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Canopus NV60-M1 Kit
Canopus NV60-M1 Kit Canopus is a name you may have heard of if you’re in Europe, but may not have actually ever seen and this is pretty much the case for us in the UK. If you’re in the US and have been paying attention, then you probably would have seen some Canopus drums at some point. The company itself has been around for some time and is probably best known for the Zelkova snare drum, a drum made from a hollowed out log. Anyway, on to the drums… To quote the Canopus website; "Supreme Vintage Sound by State-of-the-art Technology - In recent years. a return to vintage musical instruments is a universal tide in all genre of music. To respond to this tend. CANOPUS presents our NEO-Vintage series. We have thoroughly studied the construction and tone of vintage drums and revitalized them with our contemporary technique. The first step is NV60-MI. adopting a combination of poplar and maple in 7-ply (TT/FT) and in 10-ply (BD). We analyzed the shell specification of the drums which were dominant in the jazz world in the1960''s. NV60-M1 will make a "weathered sound" from the beginning. We adopted the edge shaping from those days and adopted the die-cast hoop for the tom tom and floor tom for the first time in our commercially available models. Drummers will feel the core of the drum sound in high pitch tuning. CANOPUS'' high precision manufacturing techniques overcame the shortcomings of vintage drums. such as individual variability and fickleness. NEO-Vintage is the perfectly modern musical instrument that can make the vintage sound. Only CANOPUS can make such a supreme sound because we have been dealing with vintage drums since our establishment." The review kit was actually a hire kit from a London backline supplier and came with 10x8, 12x8 mounted toms (with RIMS mounts and tom holder as standard), 16x16 floor tom, a drilled 22x14 bass drum and a matching 14x5" snare drum in a pure white pearl finish. As noted above, the shells were maple and poplar ply and had small single lugs. |
Although I was given two mounted toms with the kit, I only used the 12" drum and mounted it in a snare stand: this wasn’t a reflection on the hardware, just a personal preference. Having said that, I did try the tom holder first and it worked just fine. How do they feel to play? I say ‘feel’ because I think in this case the term is just as much a physical thing as it is physiological. I don’t know whether or not the kit would ship with coated tom heads on both resonant and batter sides, but if they don’t, they should. I have a 1964 Slingerland kit set up this way and the Canopus drums felt very similar when I played them, in that they had a real vintage vibe to them. Note: Canopus have replied with this coment regarding the heads: "the standard specification of drum head is 'Coated Ambassador'" Set up the way they were, the toms were quite dry but were still resonant. They seemed to project well and were easy to tune. The bass drum was the shallowest kick I’ve played in a long time. While the 14" depth was popular some time ago, 16" and even more recently 18" depth drums have superseded this due to popular trends. Anyway, the 14" depth of this drum definitely fitted with the vibe of this kit both in sound and feel. The heads that came on the kit as supplied, which were both regular undamped heads - a coated batter and a plain black on the front with a hole, along with a pillow inside - worked well in providing a useable sound. However, I think if you had pre-damped heads on both sides, you would get a much rounder tone without the need for the pillow. Either way, the drum sounded fine set up as it was. Also available in the series, as you’ll see from the link above, are one other mounted tom, one other floor tom and two other sized bass drums. |
"A warm sound which blends into the tune and yet the beat has its presence. This is the debut of NEO-Vintage Snare Drum, NV60M1S-1455 which reproduced the ideal sound that many drummers searched in the vintage wooden snare shells. It has achieved perfect balance between the crusted but comfortable vintage sound of 60''s and deserves the sensitivity and playability of a snare drum of present day. This is a superb product that Canopus introduces with confidence." The drum came with diecast hoops, double-ended single brass node lugs and CPSL-14DR wires , something which could have a review in themselves as Canopus are well known for their snare wires. The heads were a single ply coated head on the batter side and a clear snare-side of the resonant side. While I didn’t have the opportunity to use the snare drum for very long - I actually used a Zelkova drum instead for the gig I did with the kit, a review of which will come later - I would say that it managed to do everything Canopus said that it would do and fit well within the context of the whole kit. This drum comes in 5 ½" and 6 ½" models. I enjoyed playing these drums. I enjoyed them because they sounded good, but more particularly because Canopus’ aim of producing a vintage sounding modern kit worked and they really did have a vintage vibe to them. They also looked fantastic - they actually fitted in perfectly with the décor in the rather upmarket hotel I was playing in - and I couldn’t see any problems with the manufacturing either. I understand that Canopus is going to be increasing its profile in the UK going forward and this has to be a good thing for everyone. Although the review set was a working hire kit, if all of the company’s drums are of this quality - both in sound and manufacture - then I’ll be looking forward to seeing them in my local shop. If you’ve always wanted a vintage kit for that particular sound and vibe, but have been put off by the sometimes flimsy hardware or what can be a rather hit or miss overall shell quality, then these drums seem to provide a real viable alternative. For more on Canopus and their drums - www.canopusdrums.com/en/index.html Thanks to John Henry’s (London) for their help with the review - www.johnhenrys.com David Bateman November 2009 |
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