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Makedrums.com Top Posts of 2011 (according to Google Analytics)
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)
- The Cobus Method Review – How to Play Drums Like Cobus | How to Make Custom Drums
- My Favorite Custom Drum Builders | How to Make Custom Drums
- How to make Custom Drums | How to Make Custom Drums
- Drum Building – Pros and Cons of Tube Lugs | How to Make Custom Drums
- How to Wrap a Drum Shell Part 1 | How to Make Custom Drums
- Drum Building FAQ – How much time and money will I need to invest? | How to Make Custom Drums
- Drum Building Tools for the Beginning Drum Builder | How to Make Custom Drums
- Ryan’s 1st Custom Snare Drum Build | How to Make Custom Drums
- 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
- Reader’s Drum Pictures | How to Make Custom Drums
- 33 Drummer and Drum Related Gift Ideas For the Drummer In Your Life | How to Make Custom Drums
- 4 Tools That Make Building Custom Drums Easy | How to Make Custom Drums
- Drum Building Tools | How to Make Custom Drums
- 8 Custom Drum Companies That You Should Know About | How to Make Custom Drums
- Drum Building Tools for the Advanced Drum Builder | How to Make Custom Drums
- Drum Building 101 – Don’t Let Your Drums Slip Out of Tune | How to Make Custom Drums
- That’s one very large custom floor tom… | How to Make Custom Drums
- My Drum Head Recipe – The Best Drum Heads for Bringing The Funk | How to Make Custom Drums
- 7 Custom Drum Companies That You Should Know About | How to Make Custom Drums
- 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
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.
My Drum Head Recipe – The Best Drum Heads for Bringing The Funk
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
- 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.
Drum Building Tools for the Advanced Drum Builder
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
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!
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
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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
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 did an incredible job on building his very first custom drum set. Great job Bart!
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....
Reader Drum Pictures
