Full Review: Loyal Drumsticks, M1 and Mason models

Loyal Drums, long known for fine rope drums hand crafted in the USA, has recently released two models of drumsticks in hickory. I took delivery on one pair of each model and hung out with them here at home.

The Brendan Mason signature model was designed in collaboration with Brendan Mason, a champion rudimental drummer, arranger and instructor in the ancient/rope style. It’s a big, bold stick that’s ideal for rope drumming. In fact, small hands may struggle to maintain proper control of these sticks. My hands, although larger for a woman, found it difficult to play with these for more than ten minutes after a good warmup.the tips are somewhat pedestaled, though not sharply, and I’d consider the taper to be moderate. They’re well balanced, and even at the relatively light weight of 84 grams they have an authoritative feel. Because of my arthritis and smaller hands, I may reserve these for “good” days as a slow warmup stick.

The M1 model has the same butt diameter and a moderate taper that narrows just a little more than the Mason model, with slightly larger tips. My pair weighed in at 82 grams and I found these easier and more comfortable to play for a longer period after warmup. They’re also well-balanced, and are recommended by Loyal as an ideal rudimental stick that’s especially good for those who use the Moeller technique of playing. With a proper warmup, I find these sticks comfortable for regular practice.

Both models are made from hickory. The finish is good, though not quite as fine as that found on, say, Cooperman hickory sticks. The grain is straight and the sticks are matched and packaged in pairs.

The sticks can be ordered in a range of gram weights from the high 70s/low 80s up into the upper 90s (per stick).

Photos and videos below.

Photos showing the grain, and a chunk of wood knocked out of the butt end of one of the sticks (perhaps during shipping?).

Here are a couple of videos demonstrating first the Brendan Mason, and then the M1 sticks.

Loyal hickory sticks retail for $38 a pair plus postage and can be ordered from the Loyal web site.

Spolier Alert? PadParts.com coming soon

Bradley Lomax, the brains and brawn behind Beetle Percussion, is launching a new enterprise called PadParts. After years of  talking with folks who make their own practice pads, or who would like to, Bradley is preparing to set up a supply house that will make various parts of a practice pad -- baseplates in solid wood and MDF, various playing surfaces from recycled tire and gum rubber, in different thicknesses and more -- available for purchase so anyone can make their own practice pads at home.

[Disclaimer: I'm one of the folks he's been having conversations with, because as regular readers here know I've made a ton of practice pads at home. I am not being paid to endorse the site or any of its products, but now that it's happening I can talk about it.]

The actual web site isn't live yet, but here are some sneak peeks from the Instagram page.

As you can see, multiple options will abound for anyone wanting to make their own practice pad. Included at the upcoming site will be suggestions for adapting these designs to include materials you may already have on hand.

Obviously, there is not a little controversy around this project, at least where mass producers of commercial practice pads are concerned. After all, why pay a hundred bucks for one of their pads when you can make something very similar in form and function yourself for a fraction of that?

Any large-scale commercial pad maker may cry foul if they feel like their designs are copied too closely; but in a time when the whole concept of design and intellectual property is being challenged legally and technologically every day, I think that ship has sailed.

Even as I type, someone on eBay is selling the top rubber part of an old Cappella practice pad with the wry tag, "IYKYK" in the listing title. I think they're asking too much money, but whatever.

And if you're feeling really inspired, there's also a listing for a homemade pad that is shaped exactly like the Capella, so if you really want to get wacky, you can buy both items and glue the Cappella rubber to the underside of the complete pad.

Make a statement. Go crazy.

An added benefit of making your own pads is that you can learn a lot more about what works and what doesn't, using your own experience to inform your choice of materials and construction; and I think you might be more likely to use a pad you've successfully made yourself.

Since Beetle Percussion began as a way to make drum practice products more sustainably, I feel this falls in line with their existing modus operandi.

Personally, I hope it's a successful venture. I think the whole world of mass-produced practice pads -- especially marching-specific pads -- has gotten overhyped, overpriced and way out of hand. In a time when climate change from increased industrial output has become, as the kids say, a thing and consumerism is out of control, I think a return to homemade pads is a good thing. I'm glad to see that I'm not alone in that opinion.

Happy chopping.

Drumming is good for you. Here’s proof.

During the Covid pandemic, I lived with roughly 3 years of forced inactivity, brought on mostly by the onset of Long Covid and the time I spent too weak to do anything after I developed it. That resulted in high blood pressure, increased depression and other issues. It took time to sort all the pieces, and longer still to figure out how to begin recovery, especially because trying to do too much too fast could be dangerous for my heart and lungs.

Now that I’m past the worst of it, I’ve begun moving again. Not a lot, and not all day every day, but enough that I’m beginning to see a difference in how I feel. I’m sleeping better most nights, and my blood pressure seems to be falling a bit. Arthritis is still an issue, and so is my gut; but I can walk mostly in a straight line now, and I have fewer moments of dizziness.

Today I went outside and played. Demonstration below, followed by a full circle round the block at something like 100-110 bpm. It felt okay.

The plate that holds the practice pad is made of metal, and it’s heavy. Still, even with a pad sitting on in it’s lighter than a drum, and my back is getting used to the weight. At some point, perhaps in a few weeks, I might try carrying a drum with a sling and leg rest and see how it feels. 

Of course, at some point it will get too cold and wet to do this outside every day, but that’s eight to twelve weeks off at least.

I’ll still want to fiddle with the carrier a bit, but it’s reasonably dialed in for my purposes for the time being.

Future Vintage? Hot Sticks “Bully” marching sticks, circa 1980-84

Once upon a time, there was a company called Hot Sticks. Founded in Mississippi in 1979, their painted drum sticks made a splash among younger drummers through the early 1990s. Then business fell off, and the company closed for awhile in 2018. They resurfaced in 2022, and now offer painted and imprinted drum sticks, pens and baseball bats.

I remember these showing up in my high school band room around my junior year. A couple of freshman drummers had bought them at our local music store. They were purple and red and they didn’t really impress me. By then, though, I’d been introduced to much better sticks and I guess that made me something of a drum snob. To be fair, no one in my college or professional ensembles used them, so I felt somewhat vindicated. 

I was never able to determine if the company ever made its own drum sticks. I suspect that they probably did not. It was too easy, even back then, to job out the drum sticks from another maker and paint and imprint them in-house.

For a few years Hot Sticks followed the new marching percussion craze and tried to make their entry into the market with the Bully sticks. They were painted white (to avoid having to tape them) and were meant to compete with Promark and other companies.

The sticks were not anything special, even for the time. CB700, Fibes and other companies also had their sticks made elsewhere and branded accordingly. But based on what I could research, the Billy sticks we only offered for a few years, and then quietly discontinued before 1990. Since most marching sticks were destroyed through use, surviving pairs are harder to find.

So I scored these on eBay. They’re in good shape, though they’re certainly not pitch-matched. (Almost no mass-produced sticks were back then.) They’re a great example of how a company used appearances to sell a sub-optimal product, and for that alone they make a nice addition to my collection of vintage marching sticks.

Vintage Corner: my oldest sticks

I’m more into pads than sticks, but I do have a number of really cool sets in my collection.

Here are the two oldest sets I own:

1. Ludwig & Ludwig 5S, early 1920s. These came in a large pile of various used sticks, and they weren’t even why I bought the lot, but they turned out to be the nicest find. The 5S size was made by Ludwig up through perhaps 1923 or 24. By 1927, the stick shape still appeared in the catalog but the number and other markings had been whited out in the illustration, which likely means the size had been discontinued by then. I found documentation in a 1922 catalog.

The stick shape is very stout until you get to the end of the taper, and then it narrows down considerably before ending in a sizable tip. The 5S size was likely a “junior” sized marching stick for smaller, younger hands.

The sticks are hickory and are not cracked (amazing for sticks this old), and they feel quite nice. I only use them very occasionally on my Ludwig tunable pad and nowhere else. 

2. George Stone ”Master” model #11 sticks, circa 1925. These were made by George Lawrence Stone’s workshop, and are even rarer than the Ludwig sticks. George Lawrence Stone (who wrote the seminal “Stick Control,” which is still in print today and still used by millions of drum students) inherited the workshop from his father, George B. Stone, and continued to make sticks and drums through the mid 1930s. By 1938, the workshop was closed down due to flagging sales, and to divert more resources to the drum school, which was quite successful at the time. Thanks to Ting at King Louie Music, I was able to confirm that these sticks appeared in Stone’s 1925 catalog. They’re unusual, very old and very rare. They’re also in good used condition for their age, with no cracks or gouges, and they’re also hickory. I’m told that the odd taper was not uncommon for sticks of this era. These were designed for concert band use.

Again, because these are so rare, they’ll mostly hang on my wall display rack and I will only bring them down on extremely rare occasions to tap on my old Ludwig pad.

As I said earlier, vintage pads have long been more my thing than sticks. Pads are still easier to find, even with the increased hype of the last few years, and they tend to last a lot longer than sticks, which were made to be used, broken and replaced often. Still, when the opportunity arises, I won’t turn down a pair of cool, old sticks.

Happy drumming.

Pad carrier, redux

During the pandemic, I cobbled together a practice pad carrier, and used it to help with my lockdown boredom. I didn’t know that I’d gotten Long Covid at the time, and I ended up only being able to use it for a few months before becoming too ill to walk in a straight line.

I ended up selling the carrier with a marching drum, and the scrap wood for the platform eventually ended up being broken down and used for other projects.

But I missed having it. So when someone listed a pad platform for sale in Marketplace, I kept an eye on it. A year later, he still hadn’t sold it, and was now offering it for free. I arranged to pick it up from him on my way to the Hillsboro drum corps show, then scored a cheap carrier that I adapted. Now that I’m recovering from the worst of the LC symptoms, I’m ready to get back to chopping and walking at the same time as part of my physical therapy.

It’s not the most comfortable carrier, but for a total cost of ten bucks for both it’s more than adequate.

Tama True Touch snare drum practice pad

I scored this at a thrift store. They didn’t know what they had, and I paid far less than retail for it.

The original Tama True Touch snare drum practice pad comes with a fine mesh head and a quiet snare sound cartridge that is sealed inside a chamber. It can’t really be removed or adjusted. As it comes out of the box, it has a distinct feel and sound.

When this pad came out several years ago, I felt it was slightly overpriced for its design. I mentally filed it away and mostly forgot about it.

Then, Rick Dior tossed up a video on YouTube in which he took apart the True Touch pad and reassembled it using thicker inner foam and a regular Mylar head, and the difference was noticeable.

So when I found this for sale, I decided to buy it and see if I could make the same modifications and get a better pad out of it.

I couldn’t take this pad apart before buying it, but at a price of less than a quarter of new I figured it was worth the cost of the experiment — especially since it already came with a Mylar replacement head.

I took it home and took it apart. The foam insert was missing, and in its place the previous owner had put a folded black washcloth, which barely muted the pad at all. So I cut out two pieces of material, one from a yoga mat and the other from a thicker, firmer ensolite camping pad, stacked them on top of each other, replaced the head and reassembled it.

Interestingly, the snare sound was barely perceptible when I tested the pad before my modifications, and disappeared almost entirely when I reassembled the pad. But the feel was greatly improved, and I don’t miss the snare sound at all.

I’m not entirely thrilled with the tone of the pad, and I suspect that may have something to do with the head. I will likely swap in a Remo Ambassador had and see how things improve. I’ll probably experiment with a couple of different inserts too, before settling on a combination that makes me happy.

The pad is heavy, owing in large part to its metal and rubber construction. There’s no discernible difference on the platform or on a drum stand, and that may also be due to the weight. I like it and will hang out with it awhile.