The new drum is in operating order!! It's a Keller 6 ply maple shell with sanding sealer. I like natural grain! Basic bowtie lugs, triple flange hoops, Gibraltar cymbal mount with a Sabian B8 14" crash and Pulse pedal. What you hit it with (brushes and Vic Firth Rutes so far), and where, makes for a nice variety of sounds. The bass end is a Remo Powerstroke, loosely tuned and surprisingly non-ringing. I don't miss an actual snare sound-yet.
I will add an X-hat with Wuhan 10" splashes and Remo pre-tuned bongos like John Mettam and Keith Cronin use. If you cut a set of snare wires in half and bolt them to the small bongo's wall so that the wires curve upward and and the ends rest on the head, it sounds very much like the Club Jordan snare that Jordan used in John Mayer's Cissy Strut. A compact snappy sound. I'll post a picture once I get it refined.
They didn't tell me that once you get it built you have to learn how to play it! Oh, well. Many thanks for the inspiration. A lot of good music is being made by folks here - I have several CDs on order I heard about here. It's gonna be fun!
Thanks, John. No snare yet. But in the photo, on the floor is a Gibraltar rim clamp muffler. I'm going to put a snare fan on it. I may not use an internal snare-the top head is a coated Ambassador tuned pretty tight. It sounds good with brushes and Rutes. But I'll keep experimenting. That's half the fun of this species of percussion.
Nice job Robert! Did you use sanding sealer on the inside as well?
I also use a rathe cheap but surpirsingly good Pulse pedal, easy to reverse, fast enough to drive my acoustic band;a nice inexpensive solution!
Looking forward to seeing the rest of the set-up.
Thanks Jim. I did seal the inside - don't know what it would do to the sound. The extras will go on as soon as the companies fill the orders. I do have to say - Drummaker.com die the quickest job of shipping I've seen lately.
Hi Jim. You weren't kidding about the Pulse pedal. I talked to a semipro drummer I knew from working in a music store several years ago and he agreed that for the bucks it's great. He also pointed out that the cheaper pedals don't have a bottomplate usually. Like the $20 specials at Music 123.
I looked up Willoughby Run's website and Myspace site. Love the music! The cocktail drum sound has just the right scale for acoustic-based music. Cocktail kits DO promote artistic styles of playing.
I used a polyurethane on the inside of my main drum. I think that may have contributed to some of the ringing I experienced with the drum, but it also aids in the projection of the sound.
Thanks for checking out the Willoughby Run site, we got your message on our board as well. I didn't use the cocktail set on the songs you listened to. At that time, our band was pretty strictly acoustic, and I played a rig with a cajon, two congas, a 20 inch Zildjain ride, some 14 inch hi-hats, a big djembe and a bunch of toys. The cajon is a wooden box drum, the one I built for use with Willoughby Run is 24 inches tall, and 12 by 12 wide. It has two wooden drum heads, originally Honduran mahogany planed down to 3/8 thick. I've since replaced these heads with mahogany ply wood of the same thickness. The snare like sound is created with guitar strings strung behind one of the heads. On tunes like Terlingua or Enough, I sit on the cajon, use my right heel to strike the head on the un-sgtrung side of the cajon (literallly a "kick" drum!), and my left hand plays snare patterns on the strung head, while my right hand is busy on the hats and cymbal. Since recording those tunes, we dropepd the cello, got a bit more electric and jazzier, and that's been the impetus to build the cocktail set. I still sue the cajon on songs like Hopeless and Indiscreet.
The drum is finished for now. I put a half snare wire on a Gibraltar top-mount muffler bracket, and another half snare in the Remo bongos. The bongo sounds like a Club Jordan side snare and the main head like a full size snare (complete with rattle when playing the bass head). The top snare can be silenced by loosening the mount a half turn. An oddball Gibraltar bracket with a cowbell mount and Wuhan 8 inch splashes gives a closed hat. The stares and comments when I've played it in public (a couple of times now) are wonderful.
You aren't kidding! Looking over the posts on this website, there seem to be equal amounts of practicality and originality at work. How many times has someone mentioned "the standard cocktail set" and had others say "there ain't no such thing!" You're a prime example - the new additions to your Slingerland set add all the functionality of a Club Jordan. And they're probably less costly as well.
Does the set still hold its balance well? That seems to be an issue with the Zen of an all in one drum. It's cool the way you've solved the dilemma.
Great work on the kit! I would love to hear how your Snongo (Snare/Bongo) sounds. Very well done. Is there a way to turn the snare off or is it permanently attached? I am still trying to find one of those Toca mini-timbales or snare/tamborines to check out.
I'm still looking for one of those toca timbale snares too! My son has a 'long' remo handdrum (about the diameter of the larger remo bongo, but about 18" tall) which he's kinda outgrown...maybe he'll retire it/donate it to my experiments with a permanent internal snare like the one Robert's done here with his Snongo.
BTW I've done a fixed 6" snare fan inside a 13" timbale and it sounded very powerful. but I'd kinda like the smaller version....
Robert, you've done a great job on your kit - I bet it sounds serious.
Hey John. The "Snongo" (great name! That'll be its permanent name from now on) didn't come out quite as hefty sounding as I had hoped. Mild "fizz" instead of a powerful crack. Still pretty good for a small snare though. Could I send you an mp3 track of it? I'm working on some kind of throw-off, not sure I could fir a Gibraltar muffler bracket inside.
Multiperc-I'm interested in how your son's rum would sound with a snare - bet it would be a nice cross between a full snare and a slightly smaller unit and would set nicely on the floor.
Hey Robert
Thanks for the link - those are da ones! I'll see if they have them in stock....
I tried the snare fan inside this long remo handdrum and though I didn't permanently attach it, the resulting sound was not so great. I was hoping for the throaty sound of an octoban with a snare snap, but the fixed head is tuned too low for this to happen. These things are designed to approximate the organic sound of a similar sized 'real' percussion instrument (as you know from your snongo) and this drum is just a bit too low pitched and slow responding to work as a snare...
The search is on for some cool 'snare-y' alternatives. I've been using a brazilan tamborim clamped to my popcorn snare and is amazing for a mini-picolo-sopranino snare/timbale sound. But, I may pick up a pair of remo kid's bongos and if the tension seems right (probably on the smaller drum) i'll try a small snare fan.
On another note, as I was working on rivetizing a couple of smaller cymbals (see related post elsewhere here) I added a djembe slap-rattler (sorry I don't know it's traditional name) to my cocktail drum. This thing is about the size of a pingpong paddle and has about 20 keyring-sized rings attached over it's surface. On a djembe you can use it to create a snare-y type backbeat noise when wedged in the tension cables or lugs. On the cocktail drum, it's stupid simple: place it on the top head and it adds a trashy, but earthy rattle to both the kick and top heads. Great ethnic flavor for those opportunities. I'm sure something like this is easy to put together or simulate for some extra exotic cocktail drum flavor.
