A deeper dive into 2B: Vintage Promark oak sticks, 1970s-90s

The 2B sticks that Promark made from oak in the 1970s and 80s are near and dear to my heart. They’re balanced so well and feel so good in the hands!

Here’s a not-so-scientific chronology.

Top to bottom, first photo:

— Mid to late 1970s

— mid 1980s

— late 1980s to early 90s

There’s not a ton of difference between the first two pairs. The tip size and shape are nearly the same, and the neck just below the pedestaled tip is 7mm in diameter. The butt end is shaped differently between the gold band pair and the mid-80s pair.

By the time we get to the third pair, the sticks are a full 2mm longer and the neck just below the pedestal measures 3mm, with a tip that is larger as well.

The diameter of the straight part of the stick (before the taper) is 14mm on all three pairs.

I don’t know why the tips and the neck got larger in the late 80s. Either it was a deliberate change in that model’s design, or perhaps it was a way to simplify stick production by bringing multiple models (2B, Rock) to the same neck size. Possibly it could have been a response to the number of players who suggested a stouter diameter to reduce breakage? I have no way of knowing.

(I do know that by the early 2000s, the shape of the 2B sticks changed again. The pedestal disappeared, the taper became almost klunky and thicker and the tip got longer and more ovalized. I’m not a fan.)

I like to search for these older Promark sticks online and at yard and rummage sales, because in my opinion they're just so much nicer than the bland, straight sticks that Promark has been churning out since they were bought by D'Addario (which also owns Evans). 

I also have older Promark oak sticks in 1S, 2S and 3S, and while they're heavier, they are so nicely balanced that chopping with them is a delight.

Sadly, as with all vintage drums and accessories, the farther away we get from the date of production, the harder it is to find vintage items in playable condition that haven't been bought up by bigger and wealthier collectors. Time marches on.

My ongoing love affair with Vintage 2B sticks

I’ve loved 2B sticks for a long time.

Like most drummers, I started out with them. They provided more of a heft than 5A, the other standard size for young drummers, but were still silencer enough to serve as a good concert stick. In the 1940s and 50s, they also served as an alternative marching stick for the youngest drummers in school and community bands.

2B models from this era up through the early 1980s offered a medium to long taper and kept more weight at the butt end, which I still prefer. I’ve found that newer 2B sticks have tended towards a much shorter, less gradual taper and more weight towards the front end of the stick, which completely changes the balance and feel.

So over time, I’ve gathered older 2B sticks. I’ve used them in community bands and for pad chopping.

The nicest pairs live in this old Promark stick bag, from the late 1970s.

This isn’t the entire collection, which also includes some older Promark oak sticks from the late 1970s and early 80s that I use and enjoy often.

L-R: Jeff Rich vintage style, 2023; Fibes, 1970’s; Slingerland Haskell Harr, 1960s; Slingerland 2B standard, 1960s; Ludwig, 1970s; Ralston (possible Japanese stencil brand), 1960s; WFL, 1940s; Mercury US (stencil brand?), 1950s.

All but the Jeff Rich are made from hickory. I believe the Rich sticks were turned from bubinga or similar, heavier wood.

The tips here tend towards more of an elongated acorn shape, which would have been good for Rudimental and concert work, and would have forced the player to be consistent with stick angles when playing rolls.

It’s good to remember that in the 1950s and earlier, most Rudimental drumming happened on drums with wooden hoops, meaning that a rim shot wouldn’t have broken the stick as easily. Sticks from this era lasted longer as a result. If they were later used on metal hoops, their age and previous use may have meant they’d break more easily, making sticks from before the early 50s harder to find intact now.

Because sticks from this era were not matched for weight or pitch at the factory, drummers had to sort through a case of the same size and company to find pairs that would match. One of my fondest memories is of visiting Captain Whizeagles music store in downtown Portland when I was a middle schooler in the mid 1970s, and Fred and Toody Cole (the owners, and also founders of the seminal band Dead Moon) were happy to let me gently tap and roll sticks on their glass counter to sort out and rubber-band pairs, for myself and for the shop. If I sorted the whole lot, they’d give me a free pair, and then they’d mark up the rest because the matching had been done for the customer. Smart! 

I continue my search for older sets of 2B sticks. If you have any to rehome, reach out and let’s talk.

Happy drumming.

My favorite vintage sticks

Not boutique, but collectible.

I have always had a thing for vintage marching sticks from the 1920s through 1960s. (I went to high school in the 1970s, so calling the 1970s vintage is, well, a work in progress.)

Here’s the 3S sticks that I adore.

Top to bottom:

Slingerland maple, late 1970s

Slingerland, 1950s

Leedy 1950s (after Slingerland bought Leedy from Conn)

Ludwig, nylon tips, late 1970s

Ludwig wood tips, 1970s

Ludwig Burns Moore model, 1950s (after buying their name back from Conn)

Leedy & Ludwig, 1950s (when Conn merged the two companies, 2 prs)

WFL Burns Moore Model (Ludwig family owned company, started after Conn sued for the rights to use the family name)

Leedy, 1930s

These sticks came from a time when sticks were not pitch or weight-matched. Difference between sticks could be as much as 10 to 15 grams! If you were lucky, you could empty the entire slot of one model, roll on the counter for straightness and tap in the glass for pitch. Some shops wouldn’t let you do that and you were stuck with what they handed you. (By the time I was in high school, most shops would let you test and match sticks.)

These sticks tend to have more weight in the back half of the sticks, and a longer taper than found in modern marching sticks. Before the mid-1950s, most marching drums still used wooden hoops, which meant sticks lasted longer through rim shots and rim clicks. They also used calf heads, which were subject to the vagaries of temperature and humidity and forced drummers to “pull” their strokes up of the head, a very different technique than is called for on Kevlar heads.

Playing with these older stick designs feels so much better in my hands than the modern, forward-heavy sticks used today. While I continue to pare down some of my newer sticks, I'll hang onto these and enjoy them. You can often find these older sticks on eBay and other online sale platforms, but also check thrift shops and rummage sales.
Happy chopping.

Vintage Corner: Ludwig & Ludwig marching sticks, ca 1940s (??)

These heavy marching sticks were made by Ludwig & Ludwig sometime in the 1940s, possibly earlier (though I can't tell for sure).

From Wikipedia:
In the late 1920s, the company was sold to the C.G. Conn instrument company. William Ludwig stayed on to run the company for Conn (which also owned the Leedy Drum Co. at this time). Eventually, William Ludwig decided to leave Conn and start a new company of his own. He was unable to use the Ludwig name since that trademark now belonged to Conn who continued to market Ludwig & Ludwig drums.

In 1937, William bought a factory building and started The WFL Drum Company (his initials). The company continued producing drums at a small scale for the duration of World War II, but William got back to the idea of making the company a large drum manufacturer after the armistice. WFL was a competitor with Ludwig and Ludwig. Conn combined their two drum brands into one in the early 1950s, forming Leedy & Ludwig, and then decided to quit the drum business altogether. In 1955, William and his son Bill Jr. were able to buy the Ludwig trademark back from Conn, and over the next few years their company and its products transitioned from the WFL brand to being called "Ludwig" again.
My research indicates that these sticks had to be made before William Ludwig bought the rights to his name back from Conn; so these sticks were in fact made and sold by Conn under the Ludwig & Ludwig name. I think they date from the 1940s, but they could be older than that. More research is needed to be sure.

Marked as size 3S, a standard size for marching drums, they are not exactly the same diameter, but the wear pattern indicates they were sold and used as a pair. I suspect that the difference was in the turning during manufacture. It's significant enough to tell by feel in the hands, though interestingly, the weight feels about the same for both sticks.

I love the patina these sticks came with, indicating honest wear through use. And although they're big, they fit comfortably in my hands and play beautifully, with the tips still intact.
The wood is too dark to look like modern American hickory. In fact, they look like mahoghany in color and grain, but I don't know if that was an available choice for drumstick manufacture back then. I'll ask my brother-in-law, a woodworker, what he thinks they're made from.
These came in a box of vintage sticks I recently obtained. I'll share the other pairs as I research and photograph them.

vintage sticks: Hinger Touch-Tone, medium

When I was in college in the early 1980s, I came across a large lot of used drum and percussion parts, sticks and accessories at the downtown location of Captain Whizeagles, the music store where I'd bought my drumsticks since 6th grade. Whizeagles was closing its downtown location and moving out to somewhere in Clackamas, Oregon, far beyond the reach of public transit at the time. So I rushed to the shop to see if there would be any blowouts before it closed.

I found a pair of Hinger Touch-Tone snare drum sticks, size large for marching and rudimental use.
Made of hollow aluminum shafts, each stick also had small rubber sleeves which could be moved up and down along the sticks to change the balance and sound. I remember paying very little for the sticks -- they were useless for rock and roll playing -- and showed them to my drum instructor back on campus. He offered me many times what I'd paid for them, and since I was a broke college student who needed the money, I sold them.

Later on, of course, I wished I hadn't sold them. They were different and very cool.

So when I found another pair in the medium (concert) size at Revival Drum Shop, I had to have them. Fortunately, I had some trade on account and used that to purchase these.

The sticks themselves are nothing special to look at, other than the material. They're basically hollow aluminum rods with holes at each end, about the same length as a regular wooden drumstick.

These sticks did not have any rubber on them; I'd seen them with and without rubber weights, and I've even seen a pair with rubber handles at one end. (Fred Hinger, the designer of the sticks, meant for them to be played with matched grip.)

If I really want to experiment, I suppose I could find some super-skinny bicycle inner tubes and cut a few small sections off to approximate the same function.

Still, with or without weights, these things play an orchestral buzz roll that is so clean and beautiful it sounds like tissue paper being gently torn.

A bit about Fred Hinger the innovator, and his son Bill who took over the business and made further innovations, borrowed from the Olympic Drums web site:

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Through his entire career Fred Hinger was never satisfied with commercially produced percussion products and spent much time creating his own drumsticks and tympani mallets while he was in the Philadelphia Orchestra. He found that tympani handles made of bamboo produced a much larger sound than the traditional wood handles found on virtually all commercially produced tympani mallets. People started asking him to make the same mallets for them, and as time went on he started selling these hand sewn tympani mallets to students and other professionals.
In the early 1960’s, he began to experiment with other handle materials and found that an aluminum tubular handle would produce the same sound characteristics of the bamboo, but were much more consistent and could be duplicated much more easily.
As business picked up in the early 1960’s he registered the trademarks Hinger and Touch-Tone, which eventually became the company name.
When Bill Hinger  (Fred's son) joined the United States Army Band in Washington, D.C. in 1967, all tympani mallet production was moved to Alexandria, Virginia.  Bill became responsible for production of tympani mallets for the next three years. Fred focused on designing and building a concert snare drum from a solid metal shell that sounded incredibly crisp and clean. [Note: I had the pleasure of playing some college band concerts on my instructor's Hinger snare drum. It was a thing of beauty and one of the most incredible instruments I'd ever played.]
In 1969 Bill Hinger broached the idea of starting a company to make sticks, snare drums and tympani. In May 1970, Bill left the Army Band and moved back to New Jersey.
From that point forward, Bill was responsible for the design and production of all innovations and ideas generated by himself and his dad. 

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Fred Hinger sold the mallet side of his business and closed down the snare drum production side completely in the late 1980s. He died in 2001. Hinger snare drums remain highly sought after both as incredible instruments and as vintage collectibles.

Malletech now distributes Hinger products, including timpani and marimba mallets and the concert sized aluminum and maple snare drum sticks. They also offer a slider kit that may fit my concert sticks, but more research is needed before I buy a set.

Hinger sticks by Malletech are available from a few outlets, including Steve Weiss and Mostly Marimba.

Here's the maple version of the Hinger snare drum stick, available from Steve Weiss; maybe down the road I'll spring for a pair.
Even though it's basically the same shape as the aluminum version, being made of wood you could get away with an errant rim shot here or there. Even so, these are not sticks I'd want to use for anything other than concert playing.

I'm going to hang out with these on my concert snare drum over the next few weeks and see whether or not I want to bother with making or buying sliders.