Weird drums from the past (02)

Welcome to the second part of my "Weird drums from the past" section.
In the previous part I've been talking about North Drums and here I'll take care of another great brand of the past:

TRIXON DRUMS

Karl Weimer, founder of Trixon, started his own business in 1956 in Hamburg, Germany.
His company lived through the next two decades and achieved good popularity both in europe and the USA.
Trixon Drumsets, sold also under the "VOX" brand, had incredible endorsers such as Buddy Rich himself.
I think this brand deserves to be put in my "Weird drums from the past" section becouse of some incredible concepts Mr. Weimer developed, such as:

Telstar Conical shaped drums.
These drums were Weimer’s idea of compression and decompression. As opposed to cylindrical shaped shells of standard drum design, the Telstar Bass Drum with conical bore pushed the sound to the back of the room (similar to the subwoofers of today). While the reverse conical of the toms pushed sound out, which made for handsomely deep, rich sounding toms – especially from such a small drumset.

Speedfire Ellipsoid Bass Drum.
The premise behind the Speedfire was the idea of the “Two Different Bass Sounds from One Bass Shell.” Using two pedals (essence behind today’s double bass pedals), a player was able to get 2 sound pitches from the same drum. This idea further followed Weimer’s practical sense of getting a lot of sound out of a compact package.

Disappearing tom mount.
The disappearing tom mount, which had tubes penetrating both bass drum and tom toms, is the basis of Pearl mounting systems from the 80’s. The bass drum mounted disappearing cymbal stand with a rod passing through a clamped ball was resurrected by Sonor in the 90’s.

To gather more info about Trixon, please visit:
www.trixondrums.de

If interested in conical shaped drums:
www.daldossdrums.it

Weird drums from the past

In about a century of modern drum making many skilled craftsmen have dedicated their lives to the developing of the technical aspects of the instrument we play.
Until now, only minor changes (like double pedals and tom suspension systems to name a few) have been accepted by the drummers community and the drumsets have retained their usual basic structure.
During the past fifty years, some people and companies have tried to start a personal revolution in the concept of crafting their instruments.
In this section (Weird drums from the past) I'll try to dig out some information about these people and companies.

NORTH DRUMS

In the late 60's, Roger North was a professional drummer and graduate in structural engineering at MIT.
While he was playing his traditional drumsets he started thinking that the sound produced from his drums wasn't directing towards the audience, and the sound he heared from his stool simply wasn't the same sound heared by the audience. So, he started to feel the need of having a drum that could project it's sound towards the listener.
One of his first attempts was a lucky one, he built a fiberglass 12" tom tom shaped like a horn (see picture) that had an incredible volume and sounded lower and deeper than a regular 12" drum.
It was 1971 when he got his idea patented and started producing the first sets by hand from fiberglass, but it was in 1976 when the production moved to Music Technology incorporated, that could grant full-scale production with a high-pressure injection mold process.
Unfortunately, in the middle 80's, the advent of mass produced drums from the east set the end for this peculiar brand.
North drumsets where usually equipped with small diameter tom toms and had outstanding powerful and deep sound, so that they where weapon of choice for the hard rock drummers.

For more information and a wonderful image gallery check out: North Drums