Spending time at Tim Northup’s Drums Museum is always fun. The vintage kits are all tuned and set up to play. Each kit brings out a different facet of my playing and I do my best to play in the style and era of the kit. Each solo was one take and improvised. These kits have calf heads and light “traps” that respond to an extremely light touch. You can see I am playing with no force, just drawing the tone out of the instruments.

The first kit in Part One is a 1930 Leedy kit that has an amazing snare drum with snares under the bottom head AND under the top head. You can hear the difference in sound when I turn on and off the top snares. The second piece is a snare solo on a brand-new drum made to replicate a rare vintage snare. It was made by a drum maker in Italy, Adrian Kirchler of AK Drums. The third solo is on a 1938 Slingerland Radio King “Gene Krupa” model kit. The kit sings!

Learn more: https://www.facebook.com/northupdrums/

- Steve Smith