Twin Cities Drum Shells Revisited!

Ok, this is more of a follow up review for the Twin Cities Custom Drum Shells I did back in December. I have just completed the drum I made with the shell from that review and let me tell you, I LOVE this drum!  Since a picture is worth 1000 words, I figured a picture AND a video would be worth a million so I have posted both a photo of the finished drum and a quick video of how it sounds. Please only pay attention to the sound of the drum and not my playing…

Give Twin Cities some love, they deserve it. They make some incredible shells!

http://www.tcdrumshells.com

Link to video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pWIFWdBZSY

Joshua Tree Percussion

Joshua Tree Percussion

www.jtpercussion.com

 This is for the stave drummers out there. For those who don’t know the difference between a ply shell drum and a stave shell drum, here’s a quick lesson. Ply shell drums are made by glue pieces of veneer together (each piece being a “ply”), so when someone says a 10 ply shell, there are 10 pieces of veneer glued together to make the shell. Stave shells are made by taking pieces of wood and gluing them side by side together as would be done in making a barrel and then turned on a lathe to be made round.  There are pros and cons to both methods but since we’re talking staves in this review I will stick with staves.

Pros

Less glue is involved and is localized to just the edge joints where in a ply shell, the glue has to be spread evenly over the entire surface of the veneer.

There is a WIDE range of wood species that can be used because you’re not limited to what is supplied in veneer (I know, there are A LOT of different veneers out there).

Cons

Really, the only one I can think of at this writing is cost. Stave shells are far more expensive than ply shells.

Ok, class is over.

Joshua Tree Percussion was the first stave shell maker I encountered when I started building drums. I have made five snare drums from their shells and the customers who purchased the drums were elated with their purchases.

JTP shells come in MANY, MANY, MANY different species and they are constantly adding more. AS of this writing, here is what they offer:  Rock Maple, Soft Maple, Red Oak, White Oak, Birch, Beech, Ash, Pecan/Hickory, Phillippine Mahogany, Cherry, Black Walnut, Purpleheart, Yellowheart (Pau Amarillo), Figured Soft Maple, Figured Birch, African Mahogany, Padauk, Bubinga, Birdseye Maple, Jatoba, Wenge, Honduran Mahogany, Lacewood, Peruvian Walnut, Sapele, Zebrawood, Quilted Maple, Jarrah, Cocobolo, Chechen, Bocote, Bloodwood, Cumaru (Brazilian Teak), Teak, Canarywood, Macassar Ebony, Gabon Ebony, Asian Striped Ebony, African Blackwood, and Koa.  The species are categorized by price, with prices ranging from $100 for a 3x13 to $475 for a 7x14. These prices are for raw shells.

Their webpage is very helpful and informative. They even have the Janka Scale (measures the hardness of wood) on their page as well as suggestions to think of while designing your drums. They also carry tube lugs , hoops, throw offs and anything else you need for one stop shopping!

These guys have been around quite a while and make a sound product! Below are the four drums that I have built from their shells.

6x14 Mahogany Stave 

5x14 Oak Stave

7x13 Oak Stave

3x14 Walnut Stave

7x13 Quilted Oak Stave

So if you’re looking for something different, try a stave shell and I suggest Joshua Tree Percussion. There are a lot of different stave shell makers nowadays and most of them are pretty good but JTP has been doing it for a LONG time! They’re the first ones I think of when I do a stave!

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.

NuEdg Bearing Edges

I’ve seen these floating around for a little while now and always wondered about them, so one day as I was perusing ebay I saw some listed for sale. A pair of edges for $22.00. I thought to myself, that’s not a bad price since I charge $20 per edge when I cut bearing edges so I bought some to see how good they really were. 

The edges come in 5 different “cuts”

Traditional 45 – Which is a single 45 degree edge.

Vintage Round – Pretty self explanatory.

Classic 30 – A 30 degree cut with a rounded back cut.

Resonant 60/30 – A 30 degree cut with a 60 degree back cut.

Attack 45 – Standard double 45 degree cut.

Custom – They also do custom bearing edges.

Oops, that’s 6.

The sizes range from 8” to 18” in diameter and they are available for 5, 6, 8, and 10 ply shells. They come in either maple or composite.

It’s a little confusing at first when you’re selecting the right ply because they list a “Ply Series” and and “Application Drum Ply Shell” listed on the sizing page but they are very good about getting  you the right edges for your drums! They emailed me a couple times to insure that I was getting the edges I wanted.

I ordered a pair of 14” 8 ply edges to try out. They actually sent e a variety of edges. I’m not sure if they intended to or not but I received two 14” edges (one maple and one composite) along with a 10” and 12” edge(both composite).

I didn’t actually try one out on a drum because these are designed to place over a bad edge or a non cut edge and I don’t want to ruin a good edge by placing it on the drum and tightening it down.  But I did place it on a raw shell and messed around with it that way!

It appears that even on an unlevel edge, the Nu-Edg will sit relatively true. 

In general, I think that this is a pretty good product. For drummers who have a drum in need of a new bearing edge but don’t have the means to recut them or have them recut or just plain cant afford to have them recut, this is the answer, inexpensive but effective.

I don’t know if it would fall under their custom edge but the only thing I can see that they need to do is offer edges with snare beds. If they do that, they’re golden.