Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas to everyone! Have a Happy and safe holiday!

I have a some new reviews lined up for the new year!

Keep drumming!!!

PJ

Twin Cities Drum Shell and Percussion LLC

OK, here’s one for all the drum builders! Sick and tired of being called a “Keller company?” Not that there’s anything wrong  with Keller shells but they have become synonymous with the custom drum market…well…that may be about to change. I bring you Twin Cities Drum Shells and Percussion LLC.

Right off the bat, Twin Cities offers not only 100% maple shells, they also offer the following shells,

Maple/poplar

Walnut/poplar

Mahogany/poplar

Maple/Mahogany

Bubinga/Maple

The Gold Standard shell is “a thick maple face with 1/8 mahogany core and the inner plys are maple.  (Maple/mahogany/maple).”

Their Vintage shell has a thick core of Mahogany with your choice of the inner and outer species ply.

They also do a “Ribbon Stripe” shell that looks incredible!

But guess what? Ply shells aren’t the only thing that they make!! They also make stave shells and hoops! You can even have them make you hoops to match the shell!  The best part is that their wood hoops are priced very nicely!

With all this info on their webpage, I had to check out one of their shells, so I bought an 8 ply,  6.5 x 14 Bubinga/maple shell.  It got here pretty quick (good sign). I opened it up and took a look at it. It’s sturdy and it’s BEAUTIFUL. It’s still in it’s raw stage, I haven’t started working on it yet but as a raw shell, it surpasses Keller. I placed it on top of an 8 ply keller maple shell and noticed immediately that the Keller shell was out of round.  I placed the TC shell on my DF drill matt and sure enough, it was perfectly round! Not just acceptable, but PERFECTLY ROUND!

I will post photos when the drum is complete, I have an idea of what I want to do with it, I wanted to do this review for the raw shell so drum builders can check them out and know that there is an alternative to Keller shells.

Price wise, TC are higher priced than Keller but then the quality appears to be higher as well. I’m not trashing Keller shells I use them quite a bit but it’s nice to know that there is another high quality source with some more variety in species to choose from.

Will Twin Cities put Keller out of business? Probably not, but like I said, builders now have another affordable option to choose from…and maybe we can be called Twin Cities kits as well as Keller kits!

Check out their page at www.tcdrumshells.com for the scoop!

Have a Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

I have a couple reviews in the works! It's been a while and hope to get them out soon!

Fat Cat Snare Wires

I had a set of these lying around my shop for a couple years and finally decided to put them on a 12” snare I had just built for fun. 

 

Fat Cat Snare wires have a unique from other snare wires because they have a dual adjustability. First you can adjust them regularly with the tightening and loosening the strainer, but they also have a screw adjustment on the snare itself that can adjust the inner wires independently.  This allows for some serious sensitivity!

After I put them on the drum I messed with the tension, I tightened the strainer and loosened the adjustment screw and got some cool sounds, loosened the tension and tightened the screw and got more sounds. There’s a lot you can do with these wires, it’s nice to have more sounds.  The only drawback is that the adjustment screw causes the snare wires to extend past the hoop so when you set the drum down you get the wobble…other than that, these are pretty good and unique snare wires!

Until next time!   

Premiere Gemini 241 Bass Drum Pedal

This is a bass drum pedal that is not only a rare collector’s item but it’s just a plainly odd pedal. I actually own one that I purchased off ebay 6 or 7 years ago.  I’m not sure which pedal came out first, the Gemini 241 or the Dualist, The Gemini made its NAMM debut in 1998 and didn’t really do much after that.  This is basically a single pedal that has two beaters and is supposed to allow you to play double bass patterns with one foot…let’s explore.

This is a pretty sturdy pedal. Well built and solid. The way it operates is one beater is controlled by the foot board like a regular bass drum pedal and then the other beater is controlled with a heel operated pedal.  So basically, you have to rock your foot to get a double bass effect out of the pedal.  For players who play heel down, this isn’t too much of a problem but for those who play heel up, I can see a problem with trying to use the heel. Never mind you’re going to have to learn to rick your foot in a perfect rhythm to get a good sounding double bass pattern going.

The footboard flips up to allow access to mount the pedal to the hoop which is kind of cool. Once on the hoop, it’s kind of difficult to get the double bass going…at least for a sustainable amount of time. Triplets are a real pain in the butt to accomplish as well.

As a “double bass playing” single pedal, it fails. It’s just too difficult to get it going. For a neat collector’s item, win.

I like to refer to this pedal as the 241….A Bass Oddity.

Sorry peeps, I’m not giving this one away! I did see there’s one on ebay right now though! 

Until next review…

New winner of the 22" Gothic Radius!

Congrats to Kevin Carmen! You've been selected as the winner of the 22" Gothic radius!

Winner?

OK, so the winner of the 22" Gothic Radius has not claimed his prize. I'm going to give him a little more time, if I don't hear from him by next Friday, another winner will be selected.