Hi all you cocktail addicts... I am the owner of Metropolitan, so as that take it
for what it's worth.... Not trying to sell anyone drums, I am actually up to my ears in
orders! I am going to selling Bass drum brackets soon on ebay ( shameless plug.. ok)
All three companies, Yamaha, Phattie and Metro are capable of producing great drums,
each different in what we offer. My customers are prety happy that they can choose
finishes, sizes, options, etc. for the price. We made the decision to sell directly to drummers, and not through the Mi channel, dramatically affecting our pricing to comsumers...
I believe the two biggest items that affect the tone of the drums are bearing edge and
head selection. ( In my 30 years of building and refinishing, a good set of heads and tuning radically affects the drums... )Next is Shell Material, and then hardware on the drum and mounting locations. On bearing edges, I think Pork Pie has the best approach, and very similar to the old Gretsch bearing edge, which I tend to go for. anyone can buy a shell and build a drum. Precision cutting and finishing an edge, is a different story... IMHO... not to say you cannot build a playable drum yourself... certainly can. we use tooling we developed to cut true and accurate bearing edges on big shells, worth the price and less hassle, I let my customers decide.
I've been playing around in our R&D with a bunch of drums, we're going to have some atthe Chicago show in May the Conn. show in April... I hope if you folks are in those areas, you stop by and talk cocktails. Come by and see our Ice Cream Cones...
Thanks, Matthew@Metropolitan