The Official Drum Thread

Clicked the video and I'm like, man, that seems awfully familiar.

Yeah, Chad Smith uses one...

Just picked up a 70's era (I think, it's a teal/olive badge; will try to date it later) Ludwig Acrolite (14"x5"). It was some lady on Facebook who listed them for her dad. I asked if maybe we could meet in a neutral public location but he said come by his house in case I wanted to look at any of the other ones listed (the picture his daughter posted had like 30+ in giant racks). I felt a bit weirded out by it, but said fuck it.

No one answered the door, so I texted him and he opened the garage door. Seemed like a nice old man, and then he closed the garage door. Uh, what?

Holy shit, I'm so glad I went in person. Turns out the guy is 70 and has been drumming for 57 years. He built a studio in his house (through his garage door) and had probably 80+ snares. Dude just loves talking about drums. We talked for like 30 minutes and I kind of forgot my wife and dogs were in the car waiting, cause I was just going to bang on a couple and buy one. He played me some of his most recent band, which sounded very Led Zeppelin inspired (to which he replied, yeah, that's what we all grew up listening to...and uh, what the fuck, man, it dawned on me that people who grew up on Zeppelin are now 60-70+). He started giving me all kinds of drum tips. He showed off a bunch of his super rare drums. Even though I came for an Acrolite (he had 2, plus a black galaxy), he wanted me to hear the bell brass and aluminum drums. He played the kit he records with (a Gretsch maple) which sounded fucking amazing.

At a certain point, he mentioned that he used to teach but hasn't in a while. He offered to give me drum lessons if I wanted them, and I'm super tempted to take him up on it. Hell, I might just pay to hang out in his studio and just talk drums. I ended up having to get the wife to go check it out, and he was cool to let the dogs come in too. I don't want to call it a museum, but it's probably more than you'd find in most drum stores.

Anyway, did a quick 30 minute practice with it just now when we got home and it sounds so good. It's amazing what a difference it made. It's actually easier to play than my cheap shit starter set snare, it sounds significantly better. I imagine tuning it will also be easy. Oh, it's even got the original Ludwig silver dot head on it, barely played.

There were 3 racks of snares like this just of the ones he was selling (he wanted to get rid of them so his daughter doesn't have to try to sell them all when he dies). Then he had another rack of the ones he plays, and then just fucking drums everywhere. Those racks all have a plastic shield on them he made so they don't get dusty. Dude took serious care of this collection.