Gewa G5 Studio 5 In mid-2017, I was in Germany at Gewa HQ and on the last day there, just before we were going to leave, we were shown a small black box which turned out to be an electronic drum module. At the time, I remember thinking it looking interesting, although I didn’t get
Gretsch Ash Soan Signature Snare Drum If you’ve not heard of Ash Soan at this point, you’re probably best off just staying under that rock you’ve been living under. There are many things about Ash that you could talk about - his playing, his feel, Instagram, his studio - but the thing I’ve always been
Matt Halpern Snare Drum Things I know about Matt Halpern: he plays with Periphery; he plays Meinl cymbals; he hits hard; and, having walked past him at a drum show once, he’s quite a lot bigger than me. I might watch what I say from here on in… Ok, so seriously, the one
Zildjian Raw Crashes I looked up the term ‘cymbal’ on Google and it said ‘a musical instrument consisting of a slightly concave round brass plate which is either struck against another one or struck with a stick to make a ringing or clashing sound.’ Ok, so it says round… Wikipedia’s opening line is, ‘A cymbal
Pearl Sensitone Heritage Snare Drums Well over a dozen years ago, I reviewed a bunch of Pearl’s Sensitone snare drums. I don’t remember which ones they were now, but I remember doing it and that I liked those drums and the overall concept of the Sensitone line, and while I never bought one it
Paiste Masters Thin Cymbals These are, in short, really nice cymbals. I thought I’d just get that out of the way first. Paiste’s Masters Thin cymbals are, as the name suggests, thin models but in [largely] bigger sizes, and that thin aspect is very apparent when you play them; even in the hihats. These cymbals tell
Vic Firth Rute-X ‘The feel and response of a drumstick with the volume control and alternative sounds of a rod product.’ I think if I could just leave the review at that sentiment from the Vic Firth website, I would. It pretty much says what you need to know really. I hate to think how
One of the several new products from Gretsch for 2021 - which seems strange to say in October 2021 - was the Gergo Borlai signature snare drum. The drum has a 14x4.25” 1.2mm sand blasted brass shell with 45’ bearing edges, eight small double-sided lugs, 40-strand snare wires and 4mm die cast hoops. You also get a Lightning
I’m sat here with what seems to be a riot shield in my hand. In all seriousness, obviously I know what it’s for and the type of thing you’d play on it. But, as someone who doesn’t really play percussion beyond a tambourine, it seems huge compared to the X-Click that I recently looked at
I’ve reviewed a fair amount of drum dampening products over the years. But, now I come to think of it, I don’t think I ever had much call for this sort of thing until more recently and I’m wondering whether that’s because I was better at tuning before - unlikely - or that I just
