HHG Drums 13x8 Maple Stave Snare, Satin Sunburst Lacquer

We wanted to make a drum that had some nods to vintage aesthetics, while still maintaining a bit of a sexy factor. This is what we came up with.

We started with one of our handmade, high-quality Maple Stave shells. Made from only the best hand-selected hardwood lumber. There are no plies at all here, this drum is made from solid real wood.

Maple is always an excellent choice for musical instruments, it's an incredibly stable wood, and as we all know, maple has been used heavily in some of the best and most celebrated drums to date. Maple provides a warm, woody tone. It does really well in low and medium tunings, has a fat wet buttery feel to it... An excellent back beat machine. And tuned up high it becomes bright, articulate and crispy.

The shell is approximately 3/8" thick, enough mass for a powerful and punchy attack, but thin enough to allow for warm, woody undertones, and a buttery smooth stick-feel.

The bearing edges are an inner cut 45-degree chamfer, and the outer cut is a smooth quarter inch roundover. The round over allows for excellent shell to head contact, as well as a nice warm, fat, round tone. Where the two cuts meet there is a mildly sharp apex that allows for just the right amount of pleasant overtones, and crispy articulation.

The finish on this drum  was something we've been wanting to do for a while, a classic Sunburst finish. It's a wink at all of the beautiful guitars and drum sets of the 70's  that were made with this finish.  It's a dark jet black at the edges, which fade nicely into the black nickel hoops, the center is of vibrant  yellow tone, that fades through brown and red before reaching  the black . The shell is finished on the entire inside of the drum and on the edges with our house-blended mix of waxes and oils.

This drum features a fairly deep and wide snare bed. this snare bed should prevent all unwanted snare buzz and give the snare wires a nice cushy pillow to sink down into the snare side head.

Now let's talk Hardware...

This as 3.5 inch  black nickel over brass tube lugs, vintage style strainer and diecast buttplate,  2.3 mm triple flanged hoops ,  a diecast air vent ,  and an antique silver diecast HHG badge.  This drum also features 40 strand snare wires.

A special feature.....

You may or may not have encountered a drum with internal tone control or internal dampening before. I have fond memories of an old 60s Supraphonic snare that I had that featured this mechanism.

If you know what I'm talking about, Skip this paragraph. Basically, internal tone control is a small mechanism on the inside of the drum that consists of a piece of spring steel, and a circular felt dampening pad. An operation knob is placed on the outside of the drum, this knob turns a threaded Rod which moves the felt dampening pad on or off of the batter head, effectively muffling or dampening the drum to the desired amount.

The problem with old internal dampening mechanisms was that they had a couple of small details that were overlooked, these small details turned the majority of the drum world against these simple and genius little devices.

We have done our best to reimagine and improve upon the design of our predecessors, and have reintroduced this feature on all HHG drums including this one.

You'll notice a small wooden knob above the air vent on this drum, the knob is made from classy American walnut, and it bears the HHG initials engraved in it. This wood knob is the operation knob for the internal tone control. By turning it clockwise you advance the large felt dampening pad toward the head. The knob has a positive stop so that you can only back the dampening pad so far away from the head before it stops. This way, you are always only about a quarter of an inch away from a dampened snare drum head.

The way I personally like to use the dampening system is to hold a drumstick in one hand, making repeated strokes on the drum at a medium to low volume, while slowly turning the dampening knob, I use my ears to listen to the drum and as the dampening is slowly applied.... this allows you to find The Sweet Spot or you have just the right amount of dampening applied without choking the batter head.

I'm sorry that I had to write a small book about this drum. It just felt appropriate. Anyways, if you made it this far congratulations to you... And I very much hope that you consider purchasing this instrument. It was an absolute labor of love building it... And I look very forward to it living its life in the hands of somebody that will put it to good use.

 As with all of our drums and listings shown, when you place an order with HHG Drums, your new instrument will be hand-crafted in house, from scratch. The drum shown in the pictures was built for a customer, and now resides with them.