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Truth Custom Drums @ Winter NAMM 2012 – Pictures and Videos

Truth had some great drums at their booth. They just released a Matt Greiner signature production model kit that sounds phenomenal! If your interested in hearing what Truth Drums sound like you can check out their new site  that provides high quality audio samples of truth drums.

You can also keep up with Truth by following them on Twitter: @truthcstmdrums

1. Check out the putting green on the side of that snare drum!

Custom snare drums by Truth

2. Adding a 15″ maple ring in between the tube lugs adds a very interesting look.

Notice the placement of the tube lugs Continue Reading....

SJC Custom Drums – Pictures and Videos from Winter NAMM 2012

I had the honor to meet Mike Ciprari from SJC Custom drums at Winter NAMM this year.

SJC Custom Drums have always been a drum company that I look to for inspiration. They design some of the most innovative custom drums on the market these days. I’ve been following them ever since I started building drums in 2006. Each year they seem to up the ante. This year was no different. They are great about posting interesting pictures on Twitter. You might want to follow them.

Here is a quick video from the SJC Booth at NAMM.

I don’t know much about the exact specs of these drums, so if anyone does, feel free to leave a comment. My commentary on the drums may not correct or give much more input than the picture itself.

SJC Custom Drum Pictures from NAMM 2012

1. This snare drum really stood out to me. I have never seen a stitched wrap design on a snare. It looks like it was actually hand stitched by someone!

Hand sewn SJC stitched wrap snare drum Continue Reading....

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)

  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)

5 Drum Building Tools That Will Improve Your Custom Drums

I have been a customer of Drum Foundry for about 7 years, and every interaction I have ever had with the people at Drum Foundry has been extremely pleasant. As far as I know, they are the only company that actually creates and innovates drum building tools  specifically for the at home/garage custom drum builder. These products are used by beginning drum builders and professional drum builders all over the world. They also make some really great lugs, hoops, and Snare Throw Strainers among other things. These are a few items that I already own, or that I would love to have in my drum shop.

1. Drum Foundry Layout Mat ($44.99) -

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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.

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Drum Builder Interview: Jeremy Wolfe’s 2nd Custom Drum Set

I recently had time to interview Jeremy Wolfe about his recent experience with building drums. This is the 2nd custom drum set he has built with the help of this site. Check out our conversation and pictures below!

Makedrums: Can you tell us about the drums you’ve built?
Jeremy: This is the second kit I have built. It’s the first using the E-Book. It was actually a rebuild from an older kit. The drums were originally wrapped in a dark red wrap. After using some wood filler and the “wet sanding” tip from the book the shells were then consistently smooth. I also plugged the original lugholes with filler because I was going for an alternate lug layout. Also the toms were cut to custom size. The 9×12 rack tom was cut to 7×12″ and the 16×16″ floor was cut to 12×16″. There was also a 10×13″ rack tom that was cut to 5×13″ which is now the snare drum. Finish is a simple white gloss spray with off centered double pinstripes that gradually get bigger according to shell size. Using the finishing steps in the book the build coat and pinstripe came easily. Top coat is the lacquer suggested in the book also and finally black hoops and hardware were put on to finish.
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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 + 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.

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How to Refurbish an Old Drum Set – Breathe New Life Into Old Skins

This is a guest post by Jon Lee of MNI Drumworks in Austin, TX.

In the fall of 1993 my parents gave in.  The past 18 years had been a torturous, ear bleeding ordeal for both my Father and beautiful Mother.  I had slapped, hit, tapped, knocked, kicked, and played EVERYTHING in every house that we had ever lived in, or vehicle we had owned.  From banging on pots, pans, lamp shades (great cymbals), to foot pedal trash cans (great hi-hats) and seat cushions…I was born to play drums.

Music Lane Studios, Summer 1994

The only drum kit I have ever owned is as a 5 piece Mapex Mars kit (later 6 piece) that I bought from Phil Fisher at the Drum Connection on North Lamar in the summer of 1993.  The kit is obsolete by today’s standards, but there weren’t a lot of technological advances in drum design for beginner kits in the early 90s.  When Pearl and Tama introduced suspension mounting systems for drum kits under the $1,000 price range, it was a revolution.  A concept that just about every drum company foreign or domestic soon adhered too, including Mapex in the late 90s.  For me, I got to hit stuff really hard, and could hit stuff really hard without breaking my parent’s .  If anything the first few weeks playing would have been like watching an Animal impersonator screaming WOMAN  WOMAN while banging away in the garage.

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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....

I’m Giving Away 5 Copies of My Ebook!

Twitter users, "tis better to give than receive", so I’m running a Twitter-only contest where you (and 4 other lucky twitter users) can win a copy of "How to Make Custom Drums". All you have to do is click the link and retweet this message! The 10th, 21st, 23rd, 38th and 40th retweet get a free copy of the book! The contest will run until someone is the 40th "tweeter". Good luck!

How to enter:

  1. Click to tweet this message:Learn how to make your own custom drum set by following @makedrums – RT to Win the Makedrums.com Guide to Building Drums! http://ow.ly/3sfT6
  2. You must retweet this message exactly as it appears.

Contest Guidelines:

  1. The 10th, 21st, 23rd, 38th, and 40th retweet get a free copy of my Ebook!
  2. Make sure your tweets are public. If your tweets are private, I can’t see them, which means you can’t win.
  3. The contest will run until someone is the 40th "tweeter".
  4. Winners will be announced via Twitter and this blog post only, so be sure to follow @makedrums.

Good luck and happy tweeting!

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