We've been making an effort lately to try and make some very selfish decisions. By that, I mean that we've been making drums to try and capture and aesthetic and sound that we love. Hopefully you like it too
The heart of this drum is its reclaimed maple stave shell. The maple lumber for this shell came from the interior window trim of an old carriage house that was getting demolished. The wood has a wonderful tight grain pattern indicative of old growth lumber. It also has some signs of its previous life, some sporadic worm holes in the grain.
The shell has been finished with a deep red satin stain, both inside and outside the shell.
Here's the details:
This drum features our proprietary HHG oil-rubbed bronze single point lugs. It has a vintage style P85 strainer, diecast air vent, and diecast buttplate. Every single piece of hardware that touches the shell has a hand cut, top-grain leather washer between it and the shell. This drum also features 42 strand snare wires.
We very much hope that you consider purchasing this instrument. It was an absolute labor of love building it... And we look very forward to it living its life in the hands of somebody that will put it to good use
- About internal tone control
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 the exact same maple board that was used to build the shell and hoops, and it bares 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.