Certain wood species are similar to albino animals... Very hard to find before they get scooped up. Ambrosia maple is one of those species. We managed to get our hands on a sizable amount of this incredible Lumber to make instruments from, be sure to grab one up before they all get poached!
The figuring in this wood is caused by a fungus carried by the Ambrosia Beetle which penetrates the tree sap as the beetle eats into the tree. The cool thing about this is that this wood is not its own unique species, but rather the combination of a very specific sequence of events that take your average hard maple and turn it into this beautifully marbled wood. One of the benefits of this is that hard maple is already one of, if not the best tonewoods for building drums, Mother Nature just takes this usually boring and plain grain, and ads a little bit of visual texture.
To accentuate each segment of the drum, and Visually tied together the hardware and the shell, we added small splines of Gabon ebony between each segment of ambrosia maple. Ebony has a long history in the manufacturing of musical instruments, everything from piano keys to the horns of an oboe. It is a wonderful species for instrument building, and when coupled with the ambrosia maple the to make a wonderful sounding and looking drum.
This drum in these pictures is a 13 x 7 size, but if you decide to purchase this instrument today, we will be building it for you from scratch, feel free to let me know what size you may want.
The hardware on this drum is equally as classy to the Shell itself. We started with our signature hhg single-point lugs in Black nickel. Coupled with a smooth and classy inde strainer, diecast butt plate, diecast air vent, 2.3 mm triple flanged Hoops, diecast black nickel hhg badge, and 30 strand snare wires- the strum is an absolute Workhorse outfitted with top Quality Hardware that will serve you diligently for a lifetime.
We are very excited to be able to offer this drum to you, it is one of the coolest instruments we have built to date. Scoop One up while they last!