CB700 snare drum: an underrated gem

Although I’ve pared down my drum holdings considerably, I still hold a place in my heart for CB700 drums from the late 1970s and early 1980s, the period of time when I was in high school. CB700 drums were a common fixture in many school band rooms back then, because they were solidly built and affordable by school districts. For awhile, CB700 drums and parts were made in the same factory as Pearl drums, but their manufacture jumped around a bit over several decades. The latest generation of CB drums were made in Taiwan, and then in China.

The CB700 drums came with beautiful lugs that came to be called “wristwatch” lugs for their shape. The center of the lug was finished with a shiny panel that came in silver, blue or red, with silver being the most commonly available. 

I acquired this CB700 snare drum a couple of years ago, put it in the closet and promised I’d get to work on cleaning it up. I finally pulled it out last month. I took it apart, tightened all the bolts, cleaned up the shell and the lugs and replaced the heads and snares. As I went around the lugs, I noticed that some of them were missing the polished aluminum dots. 

I reached out to a friend who’s a CB drum enthusiast and collector, and asked him where I might find some replacement dots.

He cheerfully replied that he’d be happy to send me some. He apparently knows how to cut them from aluminum sheeting, and polish them in the process so the polished side shines. He had a bunch and slipped some into an envelope. They arrived a few days ago, carefully wrapped in blue painters tape and sealed in a cardboard sleeve. He advised me to clearcoat the shiny side to protect them before installing them.

The weather here had been quite cold, so I thanked my friend and advised him I’d have to wait until it warmed up enough for the paint to dry.

Yesterday, the temperature warmed up to the high 50s, so I laid out the dots on the tape, sprayed a light clearcoat and let it dry overnight.

This morning, I applied the new dots to the bare lugs using a tiny drop of super glue for each one. They’re dry now, and the drum is complete. And beautiful.

Not bad for a drum that cost me twenty bucks.

Vintage Corner: the rabbit hole of CB700

I’ve always loved vintage drums, from the time I was in high school and understood that drums could last long enough to become vintage.

Of course, I couldn’t possibly afford to own anything really collectible, and the many rental addresses of my young adulthood didn’t provide enough security for me to trust keeping anything super-expensive and rare at home anyway. So I stick with practice pads — on those days, so wonky that hardly anyone collected them seriously — and a few treasured pairs of sticks and brushes.

I’d owned a couple of different sets that today would fetch respectable collector’s prices. Both were obtained cheaply when I was young. The first, a 1960s Pearl President, was my sixteenth birthday GIFT from my father. He bought it from a fellow instructor at Mt Hood Community College, who was storing it for a young man who never came home from Vietnam. He placed a call to the young man’s mother, who gave her blessing and told him to sell it cheaply to a student. So my dad paid a hundred bucks for everything, including hi-hat and crash cymbals. I played that kit through the end of high school and all the way through my junior year of college. Then I took a year off from school, moved downtown and stored my drums in the space above my Murphy bed. One day, I came home from my barista job to discover my apartment had been broken into. The thieves took my boom box, my cassette tapes, all my nice Oxford shirts, and my Pearl drumkit. I was heartbroken. They had kicked in the door, breaking the door jam and one of the hinges. The elderly manager was asleep in the basement and never heard a thing. The thieves had broken into several apartments this way, and there was nothing to be done.

A few years later, I had gone back to school, and moved into another, more secure apartment, and saved up my money and bought another kit, this one a Ludwig “Ringo Starr” model with a beautiful white marine finish. I used that kit for a few years in pit orchestras and as the drummer for a vocal jazz quartet, and loved playing it. Then, I lost my day job and had to sell my drums. I made twice what I’d paid for them, but I’ve never again owned that fancy a drumkit.

Fast forward to now, and the drum kit I play today. Since I’m not gigging, I’m content with a suitcase kick drum, a selection of snare drums and some cymbals. It fits in the corner of my studio, sounds good, and Sweetie doesn’t mind when I want to play indoors most days.

But I still have the vintage itch.

I decide that I’m going to focus on vintage models from a budget brand, so I won’t have to invest as much money. CB700 drums were part of my school days, and an easy choice for where to start.

CB700 was originally the company Carl Bruno & Sons, operating in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century. Bruno eventually sold his company and it ended up with Kaman, which also owned other instrument companies. Kaman shortened the name to CB Drums, and had them made at factories throughout Southeast Asia in the 1960s through 80s (including, for a time, by Pearl drums). I played CB700 drums in middle and high school, and thought they were fine as long as they were maintained. 

Today the CB brand is gone. But the drums made in Taiwan are decent-sounding drums for a very affordable price, and they are just starting to get the attention of collectors, mostly people who grew up playing them like me. I figured if I could get in on the ground floor of that notice, I could acquire a few useful drums and call it good, before prices go up.

My first CB700 drum came last year, a wooden shell snare drum that was dirty but in great shape. I paid fifteen bucks for it at a thrift store, brought it home, tuned it up and loved it. It sounds warm and full and I do a lot of brush work on it.

My most recent CB700 arrived this week, a metal shell snare drum that I scored online. It was in much nicer condition and cost more, but still less than a hundred dollars with a padded case and shipping. What’s interesting about this drum is that it was powder coated with aluminum over a steel shell, giving it a lively sound that comes close to that of a much more expensive vintage snare, the Ludwig Acrolite. The Acrolite has a full aluminum shell, so it’s lightweight and very bright and crisp. This CB700 drum sounds like a wet Acrolite, and cost me a fifth of the average price.

I cleaned it up — it didn’t need much — and put it through its paces today. I’m very pleased with the sound and response, and am happy to have it in my very little snare drum collection.

(There is one more CB700 drum on its way to me, a 13” brass shell snare that will make a great piccolo snare and complete the stable of snare drum sounds I want at hand. Stay tuned.)

Some CB700 info — If you have more specifics, please share.

More recent CB700 history: https://killerdrumrigs.com/what-were-cb700-drums/

The Original C. Bruno & Sons, late 19th century: http://ia600205.us.archive.org/5/items/illustratedcatal00cbru/illustratedcatal00cbru.pdf

New Drum Day: 1960's Kent snare drum

I hadn't planned on getting another snare drum.

I already had two snare drums for use with my mini-kit, and a couple of marching snare drums that I'd planned on keeping for fun. I certainly didn't need this drum. 

But it was simple, lightweight and vintage -- and it came with a padded case, which I knew I'd need for gigging with the mini-kit. The total cost was a steal, and if I didn't likle the drum I could sell it for more than I'd paid.

I'm not sure I'll sell it, though. 

It's a lovely snare drum, with a wood shell, stick chopper rims, and single tension. The seller told me it was a Kent, a decent budget brand of its time, though the soundhole badge had been removed.
I paid less than a hundred bucks for it and once I tuned it up it sounded fine. I'll hang out with it for awhile and see what I think in a month or so.

Little Bitty Drumkit -- Part Two

I picked up this snare drum three years ago at a yard sale for ten bucks.

It's an older CB700 wood drum with eight lugs, and sounds a lot nicer than it ought to.

CB700 was the budget brand for Pearl for many years. I used their sticks in middle and high school, and at least one of my high school band's snares looked very much like this one. There's no easy way to trace the serial number -- these things were cranked out by the thousands -- but based on the font I can guess that it's at least 25-30 years old.

The sound is fine, especially with brushes or lighter sticks, and eight lugs give me a winder tuning range than the six often found on cheaper drums. I haven't done much more than wipe it down and tune it up, and it's great.

I scored the Yamaha drum stand for free on my local Buy Nothing network, as part of a drum kit giveaway.

Amazing what you can find out there if you just pay attention.

Vintage corner: my newest project, updating a vintage snare drum for modern use.

I scored this drum from a Reverb seller for the very reasonable sum of $145.

The drum was made in the 1940s by Leedy and Strupe, under the auspices of the Indiana Drum Company, for Sears and Roebuck to sell in their catalog under the model name Drum Master (did you get all that?).

Here’s a little more history for ya.

The drum has some interesting bits for an American-made drum, especially the tuning bolts (slotted instead of square) and the snare throw-off mechanism, which appears fussy and over-engineered for what it’s being asked to do.

The incorporation of the snare bed holes into the wooden hoop is a nice touch, and I was glad to find this drum with the wooden hoops intact and in good repair. They won’t last forever, but they’re solid for now.

I plan to take the drum to Revival Drum Shop this weekend and get some more insight into its design. My original goal was to clean it and set it up as my personal snare drum, because the 14” x 7” depth makes it great for that use. Only six lugs means I can’t tune it very high, but I don’t think that’s a problem for my  purposes. The slotted, oversized heads may require me to change the tuning bolts to newer, standard square heads, but I think I can keep the beautiful old lugs. The throw-off is incomplete, and may have to be upgraded to something more standardized because, according to a friend, this is made delicately and tends to break down. 

Stay tuned, this is going to be an interesting little adventure.

UPDATE: since I don’t own really nice tools, I decided to let the guys a Revival update my drum a bit, by replacing the tuning bolts with square-headed ones and installing a more sensible throw-off. They left everything else alone, and I’m told the drum sounds great. With my in-store credit my cost will be quite affordable and I will have a splendid drum to play.

 

Vintage Corner: Slingerland drum UPDATE 3

Yesterday and today, I hurled some love at the rims and the shell.

The drum came to me last summer in pretty bad shape. After careful cleaning, the rims shows fatigue in several spots and the shell had been gouged pretty badly in a couple of spots. I had to decide how much time and effort I wanted to invest, and wheter of not it was worth it.

In the end, I chose a compromise.

Since the shell and rims were still pretty nicely round, I decided to honor the "beausage" (literally, "beauty through usage") the drum had acquired over the decades. After repairing the worst of the cracks (which I did with R's help), I decided I would lightly sand some of the roughest spots, leave the old varnish on everything else, and cover the sanded spots with some clear nail polish. It's not what a real woddworker would do, but I'm not a woodworker and decided that the drum looked more beautiful with its war wounds. (I certainly didn't want to cover the beautiful wood with colored paint! And I couldn't justify the cost of NOS wood hoops for a drum so beat up.)

The rim repair that Ron had helped me with has held nicely, supported by the pieces of bicycle spoke I inserted. All that remained was selective sanding and varnishing with clear nail polish.

The batter rim was marked with spots where the hooks had gathered rust underneath, which had soaked into the wood. Sanding would remove more wood before it removed the rust stains, so I sanded lightly and then varnished with nail polish.

 

The shell posed another aesthetic challenge because a previous owner had gouged it, maybe with a belt buckle while marching.
The gouging had worn through multiple layers of the ply, and while there's still plenty of wood there, filling the depression with wood putty would have been more of a headache than I was prepared for. (I just have a little Tuff-Shed where I fix bikes. Not roomy or fancy.) So I sanded the area lightly to smooth it out a little, cleaned it, and then applied more nail polish.

The nice thing about nail polish is that it fills the grain nicely, and dries quickly between coats

The other thing about mahogany is how it shines when the light catches the grain, even when it's been banged up.

The shell just glows, in a way it didn't when I first got this drum.

That's why I chose to let the drum keep its patina, earned through a hundred performances and a thousand rehearsals, played by any number of hands.

This one's a keeper, and I can't wait until tomorrow to sling it up and try it out.

Video coming soon.
Below: Before, and after.

Drum love, community and patience

(At left: my very last pair of marching sticks from HS, circa fall 1980. CB700, model 3S. These sticks are forty years old and still feel great.)

In 1997 I was knee-deep in the world of percussion education and performance.
I taught marching percussion and movement at three Portland-area high schools, ran a small studio where I gave private lessons to kids and played three nights a week in a jazz combo. I also played pit percussion for two of the three major theater companies in town during the summer season.
Then it all packed up and left town.
On the way home one evening, I rode my bike past a parked truck when the drivers' side door swung open quickly and without warning, right into me. I caught the end of the door with my right hand, which bounced in and out of the latch, and then I slammed hard sideways into the pavement. Two bicyclists right behind me swerved wildly to avoid missing the spot where I'd fallen. One stayed and offered help. The driver of the truck was mortified; she made me lie still, kept me calm, and gave the ambulance driver and police her information while they dressed my wounds and decided I could get away with calling a cab to go to the hospital (I couldn't afford the ambulance ride).

Two surgeries and a year of physical therapy later, my right hand was put back together as well as possible. I could grip a wrench well enough to stay employed at my bike shop day job, and I could, with time play a passable snare drum roll. However, French grip timpani and four-in-hand keyboard mallets were gone forever, as I had lost access to the muscles in my right pinky and just below that in my right hand. That meant no more concert percussion and no more pit orchestra work, which was the primary source of my musical income. I was forced to close down my little drum studio and shad to sell my marimba to pay my bills. With the assistance of a lawyer, I eventually accepted a settlement from the driver's insurance company that covered the replacement of my totaled bicycle, all of my medical expenses and a fair chunk left over for "pain and suffering" and the loss of my  concert percussion career.

I spent the next ten years getting involved in synagogue music and eventually rebuilt myself as a singer-songwriter. Between 1999 and 2019, I enjoyed a small but growing career as a songwriter, cantorial soloist and Jewish educator. I made wonderful friends in my new sphere and grew a great deal as a musician and a human being.

And I never stopped loving drums and percussion. After a long stretch of not touching any drums (and wincing whenever I passed a marimba in a music store), I found my way back to drumming with an old practice pad and some sticks I'd kept. After six months of careful, patient practice, I'd regained the ability to play most of the rudiments I'd learned as a kid, plus a few more I hadn't gotten around to learning when the timpani bug bit. I began acquiring practice pads, to test and try and figure out which ones worked best for me. I started researching the history of practice pad development in the twentieth century, and began collecting vintage pads and sticks.

I continued to pursue drumming as a hobby while I toured, occasionally buying vintage sticks while on tour and bringing a practice pad along so I could chill out between shows.

I was on the verge of a very big breakthrough in my little Jewish music scene when COVID came along and brought it all to a screeching, painful halt.

Since last March, my travels as a touring Jewish artist have stopped cold. I've had a couple of online engagements but nothing solid or long-term. With the shutdown of my songwriting gigs came a wave of deep depression and self-doubt that has lasted, frankly, for months on end.

But all the free time of unemployment gave me time and space to dive deep into drumming, and to find myself musically in other ways.  Today, thanks in large part to the miracle of the internet, I've become part of a wonderful online community of drummers, our friendships based on mutual respect and a shared love of drums and percussion. It has been, and continues to be, a wonderful journey.

My friends in the Jewish music world may be wondering why I can't seem top pick up my guitar right now, but many have been surprised at discovering this other music side of me (through videos I've shared online), and have remained encouraging. Be patient with yourself, they've said. You'll come back to it when the time is right. I hope they're right about that.

Meanwhile, I am deeply grateful for the friends I've made in Drumland, and I want to thank a few of them here for their encouragement, acceptance and welcome.
In no particular order:

Joseph Coleman
Mary Gromko Murray
Jose Medeles and all the gang at Revival Drum Shop

James Travers and everyone at Rhythm Traders
Kevin Donka
Rene van Haaren
Don Stewart
Kevin Lehman and his amazing Wilcoxon Rudimental Challenge
Scott Brown at Flam7Percussion
René Ormae-Jarmer
Don Worth
Brian Wilemon, Jennifer Honnoll Wilemon and Bay Ratz Marching Battery
Unpresidented Brass Band

I'm sure I will fail to mention at least half a dozen other names here but they're all part of a wonderful drum rediscovery and I am grateful for every single one of them.

And I would be a complete dork and total loser if I did not thank the one who has been my biggest supporter through all of this weird and crazy time -- my Sweetie, Liz, with whom I will soon celebrate 20 years of US-ness and who may not have had any idea of what she was getting into when we started out.
I wasn't really a drummer at that point and when it all came back to me, it all came in for the first time for her. Lesser beloveds might have run screaming from the room, but she simply asked me to play on rubber pads behind a closed door.

I don't know what my return to the singer-songwriter thing will look like when we all get through this COVID mess, or even how much of that I will do going forward. It's impossible for me to know right now.
But I DO know that I will never stop being a musician, no matter what I use to explore sound with. And today, while everything remains terribly uncertain, that is one good thing I can be certain of, and deeply grateful for.

Happy Drumming.

Below: Evidence of participation. Gresham HS Band, Fall 1977. I am directly in front of the guy in the middle column with the saxophone neck strap on. You can only see half my face but that's me carrying a single tenor drum and loving every single note of the experience. (I also adored that uniform, right down to the overlay and spats.)
Someday I'd love to find photos of my brief time marching in Spartans Drum Corps [Vancouver WA, spring and summer1978] -- if you've got anything showing ME carrying timpani or bells, please let me know. Super-extra bonus points if you can tell me where to score one of those funky, black short slant-top shakos. Thanks.