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Makedrums.com Top Posts of 2011 (according to Google Analytics)

December 27, 2011 in Drum Building 101, Drum Building Resources, Drum Building Tutorials, Drum Tips, Drummer resources, Drums, Drums History, How to Tune Drums, Product Review, Reader's Drum Pictures with 1 Comment

It’s been amazing year for Makedrums.com and I wanted to recap some of the most visited blog posts and pages of the site for the year 2011. If you are brand new to the site, this is a great place to start! Enjoy, and please join in the conversations and leave some feedback in the comments area! HERE’S to an even better 2012!

Makedrums.com Top Posts of 2011 (according to Google Analytics)

  1. The Cobus Method Review – How to Play Drums Like Cobus | How to Make Custom Drums
  2. My Favorite Custom Drum Builders | How to Make Custom Drums
  3. How to make Custom Drums | How to Make Custom Drums
  4. Drum Building – Pros and Cons of Tube Lugs | How to Make Custom Drums
  5. How to Wrap a Drum Shell Part 1 | How to Make Custom Drums
  6. Drum Building FAQ – How much time and money will I need to invest? | How to Make Custom Drums
  7. Drum Building Tools for the Beginning Drum Builder | How to Make Custom Drums
  8. Ryan’s 1st Custom Snare Drum Build | How to Make Custom Drums
  9. How to Make an Inlay Jig for your Router Table and Cut/Install Perfect Inlay on your Custom Drum Set! | How to Make Custom Drums
  10. Reader’s Drum Pictures | How to Make Custom Drums
  11. 33 Drummer and Drum Related Gift Ideas For the Drummer In Your Life | How to Make Custom Drums
  12. 4 Tools That Make Building Custom Drums Easy | How to Make Custom Drums
  13. Drum Building Tools | How to Make Custom Drums
  14. 8 Custom Drum Companies That You Should Know About | How to Make Custom Drums
  15. Drum Building Tools for the Advanced Drum Builder | How to Make Custom Drums
  16. Drum Building 101 – Don’t Let Your Drums Slip Out of Tune | How to Make Custom Drums
  17. That’s one very large custom floor tom… | How to Make Custom Drums
  18. My Drum Head Recipe – The Best Drum Heads for Bringing The Funk | How to Make Custom Drums
  19. 7 Custom Drum Companies That You Should Know About | How to Make Custom Drums
  20. Drum Building 101 – How to Prevent Your Drums From Slipping Out of Tune | How to Make Custom Drums

What would you like to see more of on the site in 2012? (Click here to leave a comment)

Bass Player – Turned Drummer Builds His 1st Custom Drum Set

August 3, 2011 in Drum Building 101, Drum Building Resources, Drums, Reader's Drum Pictures with 1 Comment

This is a guest post from John A. Ledingham, PhD. He and his new custom drum set reside in Columbus, Ohio.

I started out not as a drummer, but as a bass player in my hometown of Springfield, Ohio.

One Thursday afternoon, the leader of a group I was playing bass with called to tell me the band had been hired for a six-night-a-week gig, scheduled to begin the following Monday night. However, “Eddie” wanted me to play drums, not bass.  In fact, I had an older set someone had given me to settle a debt and I had been practicing playing on them for fun.  I tried to explain to Eddie that I was nowhere close to being ready to play a drum gig. “If you want the gig, you play drums,” Eddie insisted. When Monday came I was able to get by on the drums, but only barely. That was almost 50 years ago and I’ve been playing ever since.

Continue Reading....

My Drum Head Recipe – The Best Drum Heads for Bringing The Funk

July 6, 2011 in Drum Building 101, Drum Building Resources, Drummer resources, Drums with 4 Comments

Over the years I have gone through hundreds (if not thousands) of drum heads between replacing them on my personal kits, and installing them on the custom drum sets that I build. Some drum heads have impressed me over and over and stayed on my kit for weeks, but other drum heads have come off my drum set after a few hours of playing them. This post will show you what drum heads I’ve generally trusted over the years to provide me with a sound that makes the engineers go wild. I’ll also tell you the pros and cons of each drum head, and my preference in how to tune each drum.

My current preference in drum heads for my kit:

Keep in mind I play mostly rock/pop/funk.

Snare Drum: Remo Ambassador Coated Drum Head + Remo Ambassador Snare Head, Hazy

  • Pros: Fairly cheap, almost always in stock at any music store, sounds great tuned low and tuned high, very articulate even for ghost notes.
  • Cons: 1 ply drum head can dent easily for heavy hitters and may need to be replaced more often.
  • My Tuning: I tune both batter and resonant heads to the same pitch, I try to tune them high enough to give me a mid-range “crack”, as well as giving me a good stick response. On the resonant head I tune the lugs closest to the snare wires about 2 turns tighter than the rest of the head. This allows the snare wires to have a more crisp and clean snap as well as picking up more snare snap when playing ghost notes.

Continue Reading....

Drum Building Tools for the Advanced Drum Builder

March 23, 2011 in Drum Building 101, Drum Building Resources, Drums with 4 Comments

Here is the 2nd part to the “Drum Building Tools” series. In this post I briefly discuss some of the drum building tools and supplies that you might want to get your hands on if you plan on building drums more often than just once. Again if you only want to build a snare, or even a full kit, but you don’t want to invest in buying tools, refer to this blog post to learn about building drums with only a screwdriver.

Advanced Drum Building Supplies and Tools

Tools I own and use for cutting bearing edges:

  • A Router
  • Router Bits
  • A Router Table
    -You can buy router tables from most hardware stores, but I recommend building your own table so you can easily route drums that are larger in diameter than standard router tables allow. (I have router table building plans in the eBook)

  • A “Truing” Sanding Table
    -There are many ways of going about making a truing table, which I explain in the eBook. The basic idea of using a truing table is to allow you to start, and make sure that your edge remains perfectly tru all the way around the bearing edge, in other words start with a flat and level edge, and make sure the bearing edge doesn’t have dips or curves. Continue Reading....

Drum Building Tools for the Beginning Drum Builder

March 3, 2011 in Drum Building 101, Drums with 1 Comment

It seems like I’ve gotten more emails than usual from people interested in building custom drums that just want to know what tools they will need to start building drums. To answer this question I will be writing a 2 part blog post. The first post will list and discuss the bare essentials for building custom drums, and the second post will list and discuss in more depth some of the drum building tools that you’ll need to have if you plan on building drums long term.

Here is the bare minimum that you will need to build your first drum:

…That’s it. The only tool you need to build your first drum is a screwdriver. You may think I have fallen off of my rocker, but the very first drum set that I ever built was acomplished using only a screwdriver! Continue Reading....

Learn From My Mistake!

December 18, 2010 in Drum Building 101, Drums with 0 Comments

Take your time when doing anything that becomes monotonous or else you will end up doing something that you will regret!

For example double check all of the cuts you make, all of the holes you drill, and don't try to cut corners when staining your drums. I thought I could be careful with my stain, therefore I chose not to mask the inside of the shell because I was in a hurry…and then this happened:

Learn from my mistake! Don't cut corners!

Interview with Custom Drum Builder Ryan Voight

October 20, 2010 in Drum Building 101, Drums, General Updates, Podcast with 1 Comment

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Philip: I’m here with Ryan Voight, who has recently built some pretty amazing snare drums and I’ve actually covered some of his progress on the blog, if you read down below you can see a couple of the posts and check out the drums he’s built. How’re you doing today, Ryan?

Ryan: I’m good, man. I’m happy to be talking about this stuff. I love building, I love working with my hands and this opportunity to build snare drums and use the book has been really awesome, it’s been excellent. I’m glad to share it with everybody.

Philip: Thanks, man. Well, I just wanted to ask you a couple questions, kinda give our Make Drums readers some insight into who you are and how you got started in the drum building. So, how long have you been a drummer or how long have you been interested in drums?

Ryan: I’ve been playing the drums since 1997, so, that’s what, 13 years I’ve been playing. You know, it’s kind of funny cause it started out, I’m a preacher’s son and it just so happened that we had moved to this little town in Kentucky. Our youth group needed a drummer and at that time I had taken about four years of piano, but the drums just seemed like, especially to an 11-year-old kid, seemed way cooler than the piano. So I just kind of went for it and man, never looked back. Ever since then I’ve loved playing the drums. I played in church, played for our metal band, the hardcore band, and more recently and preferably, played for some more, I guess, pop rock kind of stuff. Of course I’ve done worship, been doing that for about 13 years.

Philip: What made you want to get into drum building? How did you find out about making your own snare drums?

Ryan: Actually, it was from you. When I was playing with Day, we played with you guys I think in Pampa, Texas. Continue Reading....

Bart’s First Custom Drum Set Build

September 7, 2010 in Drum Building 101, Drum Building Resources, Drum Building Tutorials, Drums, General Updates, Reader's Drum Pictures with 0 Comments

I just got this email from a friend in Hungary and wanted to share his experience with you! Bart’s first drum set is a beauty:
Bart's first custom drum set buildBart did an incredible job on building his very first custom drum set. Great job Bart!

The first custom drum set that bart made

Below is an email conversation/interview that I had with Bart. He has lots of great drum building tips so make sure to read all of it! Continue Reading....

4 Tools That Make Building Custom Drums Easy

May 10, 2010 in Drum Building 101, Drum Building Resources, Drums, General Updates with 2 Comments

Drum key drill bit1. Drum Key Drill Bit – Buy Now! – This tool is a must for any custom drum builder who is used to using only a drum key to assemble or disassemble their drum sets. This makes putting heads on and taking off heads about 10 times faster. I have built many drums before I finally found one of these and I can honestly say this may be my favorite drum building tool discovery in the past 5 years. (I know they have been available for longer than that, but I never knew I needed one so badly!)

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right angle drill for drum building2.Right Angle Drill – Buy Now! – This also makes assembling drums extremely fast. However when your screwing in any of your hardware screws (lugs, bass drum spurs, tom mounting hardware) you'll need to use a low force setting on the drill so it doesn't strip your screws. The reason I recommend a right angle drill is to be able to get inside those smaller diameter shells like 12" and smaller. With a traditional drill you won't be able to fit it inside the shell to screw the lugs screws in!

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j-roller for wrapping drums3. J-Roller – Buy Now! – If you are going to apply a wrap to a drum, this tool will help you get any unwanted air bubbles out from in between the shell and the wrap. This really is a must for applying wrap correctly.

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Combo Square for marking lug and hardware layout4. Combo Square – Buy Now! – Ah the combo square, probably my most used drum making tool. I use this to mark the layout for all of the hardware that goes on to each drum. I also use it to mark stripe layout for paint, and for wrap. I don't know that I could build a drum without one of these.

These are some of the tools that you'll need to build a custom drum, to learn how to use some of them you can sign up for the free drum building tutorials sent to your email! If you want to learn how to use all of these drum building tools and learn the art of drum building consider buying "How to Make Custom Drums 2.0"

I'm always look for new blog topics, if you have any questions or ideas for blog topics I encourage you to leave a comment below!

What I Learned On My Recent Drum Build

April 12, 2010 in Drum Building 101, Drum Building Tutorials, Drums, General Updates with 1 Comment

Every time I build a new custom drum or custom drum kit I learn something that can usually help me improve upon a similar drum set the next time around. Each new drum I build gets better and better and I find more efficient ways to do some of the drum building tasks. Most recently I completed this drum set:

Black stain inlay custom drum set high gloss

The drum building tip I picked up from building this drum set has to do with the order of the steps that I apply the inlay strip and finishing process. For this drum set I:

  1. Cut the inlay groove
  2. Applied about 4 coats of black stain
  3. Installed the inlay strip
  4. Sealed and gave a high gloss finish

Now, from looking at pictures of the drums and even looking at the drums up close you would never be able to tell what I did wrong. (not really wrong…but I will do this differently on the next drum kit that has an inlay that I build)

Here is what the aged pearl wrap looks like up close:

Aged Pearl Wrap for a custom drum set

Look great right? Well I used some very nice tung oil for the high gloss finish for this kit and tung oil (along with other finishing products such as lacquer) tends to yellow or  “amber out” over time. Since I installed the inlay strip before I finished the drum, the inlay with also be included in the “ambering out” that is already starting to happen to this kit. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact this amber color is often desired by many custom finishers. If you’ve ever seen a vintage guitar that has discolored over time you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about!

In conclusion the main lesson I learned from building this drum set was this: If you like the original color of whatever inlay strip you decide to use,  you should mask the area where your inlay strip will go, finish the entire drum, and install the inlay once your finish is complete to prevent your strip from “ambering out”!

I hope this helps some of you builders venturing into the world of inlay! If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below. I would love to hear what you have to say!

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