Vintage corner: Ludwig model 337 Tenor mallets

In seventh grade, I got a timpani solo on a piece our middle school band was playing. It required the use of very hard wooden mallets. The only pair the school owned was a pair of combo tenor mallets, with a hard felt ball on one end and a long, olive-shaped wooden head on the other. They were odd-looking and I never forgot them.

Recently I came across this NOS pair of Ludwig tenor mallets from the 1970s, and in truth the only reason I bought them was that the wooden head was the exact same size and shape as my old middle school mallets.
Only these mallets were shorter -- only 13 inches long! -- and had the classic knurled Ludwig rubber-wrapped handle on the other end. (I loved the feel of that knurled rubber when I was a kid.)

They're very light in weight, and their short length means they're not going to give you a ton of volume. But they were designed for old-fashioned single tenor drums, where the volume came from the low tuning as much as how you played them.

They're also very, very short. Below is a photo of one of the mallets alongside one of my modern snare drum sticks (Vic Firth Jeff Queen signature model, for anyone who's curious).

Holding them is a revelation. I probably haven't used a stick or mallet this short since, well, middle school. My hands were smaller back then.















Just for fun, I tried them out on a few different pads. Right off the bat, let me say that these are useless on a rubber pad. The bounce just isn't there, owing to the length and weight (or lack thereof).

But play them on an old-fashioned Remo tuneable pad, and they respond a lot closer to the way you'd expect them to on, well, a regular drum head. Here's a sample.

I think it would be fun to try these out on my band-mate's little tenor trio, a kid-sized set he bought to save weight on his back during our community performances. Though if I'm not careful, he might make me an offer for them...