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04/26/2005 Entry: "Continued Custom Drum Madness"

Man, things are weird for me in the custom drum world. It started with my Bearing Edge snare, Wellman. It was supposed to be ready in 4 weeks. It took 14.

Then came the Joyous Lake purpleheart snare that I ordered last June. It was supposed to be done late August/early September of last year. I'm still waiting...

Then Paul Mason came out with his quarterly clearance list. Paul's a cool guy, and he builds Tempus drums. They're made out of either carbon fiber or fiberglass. When he makes a drum, he makes these long cylinders. He then cuts the length the customer wants. But in the end, he's still got the other part of the cylinder left. So he sells them as plain shells to drum builders who put their own hardware on. When the list came out, there was a 7.5" X 13" dark bronze glitter carbon fiber shell. So I ordered it. And then I went and ordered 8 satin chrome lugs to put on it.

Then the trouble started.

Paul was in the midst of moving his entire manufacturing plant. And in the confusion, he sold the dark bronze glitter shell to three people! Too bad he only had one! So Paul agreed he'd build me another one, just like the one he had advertised. I, not wanting to put him out at all, decided I'd pick something else of the list.

So while I was contemplating that, I thought I'd find a supplier for some satin chrome hoops. More bad news. Only DW carries 13" satin hoops, and they take six lugs. (I ordered 8, remember.) Pearl and DW carry 14" satin hoops, and Tama carries satin nickel hoops, but they all take 10 lugs. Crap. So if I wanted satin, I'd have to order two more lugs (about $20), or have two left over. And, since I ordered the lugs to fit a 7.5" deep drum, I needed to order a shell that was deep.

So, I ended up ordering 8" X 14" gunmetal blue sparkle. (Described by Paul as "Superman's hair color.") I'll put 8 chrome lugs on it, with chrome hoops. I already have one 8 hole diecast hoop at home, so I'll probably use that. And chrome parts are much easier to come by than satin chrome/nickel, so things will just all around be easier. And I could really use something easy around now!