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Liberty Drums
Liberty Drums Liberty Drums was a name that was new to me up until a few weeks before I got these drums to review. The company is based in the North East of England and has a mission ''to create quality drums for our customers instead of searching for customers for our products''. We were given a birch snare drum and MPX kit to look over and try. The kit As I mentioned, the kit was from the company’s MPX range and had hand crafted maple shells which are available in a choice of colours - Mahogany, Black, Jacobean Oak, Cherry, Red or Natural. The review drums themselves were finished in matt mahogany, with the bass drum having naturally finished hoops, and 50% offset lugs. All of the drums had sleek metal badges with the Liberty name on them which I thought looked quite nice. Liberty’s kits are available as shell packs in the following sizes - |
22x18" 5.5mm undrilled bass drum You can also ask for additional sized drums to go with the kit. The heads on the kit were clear Evans G1 resonant and G2 batter, while the bass drum had an EQ3 clear batter and black resonant head. According to Liberty - “Construction of the shells in this model are based on VSS Keller which enhances the integrity and strength of our drum shells. These shells use innovative adhesives enhanced with ''hollow spheres'' that permeate the wall of each shell causing regenerated vibrations (i.e more sustained sound) which elevates head response and increase drum performance thus providing more resonant tone qualities.” I love shallow toms and the two mounted drums exemplified why, the 12” particularly. Full sounding, fat and fast response are all qualities you get with drums of this size. If you haven’t tried toms with this depth, then you should. The floor toms were punchy, deep and resonant, and again, full sounding. If I had heard them without seeing them, I would have said they sounded one size bigger than they actually were (the 14“ sounding like a 16“, etc). |
As a player, I don’t generally play a lot of fills based around the toms, but having taken this kit out to gig with, I found myself actually wanting to play more toms throughout the night. The undrilled bass drum came across better - to my ears certainly - on the recording of the gig I did, rather than when I was playing it, but I’ll put that down to personal preference. However, that’s not to say I didn’t like it, it just wasn’t my thing and unfortunately, being late for the gig that night didn’t allow me the chance to experiment too much. The heads were pre-damped and the drum also had a light blanket rolled up inside. While it did provide a very recordable tight punch, I personally prefer something a little more full, but I think that is merely a head choice thing and wouldn’t be a reflection on the drum itself, especially with a thin shell. |
Snare drum This snare drum is part of Liberty Drums birch range which comes in 13" and 14" versions. Each drum is entirely made by hand in County Durham, UK and are fitted with quality parts and heads. The review drum was finished in natural birch with a lacquer gloss. It had a vertical ply shell inside and out - the vertical grain was very noticeable and caught my eye in that regard before I actually had the drum’s specs to hand - triple flange hoops (which are fitted as standard), ten double-ended chrome bridge snare lugs, a generic silent chrome throw off and die cast butt plate, generic snare wires and a deluxe air vent. The review drum came with an Evans EC Reverse Dot head batter and a Snare Side 300 Hazy. All of the metalwork was mounted on gaskets to isolate them from the shell. The bearing edges featured a double cut which brought them up to a fairly pronounced point and the snare bed, while quite wide, was tapered out and left the drum with no sensitivity issues. As you’ll see from the videos, the drum was quite bright with lots of ring to it. I couldn’t find any real issues with any of the drums, except a couple of very small cosmetic points on the inside of the snare, and the finish was commented on a lot by the band I was with. If you watch the video of the kit on the last link below, I will say that I don’t think the mic recording the sound really does the kit justice because there is much more depth than may be immediately apparent and with only a moderate tuning, the drums (the same kit as far as I am aware) sound great live. As I sit here now watching the video of me playing the kit, it’s obvious to me that I really was going out of my way at times to hit these drums more than I might ordinary have done. I think what that also says to me is that I found the kit to be inspiring and fun. Just on the basis of these drums, I’d say Liberty Drums has a bright future. Check them out.. For more - and for the snare drum - www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsXBF-r7A4E&feature=related For the kit, head over to - www.libertydrums.co.uk/drums/MPX/mpx.html David Bateman |
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