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!!