 Welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I'm very happy to welcome back to the show Rob Cook. Rob, welcome to the show. Good to hear from you, Bart. Looking forward to this. Yeah, you're kind of our expert on many different things. But I should say you've been in the drum industry since the late 70s. You're the owner of ReBeats, which you have authored and published many great history books for drums and you also run and operate the Chicago drum show. So you are kind of the drum gooery with a godfather. I try. Part of it is just being alive this long. If you're in the industry for 30, 40 years, you become one of the old experts. And if you don't talk too loudly, you can just pretend to be a sage old master. You are a sage old master. So today's topic though is really interesting because I think there's going to be a mix of people who were talking about the PV radio pro drums, which super unique drums. I don't know minus what we've talked about a little bit. I try to selectively not learn too much beforehand, but these are really unique looking drums. When I think of them, I think of the drummer for Eve Six playing them growing up. And I should have looked up his name and info, but there's just like those ads are in my mind. But before we start, let me pause and say just to everyone listening, if I sound different, I have just moved into a new house. So I am sitting in kind of an open, empty extra bedroom right now with all of my gear on a desk surrounded by packing, you know, boxes. And I've got a packing blanket kind of teepied in front of me to try and help with reverb. But so if I sound different or if you hear different noises or dog barking, kind of stuff, bear with me. So anyway, all that being said, Rob, why don't we jump right in and you explain your involvement with these super interesting PV drums? Well, is it okay if we jump back and start with the first generation PV drums? Yes, I didn't mean to miss speak. Yes, start us just when did how did PV get involved in drums in the beginning? Well, I want I want to try to put it in context for folks so they understand how important this this was an important part of my life back in the day. But I started in business, not to tell my whole life story, but in 72. And there was a small Christian bookstore that had a few musical accessories and so on a history in town of providing a few instruments and, you know, picks and strings and ukuleles, etc. I grew out of that to music stores cooks music stores in Elma and Mount Pleasant, Michigan, towns of 10,000 and 20,000. And pretty much from nothing grew these two stores, we also had two Christian bookstores ultimately in two different locations aside from the music stores. But these music stores were what they called combo shops in the day, they weren't full line full line being orchestral instruments and organs and pianos and all that. But combo shops were how we're really hot in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and in the United States. And that was guitars, amps, drums, PA gear. I was particularly interested in and most qualified in the areas of PA gear and drums. So, and remember, you know, 70s, 80s, there was no internet, there were no box stores. Musicians went to music stores to get everything from drum sticks to drum lessons. The rumors find out who was in what local band, etc. You can kind of get a feel for that at the Facebook page, which has been set up for cooks music. It set that up a few years ago. And, and just, you know, it hasn't been in business for over a decade now, even under another name. I sold it 95. But still, there's a lot of interest because a lot of people, you know, local musicians in central Michigan kind of grew up there. So we built it up and started getting franchises. And the way it always worked with the bigger the name brand, the more sophisticated of an arrangement it was. But generally, it meant a regional sales rep from the company would come in, look over your facilities, see if, you know, it made sense for them to sell to you and take pictures of your storefront. So they weren't, they could show the head office, they weren't setting up some guy in his basement or garage, it was going to upset the apple cart in the region and all that. So we had franchises, and we're dealing with Ludwig, Rogers, Slingerlin, Pearl, Gibson, Fender, Marshall, Evie, JBL, Yamaha. We had a lot of good names. And those anyhow, PD started to eat our lunch in the probably mid to late 70s. And it became an increasingly important franchise to try to get. And as it turned out, they had multiple franchises because they had multiple product lines. So you could be a PV dealer for guitar amps and not be able to get their PA gear, etc. So I had customers that wanted a Marshall stack and get some less pulled and a couple of twin reverbs. But the reality of their budget made them go to my competitor, the closest PV dealer was like 40 miles away. And they could buy a whole stage full of gear for what, you know, I was going to charge them for a couple of amps. It was just crazy. A twin reverb was what, maybe $500 in a PV classic, $212 is maybe $200 bucks or something. So I became a PV dealer and we had separate franchises for the online Mount Pleasant stores and different products. And I should mention that trans shipping was strictly forbidden. It wasn't like we could sell something that was franchised for one store in the other store, or even have them pay for it in one store pick up in the other, or sell to a non franchise dealer. That was a huge no no. If a PV dealer even from another part of the state called and said, I need this power amp, but I'm not set up for it. Can you sell me one? You could lose your franchise. They really kept track of this. And we got set up with PV and it was incredible. I mean, anybody familiar with retail would know what I mean by turnover, how often your inventory turns over in the year. And a lot for a lot of hard goods retailers, you know, maybe two or three times is considered really good for a small town music store with some some outsized lines like Altec and Electrovoice and JBL and so on. It was a little bit more of a challenge. So more of a challenge to get to the two time term. PV was easily a six or eight time turn. We sold PV stuff as quick as we could get it in. And PV was selling everything that they made and we're in a backorder status. It was it was like Ludwig was in the post Ringo days, the first surge 24 seven shipping everything they could make. One thing that they implemented about this time since everybody was trying for more product was a scheduled order plan. So the the rep would work with the regional PV rep would work with the owner and myself and we would order six months worth of everything. We'd go through their whole product schedule all the lines we were franchise for and every product in every line and try to anticipate how many we were going to be selling over the next six months and month by month. And that would all be put on order. So so then the plan was all this stuff is on order. Just tons of equipment. And month by month you would contact the rep or the factory and say okay here's what I want to discontinue. I want to cancel. Don't send me this and this and this. But everything else had already been on order and was built into their production schedule. So it did help at the beginning. Every month we got a printout that was you know the old tractor feed printers these long combined multi-page printouts that were maybe an inch and a half fixed hundreds of pages. So we're set up with PV. One of the things they did also was a big NAMM pre-show get together for PV dealers only and it was a huge PV pep rally. Hartley and Malia would come out then and pretty much convey that it was our patriotic duty to buy everything from PV and not very much from other people. One of his lines I'm not picking on him. The guy is brilliant and I want to encourage people to go to the PV website and there's a tab to click on documents or white papers and there's a first person history of PV going way back and the guy was a genius and he built a mega empire. I can't say enough about what PV accomplished. And that's Hartley PV obviously correct. Yeah PV electronics and just PV.com. So they would have these big pep rallies and talk about how a lot of his competitors were run by corporate sugar daddies but with PV you were looking at PV when you looked at Hartley and Malia. And that's why their stuff was so much cheaper because they didn't have to pay the corporate sugar daddies you know their corporate bonuses and stock be concerned with stock prices and all of that. Another thing he really hit hard on was made in America. I mean he built all this stuff in meridian Mississippi with local labor and everything was American made and it was kind of our duty to you know support an independent company and the American workforce. Another thing they did they had training facilities. They were very concerned that their PA gear and guitar amps and that sort of all the electronics that we understood the liability laws how to properly operate the gear. They had a huge training facility in meridian and at various times sent two managers down for a week at a time to kind of be indoctrinated in proper operation and safe operation. So that was PV. The long about january or june of 84 there was a pre-show at an AM show and I couldn't believe it because I hadn't heard any mention of drums and PV in the same sentence period but when we filed into this auditorium there on the stage were a couple of PV drum sets along with a bunch of other stuff and it was kind of strange that they didn't say anything about it most of the day. They kind of said yeah we'll be talking about these these drums and they didn't spend very much time on it. For me I was practically wetting my pants waiting to hear the details of who made these drums and where are they making them in meridian and how much are they because everything else PV was legendarily the cheapest in the industry and a lot of the other companies were on the rocks at this point. I mean this was 1984 and I double checked to see where everybody was in 84 and if you think of the collapse of the American drum industry as a giant multi-car car wreck the tires started squealing in maybe 81 you know and Bill Ludwig was feeling it and it sold Ludwig to Selmer in about 81 and Slingerland started to slide. Rogers was having problems well by 84 that was the year that Selmer gave up on the Damon Avenue Ludwig location all together moved things to North Carolina but at least they kept going. Slingerland in 84 was being forced out of their Niles factory and moving their distribution to Algonquin which was not really a facility and they were pretty much on the rocks. Rogers in 84 issued a memo advising dealers that all of their XPA shell production was being curtailed they were regrouping and they had just pulled out of their their venture into Mexico where the series 2 was made and everything so all of the giants as far as American drum companies were really on the rocks at this point. And it would be Japan who's coming in and taking over right? Yeah yeah Pearl was doing great, Yamaha was doing great, Tama was doing great. So that and I was at that time I was having the same availability problems as everybody else dealing with Rogers and Ludwig and Slingerland and I had joined that trend. I was doing Yamaha and Pearl later on Tama. So that was the trend at the time in 84 when this pre-show showed the PV drums. So they didn't say much about them in the pre-show there was not much detail they just said talk to your rep about you know getting signed up for these it's a separate franchise. So when I did the sit-down at the PV booth I ordered in and I think it was maybe six drum sets and 24 pieces of hardware which to me at the time sounded like an awful lot but it also sounded like the golden ticket. They looked great and there was very little detail they did have a flyer and it says that they're six ply all maple shells eight ply in the base drum. What really startled me was the castings the the bass drum kettle and the hi-hat had the PV logo cast right into it. Obviously a lot of thinking had gone into it this wasn't a private label thing these were this was a whole new drum line not a big drum line they were like two kits and only two colors you could get them in black or white and then that was it. But still the pricing brought them in cheap and I could just I had visions of these bands coming in that would buy three and four PV amps now they were going to be buying you know PV drums. So I got them all on order and they showed up on the the backorder reports that started coming in monthly for a couple of months and then they disappeared I mean everything all the hardware I mean it'd been three or four pages out of this printout there was all drum stuff just with the because of all the different product numbers and all the hardware and everything and it was all gone no trace of it and I called the rep to see if something had gone wrong with their computer or something hadn't been announced or whatever and he didn't have too much to say he said that basically there wasn't enough interest at the show there wasn't enough interest shown so they decided not to do it and I I just hung up the phone thinking this isn't right something's way wrong you to have those castings made I knew was expensive I didn't know how much because I wasn't in manufacturing but this was a whole new world of drums and that that as quickly as it appeared it disappeared before we keep going let me ask you this are these they're not the famous like radial series that that has the you know otherworldly look to them at this point right this is a series one that is more of just like a regular old yep look drum set right yep yep they just look like like a new pearl or yana or something a whole new new holders and everything but but kind of box like tuning lugs that looked kind of generic but people can take a look at them I did come up with a that piece of literature that they distributed at that show and Tommy Winkler is still around and and ends up he was the guy that developed those and he sent me some pictures of them but there are pictures at the uh rebates site uh people go there and and click on the podcasts and interviews by rob cook and it'll take it or and take it to the page at the rebates site that has links to all of the drum history podcasts that I've done and also link to some pictures of the the pv drums great we'll link that in the notes for the show so people can get to that page quickly cool okay okay so yeah then then what let's keep going from there um well uh that was kind of the end of the story for a few years remember that was 80 84 so probably by the end of 1984 the drums had disappeared from the backorder reports and the only word uh was uh pv changed their mind and decided not not to get into the drum business so they they simply disappeared from the backorder reports and nothing more was said about pv and drums uh along about six years later around 91 or 92 I happened to meet a guy named Tommy Winkler in Nashville and the the topic of pv drums came up and he said uh well that was me and he he explained that the the whole pv drum thing all of that stuff I saw on the stage all the castings the drums themselves the everything shown in the literature had been manufactured by Tommy he had set up a company called the Tommy Winkler drum company and he had an agreement uh with Hartley pv and the agreement specified that Tommy would design and manufacture these drums and drum sets and ship them from his facility in Nashville where he did the manufacturing on behalf of pv he was is basically a company whose only customer would be pv pv would rep would present them to in the marketplace sell them they would be shipped from Tommy um and that was the arrangement uh and so they got all geared up uh introduced them at the show and according to Tommy immediately after that show where I placed that that order which for me was a huge order uh then Hartley came to Tommy and said it's just not going to work for me to do it the way we had agreed upon there was a purchase order in place he had he had assigned purchase order to Tommy Winkler for the purchase of these drums but he said I'm I don't want to do that what I want to do is have you move to Meridian Mississippi and we will set up your manufacturing in a pv building and you will be a pv employee but in complete control of the drum division and you will be paid a royalty based on the sales of the drums well Tommy Tommy didn't want to do that and he told me further that he knew of some other folks who had done similar things like with the Black Widow speakers and so on where somebody comes up with an idea they're developing it as a company Hartley would kind of buy out their company and pay that person to run it for him basically as a division of pv so neither Hartley nor Tommy were flexible at all Tommy didn't want to move to Meridian Mississippi from Nashville and he didn't want to you know take apart all of his manufacturing facility and reassemble it somewhere it it was just a non-starter for him and it was just as much of a non-starter for Hartley Hartley didn't want to budge that was the only way he said that he would go forward yeah well uh so they they pretty much uh it was a standoff and pv simply decided they weren't going to do it at all took it off the backorder reports and walked away from the deal uh along about this time carl dustman had landed uh in on the Nashville scene he had been with Ludwig running the education department for over 12 years and left after it became a division of Selma and they kind of changed direction so uh carl was in uh Nashville working for gretch uh same kind of position this was the generation of gretch when it was owned by charlie rye charlie rye had started had already been running custom in shanute kansas when he acquired uh gretch from Baldwin and he moved himself and custom all to to the Nashville area and hired carl dustman to be the marketing manager well uh tommy and carl were friends tommy winkler and carl dustman uh carl had borrowed a vintage gretch drum from tommy to appear on their photograph of their uh big foldout catalog that they produced about that time 83 84 and so on so tommy turned to carl for help uh asked him if he had any advice because he was leveraged man he had he had mortgaged his house leveraged every every dime he could come up with to get the loan secured to set up this manufacturing uh facility that was going to be able to make drums on a scale but he knew pv was going to be able to to ship them so then he was covering all of this stuff himself like he said mortgaging his house knowing that he had this purchase order from heartly pv which then got pulled out from underneath him obviously because he didn't want to do that deal where he got brought to you know Mississippi and all that wow right so so he really was feeling like the rug had been pulled out from under him and and the banks were coming after him and he was getting pretty desperate so carl started kind of consulting with him on on the side or actually this might have been about when uh bald one repossessed uh uh gretch from charlie roy and then sold it to fred gretch and and carl may have already left gretch because it got sold to fred gretch anyhow carl was in Nashville and did some consulting for tommy they made him a little seven page proposal on maybe how to form a new tommy winkwood drum company and presented in the marketplace but that called for an investment of even more cash so it was kind of going in the wrong direction there but but something that that carl did offer to to work with him on was a as an effort to salvage the deal and knowing that conway twitty was a personal friend of heartly pv and also an endorser of pv gear and was a friend of tommy uh carl talked to to conway twitty and his uh business partner hugh cardin and they came up with a plan to all go to meridian to talk to heartly so tommy winkler conway twitty conways business manager hugh cardin and carl dustman all get on conway twitty's personal learjet and they fly to meridian mississippi uh heartly picks them up at the airport they go right to the heartly headquarters and they meet in the in the big pv conference room and nothing came at that meeting heartly just remained adamant that he did not want to move forward with drum product at that time now in that meeting there was no mention of the option of making tommy a division of pv or anything heartly just took the position from the get go as soon as all these guys got seated that he just plain changed his mind he didn't want to get into the drum business and that was it he felt no responsibility for uh not any financial or legal responsibility to tommy for uh you know the purchase order he he just wondered out of it um it turns out that conway had also invested with um tommy and and at that point conway offered to put more money in another hundred thousand dollars if they could keep this deal on track and float it because he was going to lose money otherwise and he kind of felt that maybe on the strength of their personal relationship that that would help push heartly over the edge but uh it it didn't uh the four of them got back on uh conway twitties private plane and went back to nashville and that was pretty much the end of the story uh the winkler drum company uh was sold off the banks came there was a bankruptcy the tooling and the hardware the office equipment the bookshelves everything went at a big auction now uh there's there's much more to the tommy winkler story but that's for another day and you might want to talk to him he's a very interesting guy and genio and he's got a lot of drum adventures to tell you about but that that was a sad chapter yeah and before we move on i think most people over you know i mean i know who he is obviously but but just so people know conway twitty is a very famous like uh country singer um and that's why he has his own jet and everything but maybe people under you know 20 something don't know who he is very famous really great country singer um obviously a businessman as well but uh god before we move on to part two of this it's just interesting of uh i mean heartly pv sounds like like it's a little bit kind of like oh boy that's really kind of crappy to do to tommy but he's also a businessman and had a gut feeling of like he went with his gut it's his business you know so you're kind of torn on what do you think is right or wrong you know who's right i mean he obviously maybe could have stuck with the the you know the correct the purchase order but um something told him to not do it so that's kind of a interesting position to be in it it is uh but um you can look at it a couple of different ways and i i'm not going to be judgmental but of course but tommy certainly feels judgmental and he feels that he was set up from the beginning and that uh he didn't want to become a pv employee but that was the end game all along and it kind of bitting so yeah well we you know without speculating or saying one thing you know right or wrong we'll let people decide on their own but yeah well it does it dovetails in a very interesting way to the next story that we're gonna get into um should we hear yeah let's let's move forward but so what year so all of this started in kind of 84 as we said with you know the the analogy of the tires falling off in 81 and then so pv starts this idea in 84 when did it fully you're on a sad plane back you know to nashville with conway twitty when did they when did that when did it part one end that was in january of 1985 oh wow so this is about a year yeah within a year they introduced them at that namsho i believe in june of 1984 and by january of 1985 was that plane ride uh to try to salvage the deal she's i don't know when the auction was for sure but it was probably by march of 85 okay so all right then it's dead in the water at that point obviously there's a part two so what happens from there oh man uh this was interesting i felt like forrest gump being in the middle of this this situation uh now about uh seven years go by we're in the spring of 1992 and one of my uh good friends and customers had a little recording studio in a little town called shepherd halfway between the two towns where my music stores were oh man pleasant so russ mckeller had this uh blue dog audio studio doing mainly uh church choirs and you know barbershop quartets and occasional rock band and and that kind of thing and i ran into him on the sales floor one of the stores and uh he said oh man how about those new drums and i said wait wait what and he had just done a session and he figured everybody knew about him and especially me being the local drum guy but i had no idea what he was talking about and he said that he had just recorded a demo for the new drum company uh out of i think they were muskegon they were over on the west side of the state somewhere holland uh muskegon area and i said what are you talking about he said they're really different they're really kind of funny looking drums but they sound great and they they for some reason came to my studio to do this demo oh i know i know why it was it was because a local sax player chris bickley i had a music store also in the area selling keyboards and he was the one that suggested russ's studio and uh he was in involved with the band that had made contact with the drum anyhow they they did this uh demo recording for volt drums and so i got uh steven volp's phone number from russ the owner of the studio and i i called him and introduced myself and asked him if he had these new drums i'd been hearing about and if he was selling them or whatever and he explained that uh yeah it was a whole new concept that he'd come up with and he had some investors there was uh local businessmen around the area where he lived and a few bankers and lawyers and so on it all chipped in and he set up this little corporation and he was making these drums and he was going to introduce them at the summer nam this that coming summer in nashville and i said well that's great i'm i'm going to be exhibiting at that show i didn't usually exhibit at nam but i did a couple of times and i had a booth reserved at that same show where steve was going to introduce these drums so uh i get to nashville and i i get all set up in my booth and i had his booth number written down he was and he was just down the aisle from me uh so i could all set up and i go down to the booth number i had and there's some cheesy disco company or something it's all imported flashing lights and stuff it was really weird and i thought ah something's gone way wrong so i i got to a pay phone and i called steve and i said uh steve i went to your booth and uh what what's up did you move or something and he said well rob i can't really talk about it but i've signed a contract with the major southern manufacturing company uh and we have an agreement in place but we can't really talk about it and i said uh at this point in time i was only a year or two away from having heard this whole timing winkler story so it was fresh in my mind and i said oh steve tell me it's not peavey i said i need to tell before you take another step i need to tell you a story and uh he said well it's it's a done deal the thing is rob this is a radically new concept and and i'm i've gotten all the backing that i could muster to go into this full bore we've made 50 kits and i can't afford to have some chinese or japanese companies see what i've done infringe my patent because a patent is only as good as your pockets are deep i can't afford the litigation of fighting somebody like that this this is going to solve that for me i'm i put my lot in with a company that's big enough to fight those guys off if anybody tries to steal it and i said well but steve still there's some things you should consider about your arrangement with whoever it may be and uh and he really didn't want to hear that so they went forward and i didn't track them too closely at the time because about that time we we parted ways with peavey they weren't nearly as critical to the survival of cook's music as they had been a decade earlier they had a lot more competition companies like crate and so on were coming on and uh so when we ran into some issues with our rep uh we just kind of pulled the plug on it and i didn't miss it i i could see i i went i made a point of going to look at him at the next namshow pursuant to our our conversation or i guess it took it took till 94 i think it was january 94 uh so steven volt went to work for him in 93 technically or on on paper signed that agreement in 92 i went to work for him in 93 and in 94 january pv came out with the radio pro series of drums there was a certain amount of tension in some quarters because interestingly enough i i wasn't aware of it till later but uh pearl was distributing pv product uh overseas presumably japan but i i don't really know the ins and outs of that whole deal but there was a business relationship between pv and pearl and people were kind of on edge wondering if there were going to be fireworks because now pv was introducing drums and uh pearl drums were obviously important to pearl and their distribution in the united states was important so there was a there was a little bit of uh apprehension about what was going to happen so the the story i heard was that uh pearl's president talk i saw me uh goes over to the pv booth to see what these are all about and he had a little entourage with him five or six people and they go over and they they look him over talk looks at him from all sides and expressionless didn't say a word and as they were walking back to the pearl booth finally one of his uh aides said uh so what do you think i mean you haven't said anything and i i'm told he said looks like a woman with three tits so there was a certain and he wasn't worried and that was kind of my impulse too when i first saw me i thought well yeah good luck with that uh they were priced pretty high they were a premium drumline and with a whole new look and new theory and uh at this point it's worth mentioning again for people to go to the link uh the links at my uh page and it'll take you to the promotional video that which is cool pv put out really well done yeah very very professionally prepared and very very accurately explains exactly what steve was trying to accomplish with these drums and it's it seems like a sound theory uh can you before we move on here and on the steve stuff so just so people know it's v o l p p steve volp correct yeah steven volp he's on linkedin and uh there he did a very interesting interview it's almost an hour long i think with uh with some pv radio pro fans as recently as 2016 and that'll give you a lot of insights into what went wrong i think his concept was sound and he still believes in it and he may someday still do something with them uh the patent now has has expired uh and pv ended up only uh producing them from 1994 to 2002 but i i think it was by about 96 or so that the writing was already on the wall there were i wasn't privy to the difficulties that they were having that steve mentions in this 2016 interview so that makes it real interesting the kind of challenges that they were having working as a drum division under pv but what i did see from the outside was that uh steven volp kind of transitioned from running his own drum division to being a pv artist relations person and and i don't know if it was from some of the relationships uh he had with with you know groups like van halen and stuff with the drums that that kind of prompted that but my observation at the time was well why are they moving the drum guy over to artist relations unless it means the drums aren't doing well but uh the guy that became the product manager of the entire drum division was uh tom rickscors now uh tom i knew really well in fact he when he was applying for the job he came to me and asked for a letter of recommendation and i wrote him a couple page summary of all the things that he had done for me and what i thought of his abilities and so on that uh and tom got the job and ended up kind of running the drum division and i'd talk to him at nam shows and he'd tell me everything was great and they were going to be coming out with a series of marching drums and and so on and uh but it it did kind of finally collapse and well it disappeared you know by 2002 it it was just no longer there can you explain so everyone is on the same page obviously we live in the world of of google and everything so people without a doubt looked up these radial drums but i always kind of equate things like this to like um almost like like there there are no way the same or similar but like north drums where they're just a different kind of drum out of nowhere where it's its own it doesn't look like a normal drum set can you explain these drums yeah his his the the driving force the concept that that drove steve to invent these was that uh hardware mounting hardware and lugs and all of that muffled the shell and he wanted to create and and also they have to be put on a shell that'll survive the torque of being the tension of the head on it so he wanted a very thin shell that could be very reason resonant and get very low tones but without any stress on it so he kind of made a shellless drum a big a big drum hoop that could tension a head and and put it on top of a very thin shell and glued it on and then did the same on the bottom so you've got basically you see nothing but a a drum shell and then donuts at the top and bottom uh that's kind of it in a nutshell yeah and and the video does a better job of explaining it than showing the vibrations and it makes sense i mean a drum sounds differently a tom tom if someone is holding it up for you just by uh their fingertips on the counter hoop and but then grabs onto it you know you are in fact inhibiting the vibrations a little so that was the that was the theory behind it they were strikingly different and i i personally think maybe would have done better in a slightly different setting maybe as the high end option as a division of uh pearl or a dw or something rather than uh an entry level dam but from an electronics manufacturer yeah it's like with pv it's like these are our drums they're super out there if you don't like these well these are all we have basically there's no like oh and the snare is really interesting because it's like i think the snare if it was a normal snare it would make the drums even look different but the snare is basically like a it's just it's just a big almost like i don't want to call it a bubble in the middle but it's a lot of them you see where it's just this kind of like yeah you know what i'm saying it's like yeah ram and then it's just a big huge like thick band almost of wood um they're unique yeah very unique yeah which when i don't even know if that goes on a regular snare stand it doesn't look like hip wood but i know yeah yeah they're they're they're really out there but i'm sure now i mean i should have asked the question how do they sound i mean do they sound as good as any other you know high level drum set they seem to but i again i i didn't have direct uh experience with them even okay um but from everything i've heard yeah they they sound pretty good i think uh uh van halen was using enough on that mistaken but uh yeah i can't really comment on on the tone i clearly the tone wasn't superior enough to warrant uh whatever negatives were stacking up against them and in the marketplace and resistance to the appearance and so on i mean if a if a drum really was head and shoulders above anything else audio wise i think drummers would put up with a an unconventional appearance yeah it's it's not in in any way it's not an ugly drum but it's just so different that you're like it's it's kind of like i don't want to say gimmicky because i mean we all have some drums and we've all seen kits that are kind of gimmicky which are cool but like it's it's sort of just a thing you know like this kind of bubble and people i've seen online looking them up they say this like otherworldly or like this alien looking drum set they do look very um it stands out i mean it's very unique and and i'm sure there's a lot of people who are very passionate about it so i want to be very respectful and say they are cool looking drums the uh yeah that recording that uh steve volt did in 2016 which is very interesting one of the things he mentions that as an example of how he was curtailed there and he also mentions that the different divisions at pv it was kind of a competitive situation i mean uh several of the divisions were in this this main building i think they called it building three and it was like a seven acre building uh that just recently was pretty much emptied by auction they've moved a lot of their electronics manufacturing offshore now but uh the different divisions were kind of competitive and uh he said the guitar people were pretty nice to him and he got along well with them but uh it was kind of towing a corporate line and and one of the examples he gives where decisions were kind of out of his hands and at hamstrung him was at one point they they uh issued a dictate that there were going to be rims uh holders used on all the drums well the rims patent was still in place so it was going to cost them some some change and uh for people that are familiar with rims the concept is similar you put a rims mount on your drum by fastening it or securing it with the tension rods and isolated with big rubber grommets and allowing the drum to vibrate freely uh so that's the real reason for a rims mount not to simply find something that will work to hold your drum in place which is what pv was telling steven to do with them uh it was uh kind of uh being redundant to use a rims mount on a radio pro drum it made no sense at all but he was told that he had to do it so it not only uh aggravated him and defeated the concept or didn't defeat it but made the concept redundant but it also made him cost more so that made it harder for him to make a profit and that's what he was going to be paid on oh yeah because he had a royalty deal yeah wow i presume i presume that was in place i should i should make it clear that i don't know exactly what kind of a arrangement that they did in fact enter into but i presume that's it was similar to what time they balked at yeah now what did a radio pro like what did a you know if you were to go out to go out and buy a five piece kit you know shell pack what would that usually set you back i don't know but i'm going to guess they were at the high end of things uh my guess would be up close to like recording custom at the time or something uh but because i do know that they came out with a cheaper series i don't know the numbers on this different series even it seems like it was 1000 the original and then they came out with a 500 series they came in with some offshore uh made radio pros and maybe even had some molded rims top and bottom on those but um yeah probably even a lot of the the pv radio pro fans would be better qualified to answer and and they're devoted and out there that that 2016 interview that people should definitely check out if they're interested in and and hear steve's whole story was basically a conversation between he and the group of uh loyal pv fans it was a pv pelusa and i get together and a bunch a bunch of these radio pro guys got together and and at the very end it's funny steve is asking them to identify or maybe it's the very beginning uh anyhow they asked each of them to identify themselves and and what they have and they're all explaining the color of their radio pro outfit and everything and and these guys are big fans of them you know they say that you know the sound there's there's nothing like them and they're trying to get steve to get back into it again like man so but and i want to clarify before because you're like i think you said before that the patent has lapsed but so steve vulp could go ahead and bring these back under his own brand like without pv right like if he wanted to create it kind of as the inventor i guess anyone yeah yeah anyone could make radio pro is my understanding don't don't take that as legally boys advice kids but uh yeah but uh yeah it's my understanding that it's pretty much open and and steve at the time he did that interview he mentioned he did have like at least a five-year commitment to the career path that he had chosen he's in a marketing and branding uh business uh back in michigan here i think he's in the detroit area and works with some music industry companies like esp guitars and so on and so he's he's carved himself another niche that uh is keeping him going at this point but it's quite possible that uh down the road uh he said he he made kind of a cryptic mention to that he has some some concepts and uh things of things that could be done better and different and so we'll see it's great yeah good for him i mean it's hard to be it's hard to make something different uh in general but especially in drums where you know where it actually catches on gets like a kind of a cult following so i think it's great and i think um it's really cool to have any kind of different looking drum set that serves a purpose that isn't just different for the sake of being different but it really does have like a a science behind it um so you said it ended kind of in 2000 early 2000s right what happens when this when a drum line or brand sort of dies does it just do they say to music stores sell off what you have that's it we're done yeah pretty much it just uh or maybe say nothing at all you know some companies will issue a press released but others will just uh uh stop taking orders it disappears from the catalog from the website from the backorder printouts and and so on and it would have been interesting to see what was actually at the auction i i missed out on that i hadn't heard about it but in uh uh 2019 there was a huge auction at that seven acre building and all manner of stuff was sold and it did mention briefly in the auction description that there was drum equipment and uh so i i don't know if it was manufacturing equipment or actual uh hardware and all that but yeah that's that's where the remnants would have been yeah geez god that has to be awesome just to go i love auctions in general and estate sales and any of that but um these music auctions it's kind of a dream come true like harrell dustman by the way went to two auctions uh that were that were kind of sad in ways he he attended the the auction where all of tommy winkler's stuff was sold off and then uh he also attended the auction of the offices he had been working in because he was notified and i think of november uh 84 that uh gretch had been sold to baldwin had sold it to fred gretch and he was going to be moving it down to savannah and where his offices were or ridgeland technically uh but so in the course of packing up and moving out and everything they had a huge auction so in two months after he had been going to work there every day he went back to see the parking lot full of filing cabinets and his desk and he can buy back his like stapler chair man that's that is kind of sad but that's business i guess you could say it really stinks for tommy i feel like out of this story steve sort of got his chance to run at steve volt but tommy winkler seems like a little bit of like um but maybe if maybe steve was right to say you know rob i don't want to hear it i'm gonna do it who knows i could have gone either way maybe maybe he could have brought him out and run it as a company making all the decisions that he wanted to make his own way and and made it very successful up until the point where some uh overseas uh juggernaut besides he doesn't have the money to fight him and and they just copy it you know he he might have been right to make that call yeah he's happy with his lot in life and has a solid career path so i don't think he has huge regrets on that you can always second yes yourself but oh yeah of course now but that's it's just a an interesting story that um i think it's just it's cool to actually know the background and to kind of hear firsthand experience of it and i mean like you said earlier pv is really it's nice stuff my my experience was my brother had a pv a minx 110 bass amp growing up and then we always had a pv raptor guitar floating around which those are both very budget friendly um you know items but they were fine when you're 10 years old 12 years old yeah yeah some stuff was uh kind of sub-power compared to the top quality stuff on the market sure but they also moved in some other directions uh media matrix became a division of pv and they're responsible for huge audio digital mixing systems that are used in airports and everything they've got a huge line array system out now they've they've got some pretty sophisticated electronics unfortunately uh for the workers in the meridian area they're they're no longer made in meridian mississippi a lot of the stuff is uh is outsourced but uh again that's that's the reality of a a person in manufacturing to make those business decisions and do what's best for his business but but he has some very sophisticated products and high quality products and it's it's an interesting story yeah the the 5150 that the eddie van halen kind of amp line that that's always awesome um but wow okay cool well i i set up before we started i was like things miraculously kind of get close to 60 minutes and then we we find a way but um all right so that's awesome while we wrap up here um it's today is the day after thanksgiving um 2020 covid um i'm been recently moving i have my leg in a boot because i tore my achilles tendon and had surgery so my world has kind of gone to you know gone to hell but i um i want to know real quick as we wrap up kind of the progress and what your thoughts are on the upcoming 2021 chicago show which i'm sure everyone is uh just unbelievably hopeful that it happens because we all want to get back together but um you want to touch on that a little bit before we wrap up sure not really much to say we're uh you can check the facebook page or the website for any updates that do come along but but really we're just kind of uh at cruising attitude altitude at this point uh the spaces are all assigned uh the exhibit floors are totally but i think there's one 10 by 10 space out of 170 and we we may be able to create a little more space in the central area uh so people can check the exhibitors who are signed up uh we can only hope it's going to happen uh yeah i'm there's no clinic program it's kind of a uh a throwback show uh and there there is going to be a conference room with some celebrity guests and that sort of thing but it's there's not a big formal clinic program so i don't have all those travel arrangements uh flights for the clinicians to worry about uh booking and cancelling and all that uh so we we just have our fingers crossed and as long as the uh the authorities in charge uh in in illinois and the venue are okay with the show going forward then we will go forward with it and uh if that were to be happening in 60 days i'd say there's a good likelihood that we would probably have to have our security riding the mask situation and and keeping people moving in that sort of thing or making sure that there's not you know large gatherings for extended periods of time but uh those those final points of definition will you know come into play closer to the time of the show but fingers crossed that by uh mid may uh there will already be other events happening at that venue and they can give us some guidance and uh everything will be good god i hope i mean it's just yeah and i i really do hope that this podcast has kind of given people like a feeling of like you know uh hearing from the guys you might meet like mike carato was just on and like all these people where you might see him at the chicago show where you kind of uh i don't know you you give a you get kind of a remote version of hearing from you and stuff but um i really hope it happens and as usual one thing i love about uh this show and the people who listen to the show is they really really love taking what we talk about and going and buying like books and um which i think is awesome because in this world it's a lot of like you know not as many people reading and i'm very guilty of it but um everyone should go to RebeatsR-E-B-E-A-T-S dot com and there's a books tab or you can do Rebeats dot com slash books but every really really cool drum book you could probably want it'll get you started for a while there's there's so many good books a lot that rob has written himself like the rogers book the slingerland book book on calf skin heads but then on top of that he has tons and tons of books by other great authors like daniel glass is on there um dr matt brennan who's been on this show multiple times um his book is on there but really it's like the hub for um awesome drum books and publications so um go and check that out again at RebeatsR-E-B-E-A-T-S dot com um Hal Blaine and the wrecking crew that's gotta be a cool one i'm looking at that um so on that note rob um i just want i think this is your fourth time on the show i'm pretty sure so that's uh it's an honor to have you here per usual well thank you i i i appreciate the uh opportunity yeah definitely and keep chugging forward on the chicago show and i think everyone knows that what you decide in the end is always the right thing for people's safety i think you should people know you have their safety in mind and if it comes to the point where you know the world is still upside down and it has to be postponed even further then yeah i hope that doesn't happen yeah and i and i i i i love the governor of illinois he's much in the pattern of our governor here in michigan governor wittner i think they're trying to do the right things for us too yeah sure all right well this has been uh the the amazing story of uh pv drums so that we you know the flash in the pan we hardly knew ye so all right rob thanks for being on the show thanks so much bar i appreciate it if you like this podcast find me on social media at drum history and please share rate and leave a review and let me know topics that you would like to learn about the future until next time keep on learning this is a gwin sound podcast