! They have a wide selection of stick sizes, brushes and Timbale sticks. They also have ultraviolet and glowing sticks! What more can you ask for??

Hit their page up and tell em PJ sent ya!

http://www.swissdrumsticks.com

Be safe!

DW Mag Throw Off

OK, so here I was building myself a nice oak stave shell snare drum. The plan was for it to be stained Red Mahogany and have brass hardware. Here was the problem. The throw off…I didn’t like the two standard Worldmax  brass options and when I tried looking into the Dunnett R4 throw off…my first idea, well…my sources were sold out and an email to Dunnett went unanswered….what to do? what to do? So I started perusing ebay to see what was available. After typing in “brass throw off,” the clouds parted and sunlight shone on my computer monitor…ok, not really but what popped up on my screen was golden goodness..ok maybe not that either. The DW Mag Throw Off looked back at me.

Now the DW Mag Throw off doesn’t come in brass, it comes in GOLD, but gold is closer to brass in color than chrome or black so I decided to take a chance on it. I’ve always liked DW drums and their hardware so I felt pretty confident that this would be a good product. 

Once I got it into my greedy little hands, I noticed that it is heavy duty. I don’t know what it’s made out of but I know that if I ever drop my beloved snare drum, the throw off will be ok. It’s operation is pretty simple. You pull the front down to release the wires and push it back up to place them.  Magnets hold the lever in place.  I’ve put this thing through the paces as I’m practicing for my Voodoo Temple reunion (nice self promotion there huh?) and I have to say that this thing is great. It takes barely any effort to release the snares but no matter how hard I hit the drum, they have yet to release unintentionally!  Having used the Trick, Worldmax, and Ego throw offs, this is the smoothest, most effortless of them all to use while playing that I have experienced. 

Included with it was all the mounting hardware necessary to mount it plus various length bolts for thicker shelled snares! Which is really cool because my snare shell is the equivalent of about a 12 ply shell.

The downside? As far as the product itself is concerned, I really don’t see any, but from what I’ve heard, DW  doesn’t particularly care for custom companies to use their hardware on non-DW drums. I know that it’s that way when it comes to their lugs but as available as this product is on the internet for sale, I don’t know if they intended to sell it as a stand alone or not.

I’m happy with it on my snare drum so if you’re looking for a cool throw off, check out the DW Mag.