The Ego Thrown Off

Today’s review is on the Ego snare throw off. I’ve had quite a few people ask me about these so here ya go.

I’m going to try and NOT do a Trick/Ego comparison for this review but if I do…well then I guess I do.

The first thing you notice when you look at it is that it kind of resembles Trick’s throw off. It’s basically the same design although there are a few differences. Not a rip off, just similar. The Trick throw off is more squared off where the Ego has a rounded appearance.  The functionalities of the two strainers are pretty different though. I found that the Ego is not as smooth as the Trick, it takes more effort to move the Ego. Not a big deal until you’re trying to adjust it in the middle of a song.  One thing, you won’t have much issue with it accidentally releasing the snares. Once it’s tightened, it doesn’t move but like I said, if you’re the type of drummer who likes to turn the snares off during a song, you’re going to struggle a little. 

As far as a strainer itself goes, the Ego is solid, well built and about the same price as the Trick. One of the advantages of the Ego is that Ego offers free powder coating on the strainer as well as their lugs so it’s nice to be able to match the strainer to the lugs. One noticeable thing about the Ego is that it is heavier than the Trick.

Overall, it’s a good strainer. Is it better than Tricks? I think that can only be determined by the user. I have used both on my drums and have had no complaints about either….damn I compared them!

Til next review!

Sweet Riser

Here’s a product that was brought to my attention that I wish was around years ago!

I bring you the Sweet Riser. I remember back in my youth trying to build a drum riser in my moms basement and rigging one up that, looking back, I’m surprised didn’t kill me.  Trust me, stealing truck loads of plastic milk crates from the nearby grocery store stacking them two high and putting a couple pieces of plywood on them isn’t the safest way to build one…not to mention, the grocery store gets REALLY pissed off about their milk crates disappearing! But let me digress from my self incrimination…

Sweet Riser builds drums risers and stages. Does a drummer NEED his/her own drum riser? Probably not but I know I have played a few places with big stages but no riser and if I had had a portable riser I would have enjoyed the show much more…sorry as much as the music being the important thing, image is a close second to me…but enough about me. 

I wasn’t able to get an actual riser from them to review but what I can see from their webpage and knowing a little bit about carpentry, these things look pretty solid and the company stands behind them 100%.

There are three main sizes of risers, small, medium and large, each size having a couple variations of depth and height, Height being either 16 inches or 24 inches. 

Prices range from $399.00 for a 6’6” x 5’4” x 16” high riser to $799.00 for an 8’x8’x24” high riser (which with my drum set…I would need the latter). They also do custom sizes.

Would it be efficient to have a riser at a gig? Sweet Riser has a video showing one being set up in 2 minutes, eleven seconds on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GQa8o1PavI). I’ve seen drummers take longer than that to get one drum on stage!

Now this product isn’t just for drummers. Any facility/venue that hosts music events, whether it be a club, theater, church, etc, can use one of these. It may or may not be cost effective for a drummer to shell out $500-$600 for a riser, depending on the drummer, but this is a pretty good price for a club or church who will use it consistently. 

So if you’re in the market for a riser or a stage, give Sweet Riser a call! If I’m ever in the market for one, I plan on calling them!

The Drum Foundry Layout Mat

Here’s another one for the builders! 

This is a cool little mat that has multiple uses! Are you tired of taping a head and hoop onto a shell to layout the holes? This is the answer!

The Drum Foundry Layout Mat is good for shell sizes 6” to 24”. Not only that but it lays out 6 hole, 8 hole and 10 hole patterns, has a snare bed layout AND it shows if your shell is even the slightest bit out of round! Yes, this thing is pretty cool! I have one and I use it religiously. I almost forgot! You can also use it determine bass drum spur placement!

I’ve seen other ones out there, I’ve even had someone email me one for free (not for review, just because) but I realized after I downloaded it and looked at it, my printer doesn’t print 28x28 sizes so it’s not really that useful.  There are a couple layout mats selling on ebay, two in the UK and one in the US, the US one goes for $50.00 plus $18.00 shipping. The Drum Foundry Mat goes for $44.99 from the Drum Foundry webpage.

Overall I love this thing, I use it in all my drum building! Drum Foundry has some pretty cool gadgets for building drums. Maybe they’ll see this review and offer some stuff up for review! *wink*,*wink*, *nudge*, *nudge*.

Happy Building!

Rimshot Locs

I was sent a set of these by a friend of mine to review. They are called Rimshot Locs, their purpose is to prevent tension rods from backing out the lugs due to vibration.  There are a couple different products out there for this issue and these are the newest ones to enter the market so I thought I’d give them a try. I received them in November and wanted to really put them through the test so I put them on my snare drum as soon as I got them, checked the tension with my handy dandy Drum Dial and then played the crap out of it, then I stuck the drum in my garage that has no climate control….don’t worry, I live in Arizona, it never gets anywhere close to freezing.

So over the past few months I went out the garage and practiced for at least thirty minutes every few days and then put it back out there without even touching the tension rods. The temperature variations in my garage have ranged between the mid 40’s at night to the mid 80’s during the day since November.

Today I checked the tension rods and here’s what I found….no variation whatsoever. I got the exact same readings on the Drum Dial. These things work and they work well!

The Up side? They work! And they come in three different sizes:

RSL2 – Is a 2” lock

RSL1 – is a 1” lock

RSL – Mini- is a 0.5” Lock

The down side? Price.  They sell each size in a number of packs, mainly 6, 8, and 10 packs with the prices ranging from 17.99 to 31.99. My review is of the RSL-1 eight pack that runs 23.99. So if you want them on an all rods on an eight lug snare both batter and reso, you’re looking at about $50.00…that’s a lot…but then again, your tension rods will never back out on you. If you just have that one stupid tension rod that keeps backing out for no apparent reason, then a six pack will do the job for roughly $20.

Overall, this is a great product, although it would be nice if one could cover all the rods on a snare for a more reasonable cost but I guess any product that has any value and usefulness will cost extra.

Until next review!

Followers

I truly appreciate each and every one of you who comes and reads my reviews. The blog is now getting about 2000 hits a month! Thank you! Thank You! I just want to ask if you guys who are reading but not followers would be willing to become official registered followers of this blog. Right now I have 62, not bad but if the number was in the hundreds or thousands, I think a lot of companies would be more willing to have products reviewed here.
It's free to become a follower, all you need is a Google account, if you have gmail, you're already half way there! Google accounts are free!

Just think, if more companies are willing to send product to be reviewed, the better the chances are of giveaways!

PJ

Drums Playalong

OK here’s something pretty cool I found on Facebook.  Drums Playalong Drumless Tracks. This is a CD (or CDs) loaded with well known songs with the drum tracks removed.  I know that there are many CDs out there that have drumless tracks but this is quite a collection….we’re talking 1900 songs! That’s no typo folks! One thousand, nine hundred songs…and there is a wide variety of music included. Just a few examples: ABBA, AC/DC, Amon Amarth, Billy Ward Trio, Black Sabbath, Blink-182, Breaking Benjamin, Children of Bodom, Coldplay, Dream Theater, and the list goes on, there isn’t a music genre that isn’t on this product!

If you friend Drumsplayalong on Facebook, they post a drumless track here and there on Facebook to check out. I’ve supplied a link to one here:

http://soundcloud.com/drumsplayalong/slipknot-duality-davulsuz?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=facebook&utm_content=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fdrumsplayalong%2Fslipknot-duality-davulsuz

Is there a down side to this product?  Maybe.  They are out of Turkey, I’ve emailed with the owner and he seems on the up and up but I’m always skeptical about over seas companies.  The price for this item is $100…kind of steep but then again, there are 1900 songs, so that alone  makes it worth it if you want to jam along to songs and play around making up your own drum parts.

As I’m writing this review and looking through the song list I’m getting more and more interested in picking it up for myself!  So check out their Facebook, friend them and check out the samples and go from there!

Until next review (I have a few lined up!)