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)

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 earliest influences were guys who were masters at playing brushes; Shelly Mann, Shadow Wilson.  Later on, players like Art Blakey set a pattern for me. I also played tenor in a Drum & Bugle Corps, which helped develop strength in my hands and wrists.

This past Spring, I retired from my position as a university professor, which gave me time to pursue something I had long wanted to try — to build a custom set of drums.  I had been impressed with kicks I had seen jazz drummers use in the late 1950s, ones with a smaller diameter, and deeper than normal.  Once I learned that drum shells could be ordered, I had been anticipating building my own custom set.

In addition to the visual appeal of a smaller, deeper kick – and the necessity of an acceptable “bass sound”  – I also wanted the kick to be light in weight.   Most of my playing is in smaller groups, and I wanted a “mellow” sound in the kick, rack tom and floor tom, while maintaining the crisp sound of my DW snare.  Finally, I wanted a set that would not look like a standard kit.

With this in mind, I ordered a 14 ” (diameter) by 24″ deep shell through one of Keller’s distributors to determine if a small, deep shell that holds approximately the same amount of air as a larger shallow shell will produce a similar sound.   Moreover, I wanted to hear what a 14″ X 24 ” drum would sound like before committing to building a full set. With the help of Matt at drumfactorydirect, I was able to decide on particular lugs and tension rods, rims and heads.

The shell arrived as specified; no support rings. Bearing edges cut for warmth rather than explosiveness.  Ready for finishing, whether stain, paint or covering.  My first task was to drill the holes needed for attaching the lugs.  As I read more and more about building a “jungle set,” as these smaller kits are sometimes called, I found that most experts recommend finishing the drum (stain, paint or covering) and then drilling the needed holes.  Instead, I had visions of a drill slipping and ruining a completed shell, so I decided to do the necessary drilling before finishing the shell.

Good thing.

In my haste, I did a terrible job of drilling, including scratching the shell.  Nonetheless, I finally was able to drill two holes for each lug.  While not perfect, they were somewhere in the range of functional.  One interesting note on the lugs:  they do not come ready for attaching; instead, they have a spring and a small triangular piece of hard material that holds the spring in place and both must be inserted into the lug for it to act as an anchor for a tension rod.  It is a time-consuming and tedious process, but it has to be done.

With lugs, tension rods, heads, and rims in place, the kick proved capable of producing a lower register, full sound.  It was, admittedly, not the sound of an 18” diameter kick, or even a 16”, but it was plenty acceptable.  Encouraged, I ordered additional shells.  For a rack tom, I decided to go with a 10 ” diameter shell for lightness, but with a depth of 13″ to produce a range of tuning preferences, and to pursue that different look.

Instead of using the shell I had just completed as the kick.  I ordered another “bass drum” shell, the same size as the prototype. This time I asked the vendor to drill the holes for attaching the lugs.  Here, we ran into some problems; the vendor’s drilling machine broke down and split the shell.   Finally, however, new shells arrived at the vendor’s and were drilled.  I mention this because it is not atypical.  Things happen, and then more things will happen to frustrate your efforts to build a set, despite the best efforts of everyone involved. I’ve ordered tension rods too short, rims with fewer holes than needed and had to return a tom holder that was not the one I should have ordered in the first place.  All of these errors slowed the process of completing the set, so patience is an important element of enjoying the custom building process.

Lesson # 1:  Let the pro’s do it.  Unless you are set up to cut bearing edges, and to drill the holes needed for various hardware, don’t do it – let the pro’s do it.  The cost is minimal and the time saved is tremendous.  And, the pro’s will do it correctly the first time.

With the holes drilled the next step was to stain the drums.  I decided to use the prototype shell (14 ” diameter X 24 ” deep) as the basis for a floor tom, and ordered a new shell for the kick, pre-drilled, with edges cut and with a reinforcing ring at each end, along with the shell for the rack tom.

Next, I sought a source for the “burnt orange” stain of my Gretsch drums.  I contacted Gretsch, but they declined to sell me any stain or to tell me what ingredients to mix to produce “burnt orange”.  Other experts in the craft were unable or not inclined to get involved.

However, a mutual friend introduced me to Jeff Assman, head of The Painting Company, of Columbus, Ohio, an organization that specializes in large-scale painting jobs, including The Ohio State University football stadium, and other major facilities across the U.S.  Within 10 minutes of meeting, Jeff was able to match the color of the Gretsch tom I had brought along.  And, within a few weeks the shells were stained and finished.  I then attached lugs, mounts, rims and heads.

Originally, I fitted the batter end of the kick with an Evan‘s head, but the sound seemed muffled and the head was slow to respond.  Replacing the Evans head with an Aquarian helped reduce response lag, and produced an acceptable “bass drum” sound.

The rack tom needed minimal attention.  I mounted it on a cymbal stand with a RIMs system and tuned it as usual.

Now came the 14” X 24” shell that was the prototype for the kick, but which now was to become a floor tom. Cutting above and below my drilling errors produced a shell for the floor tom 14” in diameter by 10” deep.    New holes were drilled and lugs attached along with a new Evans head on top and an Aquarian head on the bottom.  It already has become one of my favorite drums.

So, what have I learned from this experience?  Let’s try the following:

#1.  You can design a unique set of drums, work with vendors and produce a set that reflects your likes and dislikes, and you can complete the process, even if you are carpenter challenged

#2.  Although we didn’t break down the costs here, you can produce a set of drums for a few hundred dollars, comparable to drums costing thousands of dollars.

#3. You can choose at any juncture in the process to take on tasks such as drilling, sanding or whatever, or to hand that task over to a professional – usually at a very low cost.

#4. Make friends.  There are many people around who have already gone through this process and all of them are eager to help.  In my case, these included Jeff at The Painting Company; Chris White, of Columbus Pro Percussion; and fellow drummer James “Smooth” Eliot, whose support and enthusiasm for the project never waned.

#5.  Building a custom set is fun.  Always remember to have fun with the process, and the fun you have will be reflected in the drum set. Forever.

John A. Ledingham, PhD.

Columbus, Ohio

Thanks John for your incredible insight into building your first custom drum set!

If you enjoyed what John shared, or if you have any questions for him, please leave a comment below! If your ready to start building your very own custom drum set consider checking out the eBook to set you on the fast track to building drums!

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 Tunin g: 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.

Toms: Remo Emperor Tom Drumheads (batter side) + Remo Ambassador Tom Drumheads (resonant side)

• Pros: Fairly cheap, almost always available at any more store, the simplicity in the construction of the clear drum heads allow characteristics of the bearing edge and wood type to come through unobstructed by sound rings or power dots on other drum heads, sound great tuned high and low, the clear heads adds a brightness to make your toms cut through the mix.
• Cons: I don’t use brushes very often, but obviously you would want to have coated heads for any brush work.
• My Tuning: Each tom has it’s own sweet spot that the drum will resonate at best. I try to find this sweet spot and tune both drum heads to this pitch. What I mean by “sweet spot” is, the tuning that produces the most full sound without any buzzing/flabbiness (caused from being too loose) or choked off tintiness (caused from being too tight). For my toms, they generally find that sweet spot at a “just above finger tight” tuning.

Bass / Kick Drum: Evans EMAD2 Clear Bass Drum Head with the larger external muffling ring (batter side) + Remo Fiberskyn with 6″ sound hole (resonant side) Evans Pillow inside the drum only touching the front bass head.

• Pros: Tons of attack as well as low end, extremely easy to EQ when mic’ed up.
• Cons: The Emad’s plastic ring that holds the external dampening ALWAYS cracks and ends up rattling, and eventually you’ll either need to tape the dampening ring on, or replace the drum head completely. You’ll have to cut your own sound hole in the Remo Fiberskyn (if you choose to cut a hole), which can be a little difficult if your not used to doing this. The Fiberskyn is a little more difficult to find in stock at music stores.
• My Tuning: I tune the front head to where there are no wrinkles, with a moderately tight tuning across the head. I tune the Emad finger tight and try to keep the wrinkles out (but sometimes it’s ok to still have a slight wrinkle, you be the judge depending on how it sounds) I place the Emad Pillow (or a towel or small blanket) on the inside of the drum where it is only touching the front resonate head. Without the pillow touching the front head you’ll have a ringy sound, the pillow dampens it just enough to let the kick punch you in the chest the way it should.

I know someone of you reading this will disagree with me when it comes to drum head selection, and I welcome your comments and rebukes. I would love to know what your favorite drum heads are and why. Feel free to discuss by leaving a comment below!

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.

Tools I own and use for marking the hardware layout on a drum shell:

• Layout mat or cake dividing layout mat
• Blue Painters Tape
• Pencil
• Combo Square

Tools I own and use for drilling holes for hardware:

• A Drill (A right angle drill is preferred for when you need to drill from the inside of the shell on smaller size shells)
• A Drill Bit Set (You’ll need different sizes bits to drill different size holes for the different sizes of hardware)

Tools I own or use for cutting wrap:

• Long table or workbench
• Swanson 100-Inch Cutting Guide
• Utility Knife
• Adjustable C-Clamp

Questions or comments? Please leave it below and I’ll get back to  you!

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:

• A Screwdriver

…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!

Here is the bottom line, there are drum supply companies out there that want nothing more than to get your business, in fact they want your business so much that if you buy all of your parts from them (drum shell, drum lugs, tension rods, hoops, lug screws, etc…) they will  drill the holes for all of your hardware, cut the bearing edges on your drums, and even cut your snare bed! They will then ship you the drum shell and your hardware and the only thing you have to do now is assemble the drum – that’s where your screwdriver comes in handy!

Now, I realize most people that want to build a “custom” drum don’t want a plain looking drum. There are steps in between getting your supplies in the mail and assembling the drum that can make your drums have a custom look to them, such as staining, painting and wrapping your drums. Those are the steps that truly make your drum “custom” and to customize your drums  you only need a few more tools/supplies.

To customize the look of your drums by applying a wood dye (stain) to the shell you’ll need:

• Wood Dye/Stain
• Strips cut from an old cotton t-shirt or sock
• Water
• Clear Gloss Spray
• Assorted Grit Sandpaper

For those of you who want to learn more about the correct staining and clear coating process for drums, you can sign up on the email list and I’ll send you some free information that comes straight from my eBook, or if you are ready to go even deeper into the art of drum building you can buy the eBook!

To customize the look of your drums by wrapping your drums you’ll need:

• Drum wrap
• Contact Cement – (and a paint brush)
• 100 Grit Sandpaper
• J-Roller (laminate roller)

Again, for those of you who want to learn the in’s and outs of wrapping a drum shell, you can sign up for the email list and I’ll send you a “How to Wrap Drums” tutorial totally free of charge!

So really, to get started in customizing your drums your only going to be out about $30 (not including the cost of drum parts). A small price to pay for the ultimate satisfaction of having a drum or drum set that is totally customized to your style! I’ll be posting a more in depth list of drum building tools soon! The next list will go into more detail of what I use on a day to day basis for building custom drums at P.Ellis Drums!

As always comments and questions are encouraged!

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 Drum Building Ryan Voight

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.

Philip: Yeah, I remember that.

Ryan: I know we played with you guys when you were with the Rocketboys, or I guess then it was Homer Hiccolm and the Rocketboys, but I actually know we had met before then. But anyway, I met you and I’d seen that first kit you built that was stained blue, I think.

Philip: Uh-huh, yeah.

Ryan: You know, it looked cool and sounded even better, you know and so, I had just talked to you about it and ever since then, that had been a few years ago, I just – it was always in my head that that’s the way to go instead of buying some big mass-produced-every-drummer-has-one kind of kit. The next time I was ready for something new, I was just going to build my own and I finally got the opportunity earlier this year.

Philip: Awesome, man. Well, can you tell us a little bit about the drums you’ve built? Have you only built those two snare drums that are on the blog?

Ryan: Yes, those are the only two I’ve built so far. Right now it’s still kind of in the hobby phase, especially with all the other stuff I’ve got going on. I also have a 7-month-old son so he’s keeping me busy. But yeah, just built those two snare drums so far and I’m the kind of person, I find myself being obsessive so I’ve actually probably got about 10 or 15 Word documents on my computer of different kit designs I want to buy or that I want to buy the parts for and stuff like that. I’ve got tons of ideas bouncing around in my head, but so far yeah, I’ve just built two snares.

Philip: That’s great, dude, that’s the exact same way I got started building my drums. I built the first drum set and then I just got really addicted to it, I guess you could say. I just wanted to keep building different types of drums and pushing the limits and find out everything there was to making custom drums. It’s contagious, man, once you build that first drum, it’s like Pringles, once you pop, you can’t stop.

Ryan: Man, it is. And you know, there’s a fine line between being proud of what you’ve done and obsessed with what you’ve done. And I’ve found myself just sitting on the couch looking at my snare drum, looking at it like, “Wow!” I’m not gonna brag, but I’m pretty impressed with myself.

Philip: I’m very impressed. The pictures you took look amazing, the snare drum looks amazing. Can you tell us a little bit about the process of building those drums? What were some of the obstacles that you had to overcome when building that, and what were some drawbacks to getting started?

Ryan: Yeah, definitely. Before I’d even started, the biggest drawback was just, even though paying for the parts to build your own drum is cheaper than something pre-made, my biggest obstacle was just having to save up for the money. The first snare drum I built was just a natural wood with a satin finish and then I used regular tube lugs with all chrome hardware. I wanted to do something simple and standard because I figured, if I get halfway into this and hate it, I don’t want to be halfway into something that’s just huge and complex. So with that one, definitely the biggest obstacle for me was cutting the snare bed. I definitely understood the concept of the snare beds, but I hadn’t thought through every detail. What I ended up doing was I cut the snare beds too deep and too wide the first time around. And so I didn’t realize they were too deep or too wide and I remember, the first Sunday that I had the snare drum ready to go, tuned up, and by the time we were finished with just practice, two of the lugs on the bottom head had just fallen out right by the snare bed. And it was because the shell swooped in too far out and so those tension rods just weren’t getting any tension. So it took me a while to figure out what I had done and so, actually they had to take the shell and sand the bottom all the way flat again and recut the edges of the snare bed. It was work, but just like you said in your book, you’re thankful for all the mistakes you’ve made because you know now not to make them. And now you know how to do it more efficiently.  And so I think that was probably one of the biggest obstacles with that snare drum. But once I got that figured out and re-cut the beds, that snare stays consistently in tune all the time. If anyone’s listening and they’ve got maybe an older kit like I do, my toms, I have to re-tune them fairly regularly just because they’re older equipment, but with this new snare, it’s always in tune and it always sounds great.  And then the second snare drum I built – I stained it black, put a flat satin finish on the wood and then it’s got two stripes of pearl inlay.

Philip: Nice. That’s my favorite.

Ryan: Yeah, it came out nice, I’m proud of that one and that pearl inlay. I’m not going to lie, obviously I got the color scheme idea from that kit that you made. But I actually built that for this really cool kid I met when I was doing worship for a youth camp in New Mexico. He really liked my snare and we had kind of gone back and forth on ideas. The biggest obstacle I had with that one was with my inlay strips – I actually ordered the wrong sizes. I needed a half inch and an inch and a half, but for some reason I ordered one-inch and two-inch strips – so I actually had to hand-cut those strips and that’s just hard to do.  I did it, and there were a couple places on those strips where I put them into the groove I’d cut on the shell, they looked a little jagged and so I just actually spent a lot of time on those strips, sanding the edges to make it look like they were perfectly flat. It actually ended up working out. I just burned a lot of time doing that. If I had just ordered the strips in the right sizes, then I could have just taken them out of the box and put them on the shell. But again, I’m glad I learned from those mistakes.

Philip: Yeah, that’s one of the things – whenever I do any kind of inlay, I’ve actually just cut all the inlays out by hand and yeah, it does take forever because you have that jagged edge and you want it to be perfectly flat, you want it to be perfectly flush. I guess one of the things I haven’t been able to find, at least not for the right price, is just some kind of cutting table to where I can actually cut perfectly straight lines through that thick wrap and it actually be the correct size and everything. But that’s definitely one of my obstacles as well, trying to get those flush and perfectly trimmed.

Ryan: Right, and it seems like there’s got to be something out there – I’m thinking just a big industrial paper cutter, because I’ve used paper cutters before where it’s almost like a pizza cutter on the top, so you put the paper in there and you just roll this pizza cutter type thing on a track. That would be cool – I tried using scissors and that just bends the wrap in towards the scissors and then you lose your straight line. I actually did it all with a razor blade, that was the way I cut them.

Philip: Awesome. Well, what are some of your favorite drum companies out there, maybe some of the mass-produced drums, but also some of the custom drum companies – what are your favorites and why?

Ryan: I would have to say that as far as modern companies go, DW has always had my attention.  I’ve never personally owned a DW kit, but I’ve had the opportunity recording in studios and just playing different places with different drummers, I’ve gotten to mess around with DW kits and those seem to be one of the best bridges between fully custom and mass-produced kind of kits. In my personal opinion, some of the bigger mass-produced companies, they seem to not really be too concerned with the individual drummer.  It’s just about getting their product and getting as many kits out there as possible. Unless you’re willing to spend 7, 8, 9, 10 thousand dollars for a pearl masters custom kit.

Philip: Which is not going to happen, at least for most musicians, because musicians don’t really make money.

Ryan: Yeah – DW is probably definitely my favorite big, modern company. Their products are always consistently sounding good. I’ve watched video and read up on how they select shells and stuff for customer kits and stuff like that. It’s really interesting. There’s always the human element from beginning to end with DW, and that’s what I appreciate. Personally, I’m a vintage kind of guy – I play a 1967 Ludwig downbeat kit, it’s just a little jazz set from the 60s. The thing looks pretty rough and beat-up, but sounds phenomenal. I get on Ebay all the time and look at vintage Ludwig stuff, even though I can’t buy it, just to see what people have and what people are selling.

Philip: I do the same thing, I just got done reading that autobiography of William F. Ludwig, who’s the son of the guy who started Ludwig Drum Company and he’s kind of taken over the company and it’s been really, really interesting just reading up on the history of Ludwig and about just the different artists, and to hear it from the perspective of a guy who is in the middle of the whole business of drum making.

Ryan: Yeah, man, he grew up with that. What is the name of that book? I’ve actually seen you tweet excerpts from it and comment on it and stuff, I’ve been meaning to ask you, what’s the name of that book?

Philip: The Making of a Drum Company: The Autobiography of William F. Ludwig

Ryan: OK, awesome.

Philip: I was going to ask you, where did you order your supplies from?

Ryan: I actually went to a few different ones, a few different vendors so I could get the best price so that I could give Ryan, ironically that’s the name of the guy I built the other snare for, I wanted to give him the best price and I also wanted to save the most money.  I used Drum Foundry and Drum Factory Direct – they were the two I got the most stuff from.

Philip: How long did all your parts actually take to arrive to you? I know in the drum-making business, national back-orders are kind of a problem, at least they have been for me when I’ve tried to order different parts or whatever to complete a drum set, I’ll get an e-mail back from one of the suppliers and they’ll say, “Hey, we’re waiting for a shipment to come in on a ship from Taiwan, it’s going to be another month before we get them.” And so I’ve always been just frustrated and I’m wondering if I’m the only one that that happens to.

Ryan: Man, you’re not. Believe it or not, I’m actually still waiting on some black chrome tension rods that I ordered from Drum Foundry back in July. I still haven’t got them. And I actually ended up just contacting Drum Factory Direct and saying, “Hey, you know, Drum Foundry has still not sent me anything and I need these because I’m selling this snare drum to a guy and I need to get it built.” And they were actually really cool, they rushed me an order. Obviously, I paid for them, but they rushed me the order with standard shipping just to be cool to help me out so that maybe hopefully they’ll get more of my business. But honestly there were some things I ordered and I got the order processed and I got it in a week, and there were some things that took a little bit longer. I actually got the shell from Drum Foundry also, and when I ordered it they sent me the wrong size shell. Not to – I don’t want to badmouth any companies on your website, so if you need to edit this out, feel free, but they actually made that right because they sent me a 13-inch shell and I called them and they said, “You know what, just keep the 13-inch shell. We’ll send you a 14-inch.”

Philip: No way. So you got to keep both of them?

Ryan: Yeah, so I have a 13-inch shell still so I’m trying to figure out which of my many designs I want to apply to that one so I can make an unusual 13-inch shell. But it’s just like purchasing from any online company – they all have their pros and cons.

Philip: Yeah, and the fact of a tension rod being out of stock – it’s really not their problem, at least it doesn’t look like it to me to be their problem. Stuff like that happens and honestly, it’s going to happen to all drum companies at some point, no matter where you get your stuff from. I’ve tried switching different suppliers and that’s happened with every single different supplier I’ve tried to get stuff from.  At some point in our relationship, it’ll happen to where they just run out of stock and it takes a month or two to get something in. But that’s great about Drum Foundry giving you a shell for free, I’d say that definitely makes it right.

Ryan: Yeah, definitely. Drummaker.com was the other site; I got a throw-off from them. But yeah, they were really cool about it. I’m still waiting for the tension rods, which are probably on some container in the South Pacific, making its way slowly to the States, but they’re definitely all great companies.

Philip: Definitely. So where did all the actual drum building and customizing your drums take place? Did you do it in a garage or a building or what?

Ryan: The first snare I made, the natural maple one, I actually did – I went to a friend’s house to cut the bearing edges. But everything else – my wife and I were living in an apartment at the time and I did it up on the balcony at our apartment, just kind of sitting out there and I had some stuff stacked up to keep the wind out because it was in February when I was building it. But I did almost everything just sitting on our balcony or in the living room sitting on a blanket trying not to get wood shavings all over the place.

Philip: That’s awesome.

Ryan: The second drum – I built myself a router table and I just got an extra piece of melamine to set on top. I would pull the router down so that wasn’t sticking up out of the hole and I would put a piece of melamine on top of that and I had a 2×4 kind of mounted onto the side of it so I could actually use that as a work table and then also kind of hang the shell on that 2×4 for doing work like the inlay work and stuff like that. And that was in my garage in the house that we live in now, so definitely a lot more space and resources at that time.

Philip: Yeah all that stuff sounds familiar to me from when I built my first drum set in college. I lived in a house with seven guys and I just took over the living room for about a week to stain my drums and to do all that work on there. It was fun because it was a pretty trashy house to begin with so nobody really cared.

Ryan: I actually remember seeing a picture of one of the shells hanging on a mic stand to dry, and I thought, “Hey, you got to use whatever resources are available.”

Philip: Well, is there anything else that you’d like to share? Maybe a little piece of wisdom or a quick tip or a recommendation of a tool of any kind that might help anyone else build drums?

Ryan: Man, all I would say is that you’re going to mess something up. There’s going to be something where you didn’t measure perfectly or you have to back up and re-draw everything, you know. But the small frustrations that come throughout the building process – they don’t in any way compare to the joy of knowing that you built something that looks good and is actually usable. To be able to build something that you can take and however often you play the drums, you can play that thing that you made by hand – the pride that comes from that far outweighs any frustrations or speed bumps that any of the listeners right now might come in contact with.

Philip: I definitely agree with that statement because it’s true – you’re going to mess up, and then you’ll get really mad and you may blow through some money by wasting a shell or something, but hopefully it’s not that drastic to where you have to scrap a whole shell, but it’s happened to me and it’s not fun. But yeah, definitely when you’re done with something that you play on and it looks amazing and it sounds amazing, it far outweighs the frustrations that you had, definitely.

Ryan: It absolutely does.

Philip: Well Ryan, thanks for being on this call, man. I wish you luck in all the drum building and photography stuff you’ve got going on.

Ryan: Well thanks man, I really appreciate it. I enjoyed talking to you.

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!

I’ll be writing a short little blog post about your first build pretty soon. Can you tell me some more details about the build? How long it took, what problems did you run into when building it, how did you address the problems, how do they sound? etc… If you want to tell me anything that other drum builders would find interesting or useful I will post it on the blog! I can’t wait to see the other drums you build!
-Philip Ellis

Hi Phillip,
Well let’s start with the 2 major obstacles, time and money…

I started the project as I call it Canto-Drums about 10 months ago.The big dream however to make my own drums started about 25 years ago but that time it was impossible to accomplish what you can achieve now, there was no Internet, no Ellis books, shells, hardware, etc. Those were very difficult to get, and if you could get it they were very expensive…..to be honest it still is today!!

With all the experience of the last 25 years, as a drummer-musician, working in a drum shop, hanging with the drum dudes, organizing drum events, collecting every prospect, checking out in detail all the brands, books whatever to be known about drums (let’s say in general “drum addiction”) to merge that in the idea what I saw was still missing in custom drum building…I don’t want to say I will make something better because I could not ever reach the level of fine drum craft we see today from all the new innovative Custom builders out there ( a big respect for Craviotto, Brady, Ayotte, Le Soprano, Tamburo, Spaun, Rockett, Shine, C and C, San Fransisco Drum Company, Artisan drum works (not to forget my friend in Belgium at LIGNUM DRUMS!) and the many hundreds of others ….

But I saw the need for an affordable custom drum, classic look, classic sound, practical in use and to fill the need for small sized drums…

The truth is that many good hardworking-drummers don’t have the wallet to afford a 5000 dollar drum set (they spent it on booze and woman….joke of course).

At this moment I did achieve my goal, my drums look classic, they are affordable and the jazz kit sounds very jazzy ,the 5MM tom/floor tom birch shells give enough deep-resonance and sound vintage, especially with the Fiberskyns, I tried with
Regular coated ambassadors and that opens up the spectrum really, the set in it’s total is very tune-sensitive, that’s a mark!
The snare drum (12MM birch) is very sensitive too,works well with a low as well as a high tuning, blends in well with the whole kit and doesn’t over power the rest .

The bass drum 18×16 ( 8MM birch !!) is killer, has extreme low-end for an 18”, tried it with the P3 smooth white front-P3 Fiberskyn batter (i cut 1cm from the inner tone control rings to give it a little more head) no holes yet on the front.I still want to try it with coated ambassadors and coated emperor to see if it really lives up the standard of a Bop-bass….

OK, about timing and troubleshooting.

It took me about 10 days to finish the first set. For me patience was the golden rule….you need TIME and PEACE, any rush or frustration will run into almost irreversible mistakes!

I took time to search for shells and wood hoops, ordered at 3 different places to see the quality and try them,all shells I ordered had small mistakes, some went back to the seller some I fixed myself,although 2 sellers made good shells I still had to lay a finishing touch to the 45 bearing edges (that’s why they sound so good now ), I prepared the shells with a 400 grit sanding and 000 steel wool.

I took time to try different tests with water based staining, lacquers, etc (of course not directly on the shells). I came upon the hard wax oils, you don’t need to spray, no compressor machines needed, no brush just cloth needed and very very light 000 steel wool sanding between layers, no 5, 6, 8, 12, 17 layers only 3 to 4 then waxing, polish and ready, the results are stunning.
The only negative thing about hard wax oil is you need to work slow to not have stripes and stains (if you do it with a cloth) let the oil soak in by slow rubbing, work very very thin layers and you have to respect the 24 hours drying time between every layer!
Even waiting a full week after the last layer to let the oil set in and get hard isn’t a bad idea before you start to assemble the hardware…also to let the oil set in and sink before waxing or polish. To be honest, the hard wax oils are not the cheapest but work very easy, compared to aerosol techniques or staining and lacquer, and you don’t need to put on a lot so it saves a lot of money and energy.

I took time to search for hardware and ordered from different brands. I had to wait over 2 months for the lugs to arrive !!!
Placing the lugs wasn’t a real big deal, precision is still the key, I used plastic spacers on all the inner screws so no metal is touching the shells, it’s not that important but it makes a difference.

Placing the bass drum spurs and floor tom legs gave me some sweating moments but worked well, good measuring is the key. I put the floor tom brackets a little higher with the thin 5MM shells, to not have the pressure on the lower part of the shell and to not interfere with the tension-tuning capacity of the resonance head…….there is some logic in that …..isn’t there??
I also changed the rubber feet on the floor tom legs with Pearl rubber feet.

The Gibraltar Rail-Mount is a nice piece but very heavy, there is a rubber spacer to protect the top of the shell when mounting it but the bottom piece that lands on the inside of the bass drum shell is metal so I cut out the same form from a wood ply and used it as a spacer and stabilizer for the Rail mount (especially with thin shell bass drums you need to do that to eliminate any risk of tearing up the shell!)

I bought a set of standard tools to work on the drums, no extreme tools, machines, etc…just basic, I spent a little more on wood drills…that’s a good advice…

I used all of the advice, and techniques I found in Philip Ellis’s book to be a great help, and I searched all the blogs and sites for advice!

I bought the lug layout maps from ST-DRUMS in Germany, glued them on a hardboard and they work perfect.
Good masking tape, good pencil-marker, accurate measuring, creativity and drum passion are the final ingredients to make it happen.

I am 45, made my first 2 sets and I am more excited than ever about drum making.

My next one will be a wrapped set, that’s again a new adventure…
Greetings,
Bart

1. 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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2.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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3. 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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4. 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!

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:

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:

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!