The $8,000 Snare Drum Alex Van Halen LOVES

you ever seen Alex Van Halen's eight thousand dollar piece of wood welcome back to another episode or whatever the heck this show is Timmy and the drum basement today we're looking at a time of rw256 this is an all Rosewood snare uh made in about 79 or 80 you can tell because of the lugs here these are the original time lugs you'd find on the old Imperial Star kits which are sleeper kits you should try to find those drums because they're usually cheap and they sound freaking great uh but this drum here really really cool drum and model it's X Van Halen Halen uh on the records fair warning moving on forward into the 90s so a lot of the Big Van Halen hits you're going to hear this sound on sort of that hollowy type of tone it's it's muted but in a way that the the tone Still Remains Airy that's the best way I can describe it is Airy what's interesting about this drum that you're not gonna find on anything else well the biggest thing here is the the Rosewood shell obviously it's a hardwood uh kind of like Oak but to me again it retains this Airy quality uh you can't really I've never heard a shell that sounds quite like this to the to the ear uh but what is shared with other vintage drums out there is this sort of extended wire system so the wires go over and across the shell uh and across the head past the head so it's a little different than the way you know typically on a drum the snares just sit on the head they don't go past the head they sit right on it uh I don't like system like systems like this you know Ludwig had the uh super sensitive there was a uh I forget what the name was but slingerlin had one sonar famously had a lot of those and so did uh Pearl extended wire systems throw off you got ta really some gates and all sorts of other stuff and you got to get everything set up just right for these snares to sit on here which is in my opinion it's not fun it takes away from the actual drumming uh it's just trying to take care of something like this but helps create this unique tone that you get out of the drum this drum also has Die Cast Hoops on here which are much heavier than what I prefer you know Die Cast is it's heavy it's straight up typically it's made out of zinc sometimes you'll get other materials but zinc is usually the main newer type that you're going to find I you know it's like Gretch Gretch really did that die cast hoop thing I don't know it creates a tone but for me uh triple flange Hoops are way easier to tune with uh they produce a tone to me that's more Musical that sounds in my head more like a drum uh so I tend to prefer triple flange Hoops but again it's these Die Cast Hoops that help produce that tone that Alex Van Halen love the tone that is signature to this particular drum and because of that tone and because of that lineage of these this sort of rumor that Alex played it they're worth a ton of money I I said in the beginning of the video this is a eight thousand dollar piece of wood now I I don't know that this particular one's worth eight grand but there's one on eBay uh as of now that the dude's asking 8 000 bucks for uh the reissues if they did a 40th anniversary reissue I believe that's treated at about nine hundred dollars uh these a few years ago were only selling for about 12 50 1500 but it looks like now they're regularly these drums this particular drum the six and a half inch depth model is selling for like twenty two hundred dollars or more crazy to think that applied drum is selling for that much but hey you know what that's live welcome so I'm gonna play this in a metal context to kind of give you an idea of you know what it sounds like how you get that Alex Van Halen type of tone and then I'm going to show you what it doesn't sound like uh or I guess what it sounds like in not a metal context because this is a pretty versatile drum sound wise um to get the Alex tone you gotta engage this really cool muffler so the muffler twists to turn it on and off and then on the top there's another dial to adjust your tension uh really really interesting system and that I think is is again key to getting the tone here heads on this drum I think are going to help too we got a vintage Ambassador coated on top which is what came with vintage Ambassador snare side original wires this is going to be as close to uh a Van Halen tone as you're gonna get or the van the setup that Alex was probably using back then so let's give it a rip let's see what this little puppy does [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] I mean that muted tone is super cool undeniably cool uh is it something I would use every day no but if you're playing jazz I could really see that being a usable tone and honestly this could be a really useful orchestral drum too because of how dry you can make this drum sound um now when you open it up you can get some rock tones out of it you can get some more modern universally usable tones out of this drum so I'm going to show you what that sounds like now and uh you can judge for yourself let me know what you think I think it's a cool drum would I own one personally no I can't afford something like this and B it's uh you know it takes a special person to care for something like this and to make sure that it will work for another shoot how old are we now we're talking another 45 50 years [Music] um but you know what I'm really happy that we got to take a peek at it today because Wendy when else are you going to get an opportunity to hear a drum like this [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign this is not a bad sounding drum I think this is a pretty good sounding little drum here you know you can open it up take that muffler off you can you can get a wide open tone especially with uh you know lighter heads on here it's got the Ambassador on it so you can tune it up tune it down get a lot of different sounds out of it and you know to try to complement this well I used a few different pieces here I got my classic Maple kit instead of some vintage drums and then what I did this is a downbeat kit ninety percent of the time you're gonna see me playing a 20 inch bass drum a 12 inch Tom and a 14 inch floor tom but because I use uh I switched out the uv2 heads on top and I have reso 7s on the bottom switch those out for the Evans Onyx top and bottom and it makes these little Tom sound big so I can get that sort of big rock hard rock heavy metal type of tone out of itty bitty drums uh symbols you know again Turkish Turkish symbols these things are really really neat 15-inch Millennium hats 20 inch uh brilliant meta crash 22-inch Millennium ride and this time I'm using a 24 inch uh super light and warbly sort of dry symbol it's a 24 the big boy and uh you know thanks again to Turkish symbols USA for borrowing me this drum this is a wonderful little snare drum uh again not something I would own because I can't afford it but I'm so fortunate to to be able to show you guys what what the heck this thing is Alex Van Halen obviously loved it so much that when he was the Ludwig endorser he was still using this on the Van Halen records and the rumor is is that Ludwig went so far as to recreate this snare they made this snare uh Rosewood ply drum with their Hardware on it for Alex I'd like to know whatever happened to that Drummond if he ever did wind up using it in the studio but cool snare drum if you know any more info on this than I do I would love love to hear it put it down in the comments uh subscribe like the video and uh food question of the day what's your favorite fast food french fry because if you want if you like a crispy snare drum I know you like a crispy fry for me I like a little seasoning Popeyes best fries hands down you get that with a Strawberry Fanta you're gonna live life all right well thanks for stopping by we're gonna do another drum video soon and I hope to see you then all right bye guys

Channel: Timbo From Keno

Views: 8,213

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Id: u1PfFjIPvD0

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023