Canopus Zelkova Snare

Canopus Zelkova Snare Drum

As I mentioned in my earlier review of their drum kit, Canopus is probably best known for the production of its one-piece snare drum, the Zelkova. In this case one-piece means one-piece because the shell is created from a hollowed out log and there are no seams anywhere which means the shell can resonate more fully.

I’m not going to go into too much depth about how the shell is made like I might normally because that’s detailed on the Canopus website - the link to which is below - and I’d encourage you to read it as it’s quite interesting in that respect. However, I will take the following from the Canopus website since it sums the basics -

“The Zelkova Snare Drum, which has a hollowed one piece drum shell, can be described as the purest form of the drum. Only one hollowed piece can be taken from a stump of precious 200 year old Zelkova wood, also called Akagi or "red wood". The sound that is produced from a single piece of wood has a unique and powerful attack. Each stroke produces a "block of sound" with a sharp edge and a thick low pitch, while maintaining the warmth of natural wood.”

The drum itself comes in 5” and 6 ½” sizes and the model I had to play with was the deeper version. Apart from the unique shell design, which is quite thick and slightly concave on the outside, each Zelkova comes with eight double-ended brass lugs and die cast hoops. The snare
mechanism is a fairly basic design and the wires are Canpous’ own CPSL-ZL14NP model. The shell only has a single air hole which has no grommet and the overall manufacturing of the drum was flawless from what I could see.

To play, the Zelkova did feel a little different from all of the more traditional one ply snares I own.

The drum came with a coated single ply head on top, with a clear snare side head. I tuned it with a fairly tight batter head and a slightly more loose bottom and it had a depth and body to the sound which was very pleasing whilst keeping the initial attack. The drum was sensitive across the head, and at all volumes, and I can confirm that the sound sample on the Canopus website is very close to what I had when I tried the review drum.

The Zelkova is a classic drum and was something I had wanted to try for a long time ever since I‘d first heard of them. It sounds great, is easy to play, has a unique look and offers something which most other drums can’t by its very nature. Whilst I don’t have a UK RRP at the time of writing, I can say that although the Zelkova isn’t cheap, it is far more reasonable in price than you may think.

For more info including a sound sample of the same size drum as the review model - http://www.canopusdrums.com/en/drumproducts/zelkova/snare/index.html

Thanks to John Henrys (London) for their help with the review - www.johnhenrys.com

David Bateman
November 2009