A product of Mr. Russ Gray and the Northern Drum Company in DePere, WI.
Specs: 5"X14", stainless steel, 10-lugs, cast hoops. This is a very normal size for a snare drum, one that allows for a variety of applications (whereas a deeper drum might be unsuitable for jazz or funk drumming).
It's a beautiful piece of work, and sounds great. Russ told me when I picked it up that they sometimes can be a little touchy to tune, but I've left it at a medium tension and it sounds and plays beautifully. The sound is subtly different from the other drums I've owned, but in ways so slight that I'm unable to pinpoint them very precisely. I couldn't identify the drum by sound alone, but I've only had it for a few days and over time I may come to recognize things. Hitting the head of the drum and the rim simultaneously is called a rim shot, which gives a distinctive crack with a bit of metallic ring, and will often be the most distinctive sound on a snare drum. I tend to hit the drum this way an awful lot, and this drum sounds quite gratifying when treated thusly. It projects very nicely, and has a nice, live sound without ringing excessively. I love that I've not needed to use any kind of damping on it: it pains me to hear a drum with the resonance deadened out of it.
Honeymoon phase and all, but so far I'm thrilled! (Too bad--or lucky for you, depending on your perspective--I can't put up a sound clip!)
4 comments:
It's a honey, all right!
Have fun.
ratamacue ratamacue
What are the frankenstein looking bolts on the sides all about?
Those are the lugs, and they are used to screw down on the rim, which stretches the drum head to whatever tension you desire. This sets the pitch, and the overall sound, of the drum.
The snare drum picture in that last post further down the page is of a drum the same dimensions as mine, this time by Drum Workshop. In that case, the lugs are those round things, and the top and bottom heads are tensioned by the same lugs (with separate screws); on my drum, there are separate lugs for top and bottom heads. "10 lug" refers to the number of screws assigned to tension each head. My drum actually has 20 lugs, ten for each head.
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