 Welcome to the drum history podcast. I am your host Bart van der Zee and today I'm joined by Jeff Kersh of Kersh drums Jeff welcome to the show. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm it's an honor. Yeah, man I've been I've been following you on social media for I feel like a long time just because I've enjoyed everything you're doing and then just by chance Mr. Dave Chapman who's a listener of the show recommended that you be a guest and Here we are we were talking and I think we just messaged each other and now now we're we're we're here recording So it's funny how the world works like that. Oh Man, it's great. I've been listening to you for years now. Oh awesome That's cool to hear. So you know how the show flows then so we won't We won't take too long to hop into the the topic like we do on the show So and I also want to say too, mr. Richie pace who I've talked to before who's a very nice guy He recommended An episode talking about wood and wood types and how it affects shells And I think we can kind of check that one off as well in this episode And kind of kill two birds with one stone. So Yeah, on that note what we're here to talk about is something that you're really kind of known for is bearing edges and Really being an expert on shell types and construction both vintage and modern So why don't we take it one thing at a time and just start off with a conversation about bearing edges Why don't you kick it off with what they are why they're important and how they are, you know, they vary drum to drum No, it got you. Yeah pretty much I Would say that the bearing edges is 90% of what a drum does if Baring edges aren't really correct and you're not interacting with the shell to get whatever makes that shell unique and so Baring edges has really been where I started with drum building. It started with a It's very expensive name brand kit that I got in debt to own and and could not tune and So that kit sat stacked in a corner while I was making payments on it and And I found it really frustrating and so That's when I got into bearing edges and and understanding what it is that they do and essentially The bearing edge is kind of a lost art When someone like George Way spends time developing a bearing edge shape That's going to be the character of the the brand And then sells the company to so-and-so So-and-so becomes a manufacturing expert more than a Drum expert There's kind of a tendency for efficiency to take over What was done by the most expensive person in the building the woodworker the talented skilled experienced designer and and it's commonly known in in guitars I Don't know a single guitar player who pulls a guitar out of a box and Goes into the studio with it. Yeah, it's it's There's a thing that's happened in the guitar industry and a lot of other acoustic instrument Industries where they say look we've built you the most solid foundation that we can You're probably gonna want to take this to a tech and get the last of the details dialed in The fender factory doesn't have an 80 to a hundred and twenty dollar an hour a Setup guy. Yeah. Yeah, I would imagine everyone has different taste where Out of the factory they can't exactly know what every single person would want right? Well, and that's an interesting part of it is that it's it's less about taste and more about function taste is something that That you choose in in the foundation like whether or not you go with the Gibson or a fender or One of the other brands are one of the different wood types, but none of them are intonated Which is where the the parts are are Adjusted to make sure that high tones are in tune with low tones Mm-hmm. The frets aren't dressed. They're a little rough It's not gonna be as fun for a guitar player to play and so it's it's more about Function at first and then you can customize all you want from there, but They're they're functionally limited straight out of the box You could not take a brandy fender out of out of the box and use it in the studio without the engineer getting irritated Yeah, but how and how does that apply though because I feel like guitar is sort of different from drums At least I've always thought it is but how does that same? You know setting it up you take your drums out. I've I've always thought it was a little I Don't know maybe guitar is more particular than drums But what what do you how does all everything you just said kind of in the you know guitar world? How does that apply to a brand-new drum set? Do you need to get your bearing at bearing edges checked and cut on every every brand-new drum set? Not every brand-new drum set. It depends on who you're going to which company you're going to Some companies have carried on their legacy designs And other companies have abandoned them and and normally I think it's for efficiencies but the way it compares is that It's the same factory in some cases. It's the same parent company who set up their Their assembly lines for efficiency for for profit margin and and you know not that Profit is bad. Everyone has to pay their bills but there's It it's true what you're saying that a guitar is more particular in the sense that If it doesn't function properly, you cannot use it. Yeah, where a drum will still make sound You know and and that sound is gonna be enjoyable to somebody sure and so It's it's it's more forgiving in that sense But I find that drummers I mean part of the reason your show exists is drummers are out there almost desperately seeking information on how to get the character and the sound they want out of their drums and You know anything works as a drum I've used a cardboard box with a mic in it for a bass drum Yeah in a pinch a coffee or whatever flipped over. I mean we've all been at some Family event or a party where they're like I was that I had I used a Folgers mug once when someone was playing violin and they were like Bart play the drums and it's like, all right This I guess You know, yeah, and and because that works, you know, if you can keep time You know on a countertop, yeah, you're gonna be able to add something to the music and and and because of that there's there's a There's a larger ability for drum companies to make Claims that a guitar manufacturer or violin manufacturer couldn't get away with and really like they're they're all Acoustic instruments, they're all functioning, you know, the drums don't have pickups They are a hollow body acoustic instrument the same as a guitar or violin And and that's really why I draw the comparison so often. Yeah is is because the the The physics are the same. It's just the tolerances are different Yeah So all right, let's real quick. I just want to kind of narrow this down a little bit or I guess like zoom in a little bit So all right bearing edges It's sort of a thing I almost feel like I don't want to say a dark art where where there's like a little bit of this like You know, maybe to the untrained ear someone doesn't know what they're listening to what can a drummer Who's not a guy like you who was working on this all the time and who has a trained ear? What can they listen for to know that maybe there's an issue with their bearing edge? What would be some? Some red flags going on because I mean really I think everyone thinks out there I just bought, you know a $2,000 drum set that I'm you know, like you said, I'm maybe you know You finance this thing and it's not It's not what you wanted. It's not going well. What what are some of those red flags that people can look out for? Well, it's surprisingly less tonal Like if like using again the guitar as an example if you've got a guitar with a bent neck or worn frets Or it's not intonated It's not well the intonation is but it's not so much of a sound issue as a function one You can have a guitar that's in tune but still feels terrible to play the the response of The player is limited By how the instrument feels. Yeah, you can't can't play as fast Tuning doesn't stay in tune as long So maybe you're halfway through a song in the recording studio and the instrument goes out of tune and now you have to punch in or start the song all over again and And so a lot of the struggles that I find drummers have are not necessarily related to the tone They they like their drum set. There's just something missing and usually it's functional Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's can the thing go through a song All the way through or a set all the way through without retuning. Can you? disassemble the drum Put a new head on reassemble it and get the sound that you had before That you took an hour and a half to figure out how to get You know, and so most of what bearing edges does is functional and the tonal benefits are sort of the icing on the cake Now what is the you know in in you know, I know I'm sure we could talk about this next question for an hour But how would you explain kind of in you know, layman's terms the science behind that? Obviously, we know it's where the the edge of the drum comes in contact with the head What yeah, what what constitutes a bad bearing edge Is it not even is it you know, not sharp in one point and then it's rounded in another? How does it leave a? World-renowned factory, you know what again what all that all that stuff is one one weird weirdly shaped question Well, you know, it's it's funny because obviously if you buy a an American made Fender guitar It is leaving a world-renowned factory But it's not done yet. It's not a complete instrument But guitar companies are cool with that and and guitar players are cool with that. It's an open relationship that they have Your your guitar player will go out by a brand-new American Fender and drive straight to his tech and and the the idea that Any mass production facility Finishes the details is is a myth like they they just don't do it And they can't do it. There's no way that they could have say at Fender. They couldn't have 80 to 120 dollar an hour setup guys Perfectly dialing in 10,000 guitars week or whatever they're producing and it's the same with drums They have to do what will get these things in into Their guitar center contracts that they have to fulfill as quickly as possible and and so They literally cut quarters But essentially the history behind the bearing edge is that you have animal hide heads Mm-hmm, and you can take an animal hide head. You can stretch that over a Log that's been hollowed by a hatchet with zero precision You could stretch that hide head over a triangle shape drum a square drum a round drum like nothing ever really mattered in Drumps for precision when it came to animal hide heads this this whole thing is is actually fairly brand new And is that because from my alert I learned from Jeff Stern on a recent episode the skin then will form around that shape and kind of seal to that whatever You know because it's skin. Is that basically right? Yeah, exactly and and I a piece of molded plastic that's under heat and pressure is It's never going to take another shape It is going to fight taking another shape no matter what you do It's you could take a two-liter bottle and you can squeeze it and crush it And it's just gonna pop right back out into its original shape Mm-hmm and in a sense that's what the drum heads are doing and when When the head first got invented you had these guys who were Very excited about the possibility of of not having to deal with all the issues involved in in in calf heads and also the the increase in volume and And resonance, you know as the amplifiers are getting bigger you know, people are trying to figure out how to get the same volume and And compete, you know be audible in these arenas and And so you have these guys they they go down to the head factory and Measure the shape that the heads are being molded at and Go back to their Drum building factories and start cutting that shape Into the edge of the drums Knowing full well that you're you're not going to make plastic head reshape maybe at jazz tensions at Sneer drums can get away with it Because you're getting enough tension to start pulling all of that out But for the most part a plastic head is never going to take another shape and So you've got somebody it, you know gratch or camco or Rogers and these guys create different bearing edges that are similarly shaped for the time and That shape is very similar to how Remo was molding the heads and how Evans was molding the heads in their factories and and And then they they they put these into their brands this this edge shape and it's usually rounded on the outside and As Companies get bought and as the original designer engineer is is long gone And an efficiency expert says well, why are we doing you know double the work on this? Yeah When we can just do this single cut Super fast one operation can be done by a kid who's never run a router in his life And he can cut bearing edges all day long. Yeah, and it's it's called a bearing edge But and that's one of the things that that really gets left out is it's called a bearing edge Not because it bears The tension of the head or it bears the playing But because it's actually supposed to function as a bearing in a wheel huh For the head to roll tight and roll loose sure it's rolling across the sparing edge High tension low tension rolling always supported and rolling on that edge Hmm as soon as you make that edge razor sharp You're asking the head to crease at each note And it's just not something the drumhead wants to do. Yeah now alright, so My question for that would be so backing up a little bit so in the I guess we could say late 50s ish When the you know the mylar heads were coming out This wasn't like something where you know kids were watching Ringo and going oh, man I wonder what bearing edges these were it it almost seems like it wasn't brought into Like it wasn't like a marketing term until Years later obviously we're all we're the big, you know all the various companies Were they using different bearing edge types? And I do want to cover what they are you have like the baseball bat and all that stuff did each company kind of have their own let's say in the heyday before maybe they got You know simplified by their corporate people who were you know came in but would they have their own patented Bearing edge to make it their own sound company to company I think it was just to them It was just a very basic function and it and the conversation about bearing edges really didn't come up until these these edges got lost Yeah, you know and and people really started to struggle in the way that that you you might not with our with a Rogers or a camco and You know you buy this brand-new You know 90s or 2000s is is pretty much when a lot of the The conversation started when the I would say issues started and and so The legacy guys seem to have just done what was necessary and Didn't really make a big deal out of it. I I can't find any vintage advertising about how bearing edges are and And and most of what I've learned about bearing edges pretty much all comes from 20 years of taking people's drums apart sure and and putting them back together and the The customer feedback has created what I know more than anything else Yeah, so All right, I want to get into the different bearing edge styles, but so I don't forget I want to ask you does a bearing edge over time Go bad like do you need to do routine maintenance on your bearing edges or Are they you know if they're right when they're out of the factory or they got the bearing edges kind of recut 30 years ago or whatever Do you need to get them touched up over time? It depends largely on the woods Okay Maple and birch and a lot of the hardwoods they'll hold their same bearing edge almost forever You know, there were a lot of drums that were Ruined in the concert tom days Where bottom heads were taken off and and you know It didn't take too long for the tom to drag across that base drum tension rod at the top of the kick Yeah, and have the bottom edges torn out of them But but usually what happens is is is the old three-ply Ludwigs and slinger lens those are probably the most Needing of maintenance because the bearing edge sits on top of a vertical grain Poplar, it's a very soft wood and it's the wood where the Like if you're going to chop a log You chop it on the end grain and the log just splits Mm-hmm If you turn a log sideways and you try to chop it that way it's gonna take you forever to get through that log and and bearing edges on the old Ludwigs and slinger lens are Endgrain sitting up and you have the head sitting on top of that and Because that's how the tree drank originally Uh Moisture is sucked into there your beer and your sweat and You know just years of You know steamy basements sure the the the end of those Shells Ludwig and slingerland in particular that that poplar core Those flat and overtime Those definitely do and people do a lot of crazy stuff to try to preserve them and and and that's one of those things where it's like Dented frets on a fender. Yeah, you don't just like Leave them that way because on a fender. It's unplayable if the frets are dented but on a drum You could still get a sound Yeah, and it's and when it comes to the three-ply, so that's one of the things that drives me crazy Like oh, you know, I love this snare because it's the Ringo sound and it's like well Ringo was playing a brand-new drum Yeah, his drum didn't have dented bearing edges. It didn't have 50 years of wood rot. It wasn't applies to emanating from each other and so There's kind of a superstition about Not restoring vintage Bearing edges. Yeah, you read my mind. I was just gonna say I mean it seems almost like that's the way it is You know, she's an old girl leave her house. She is like, but that's not true. You're saying you can You can it's wood like you could Recut and again, I don't have much experience. I've never had drums recut or anything. So this is all like pretty fascinating You can fix it. I mean even if it's a 1963 whatever Ludwig kit It'll cut just like a new drum, right? Oh Exactly like they did. There was a time period where people were modernizing them and they were trying to get these old Poplar drums to sound modern and It didn't work. You can't really put a razor-sharp 90s bearing edge on a vintage Ludwig and make that actually A sound could yeah, and so there were people who really hacked up Some vintage Ludwigs and I'm I'm still fixing those today So the important thing to remember is there's a difference between modifying a bearing edge and restoring one You know, you wouldn't you wouldn't take a vintage instrument like a guitar or violin and and Try to make it into something else. No The goal is is to actually restore bearing edges and there's there's not a lot of People that are doing that correctly and even if you say you take an old vintage drum and You want to restore the bearing edges on it say it's your example of the 63 Ludwig If you're wanting to restore the original edges on that Ludwig went through a period where their edges changed to various degrees five or six times and So which Ludwig edge do you want to reproduce? Interesting and you know, there was a time period where and this was Leedy Ludwig area and going into Right before they were mass producing to supply Rock and roll with drum sets, you know in every basement garage across the planet They they they were very focused More handcrafted Details, they would file out Parts of the shell where the reinforcement ring created a hump. Hmm. They would file out Humps created where the old three-ply shells overlap each other. I put a very big hump in the bearing edge and By Seven they just didn't have time to do this anymore. Yeah, so that was some extreme attention to detail But obviously for for let's say Ludwig in particular, I mean, and I guess drums just across the board got more popular I guess you just can't do that And that but that's but let's you know, we'll talk about this more Later later in the episode, but that's where I guess it pays to use like a smaller shop Almost like, you know, let's say like cursed drums There's that attention to detail, but I see that how you can't almost expect them to do that but but I Think they did pretty damn good for the amount of drums that a lot of these companies were putting out Obviously, there's some misses here and there, but it seems like overall they did they did a pretty good job. Is that fair to say? Oh Certainly, I mean for what they had to work with Yeah, in the in the sense that The the Ludwig Slingerland shell is the 300 year old design. Mm-hmm, you know, it goes it goes It goes back to The drum needing to be easy to carry Lightweight but still huge to be able to project its sound. I mean they were using these things to direct battle, you know, yeah, absolutely so It was a completely different priority when when When we switched over to kits because the the the first kits you're talking about a rack toms from Asia mm-hmm a bass drum from classical or marching a Floor Tom made from a Civil War marching drum. Yeah, and it was this this hodgepodge of things Kind of ancient ancient Technologies and so it's a blueprint though, which which kind of like you look at it and then you go Oh, it's like evolution, you know It's like you see like the like the Kate the monkey turning into the caveman into the modern man It's like it starts with that and then it evolves into something more and Yeah, I've been like an archaeologist of this stuff. I'm I'm I'm literally like Like digging through these crusty old pieces of history and and and gleaning everything I can from them about like Oh, well in 1957 they filed these humps out and then by 67 They they weren't touching them. They were packaging them up getting them out as quick as they can and and and they had yeah, I think Ludwig and slingerlands problem and slingerland didn't survive it and I'm not sure how Ludwig did but Everyone else had moved on to really advance technology compared you know the idea of taking hardwoods and cross-graining the plies and cooking those under heat and pressure and making finally having something that's as solid and resonant thin responsive musical as an acoustic guitar or violin, you know that didn't happen until plywood Yeah, that that you could get something that would stay flawlessly around without Extra material rings, you know a Ludwig didn't have reinforcement rings for tonal reasons They never decided like let's put these puppies in there because it's gonna create a fatter tone and more resonance or this that or the other It was it was none of that. It's how do we keep this head from crushing a very thin lightweight drum? Yeah, when it's left out in the sun the reinforcement rings are a stopgap there. They're an emergency Protection yeah, I think I heard someone on a really early episode of the show call it like an insurance policy We're like if it's gonna happen, you know, okay, we have this this ring here to stop it You know, it sort of buys you that little bit of like, you know, it might not happen, but it you boom you got that that that ring there which I Honestly feel like that's getting into the shell territory, which I'm excited to talk about but I before we get there I want to and again. I know we're jamming a lot into one episode, but I want to ask you here for a quick rundown of The various bearing edge types you mentioned the razor sharp 90s You know style so so maybe you can go down Chronologically going back in time With what kind of bearing edges people would find on drums and maybe what that sound produces And I'm sure this could be it again another hour-long conversation in itself So you can keep it kind of high level, but yeah, what what are the different types and what does that sound produce? Well, it seemed like when When the kit was first starting out Baring edges were really really round like very fat and the more contact you have with the shell There's pros and cons if you're contacting the shell heavily and it's a soft wood shell then shell essentially becomes absorbative if it's a hardwood shell the shell projects What's happening from the communication with the drum head and so it seemed like The animal hide had worked the same regardless of what your edges are Yeah, and so it really didn't start becoming a Tonal factor until the plastic heads and so early Ludwig Slingerland style shell And and say like famous drums like the radio king very very fat rounded bearing edges and This became kind of a problem as the amps got huge and people wanted more and more volume They started going to brands like Rogers and correct Chinkamco because these guys were doing essentially the If you take a Remo or Evans drum head and you look at the molded rounded shape on the outside edge that is Chinkamco Rogers and correct kind of reproduced that shape hmm and then to Have less contact with the shell and make more resonance They cut off the rounded inside part of the bearing edge Because the bearing edge essentially has two parts the inside and the outside sure The inside people will talk about 30 degree 40 degree, you know all these It's not contacting the head the head has no idea the tone has no idea if the inside edge is 30 degrees or 45 degrees or anything mm-hmm it really starts to matter when you round over the inside edge Because you can start to use the peak of the shell in the same way you'd use one of those plastic zero rings Where the Peak of the edge is actually making it enough contact of with the head to kind of focus it Yeah, absorb some of the overtones and so That got to be too mellow and too quiet for rock and roll So people started 45 in 30 Doesn't matter they started cutting the inside sharp to allow the playing surface of the drum head to ring out louder and longer and Get through the mix and so that that 45 or 30 is kind of what started what happened in the 90s so people started sharpening these edges even more and and There was a pretty split Group when when I started building in 98. There was a pretty split Forum conversation. I used to get on the drum forums and talk about this stuff with a lot of people and we would argue and argue Yeah, and you know, it was a pretty big debate between single 45 and double 45 Expo so single would mean one side is 45 versus all Yeah, all cut all the way to the outside of the shell Hmm and the problem that this this creates and and this is kind of one of the frustrating things for me You will see companies talk about our shells are leveled so precisely that not even light gets through But meanwhile that shell is so over-diametered That the head is never going to sit flat even though you have a flawlessly flat surface You drop the head on there and the head is rocking back and forth from side to side It's Rotating in a sense trying to find a place where it can drop down and actually sit on the drum because if you're contacting the the drum head where it is still rising up and Rounding over to the actual part you're gonna hit Then you kind of end up with that rounded area In the playing surface almost acting how a rubber surround on a speaker will float the cone Yeah, you end up with this pre-molded rounded shape in your playing surface So you can sit there and you'll tune it and And doon-doon-doon-doon-doon like all your pitches will match and then you'll strike that drum and it will finally pull that Floating collar flat It's an unpleasant experience. It doesn't feel good to play. It's why your snare probably feels a lot better to play than your toms do because there's a pitch when that head finally gets stretched all the way and Then it springs back to the pitch that you tuned it out. So there's a kind of oh wow of the Of the head having in a sense two different notes the one you tuned it out and the one that it finally Bottoms out at yeah, because the head is floating so outside diameter is Dramatically more important than how level I would take an unlevel bearing edge That's inside diameter over Over a flawlessly leveled shell that is too big around for the head to see Yeah, like a perfect example. I get people telling me this a lot Um, I have a vintage premiere or a vintage sonar With single 45s and it tunes great stays in tune great and plays beautifully But those shells are under diameter They are not big around as a Keller shell or a dw or You know american made drum set. They're not as big around as the asian kits They're they're undersized. They specifically have lugs made that are taller To compensate for the undersized shell That's this this whole over diameter under diameter. I mean it's kind of like I feel like I've never even really heard of this or I've never heard this discussion. So I mean we have to be talking obviously by a small diameter, right? I mean, we're not it's not a half an inch or something like that. It's millimeters, right? I mean like we're talking a small little bit, but it obviously that adds up to a big uh difference, but Right, it's it's small enough uh But impactful enough that yeah that the difference say between where a drumhead collar Is coming up, you know, the head is coming up out of the metal ring And starting to round over And the distance from where it's starting to round over to where it actually goes flat and level Is is very minimal It's a very small difference. Sure, but it's a it's a it's a huge difference for Stick rebound. Yeah head life You know, uh tuning range And so it really it doesn't take very much and and like another example is You know the pork pies and the orange counties 90s Legendary for tons of volume tons of sustain not a big problem to tune And that is because at that time there was the double 45 or single 45 debate And the double 45 Actually brings your diameter in enough if you're peaking say you've got an eight ply Keller shell And you 45 the outside four plies and the inside four plies You're going to sit right at the flat point of the drumhead the perfect point of the drumhead Um, you still have the problem of Trying to crease a drum at every note Uh crease the drumhead at every note. Sure You're you're not having that supported Roll tight roll loose of of uh An earlier gratch or rogers or camco Uh, but that that kind of bearing edge is a lot of work and a lot of skill Yeah, yeah, absolutely It kind of went out the window there were a few companies and and this is also why you see the huge boom Of the import kits that started out as I mean junk they were they were junkie copies of uh slingerlands and crutches and and uh rogers Yeah, but they kept developing and they kept developing and they kept about by the late 70s early 80s You really couldn't buy an american kit that was better than a japanese one Yeah, and that's been talked about a fair amount. I mean they're they really they did their homework um, they They copied and copied and copied and developed and and and did a really good job and god I mean Japanese drums are Some of the finest drums made. I mean it's it's there's you know tons of great brands all over the world But they definitely earned their place. I think uh in the world of you know drum sets Oh, it's it's just astounding what they did because They took everything that these companies were missing and and added it and Especially when it comes to bearing edges You know there was uh the the big The big epiphany for me was so that expensive american uh name brand kit That I got into debt for Sat in the corner While I played my uh, tomah rock star pearl export. Yep, uh mix sure kit and uh My girlfriend at the time was not happy that we were in debt on this kit that I wasn't even playing That wasn't gigging with um, so what I ended up doing was I traded with a friend for a 79 yamaha recording custom Nice and what made this kit special he just saw it as a as a you know beat up all the hamaha and I sat with the thing and I could tune it like and and it would stay in tune for gigs and Just always produce this beautiful sound and um and You know I played the kit for about a month and I was like god I sure hope he wants to trade because I do not want that other kid anymore and He did and we traded and I had to find out Uh why I would have this experience where a beat up old yamaha would be More fun than a brand new top of the line heavily advertised kit so I took it apart and Really examined the bearing edges and and now what I've learned is is that Uh Sakai who was pretty much the designer engineer of everything the yamaha was doing Took a bearing edge from the marching drum department And that bearing edge was Pretty rounded almost fully rounded because at the the tensions of a marching drum You you can't have a razor sharp bearing edge. You're just gonna cut right through the head and um and break things So he took this rounded marching bearing drum edge and put it on a kit And that was the nine thousands Wow, which are iconic On pretty much, you know, probably more recordings than uh than most other drum sets. Um Yeah, and that and that's how they got named the recording custom if they didn't start out with that name Yeah, sure. They were so popular with recording studios and recording drummers You know the gads and garibaldies all those cats um That they renamed the kit recording custom and put You know a new log on it to kind of like get it to to be a standalone model. Yeah, yeah St. Shell is a birch custom. The only difference is The bearing edge people will say well the lugs do this and do that. They really don't It's uh, what made the recording customs sought after was that Even an engineer who's never played drums could tune a yamaha Recording custom the 79 because the head and the shell Were the same shape so You're not spending your tuning tension To reshape the head and then once you've reshaped the head now you can work on pitch The two things just went together. So as soon as you start tuning turning drum keys You are changing pitch Yeah I mean, that's what you would expect from a pro drum set. But obviously that's from what from everything we've talked about That's not the case. Well, it has been a little bit more lately. Yeah, um company companies are Are, you know kissers More than a few people like me who are out here redoing Brands bearing edges daily and I think they're picking up on it and starting to respond like Ludwig has had some really impressive edges lately um, a lot of a lot of the companies are kind of revisiting the subject because You know While all the Japanese companies were developing these technologies um from older American kids Those American companies were being bought and sold and bought and sold Um, manufacturing experts trying to come in and figure out how to make these things profitable to compete with the Japanese Yeah, and and so a lot of The information was lost a lot of the hands on um You know gigging drummer who designs a bearing edge a lot of that stuff was lost and um But now it's it's being revisited. There there's a definitely Uh been some good quality lately. Well, that's good. I mean it's Guys like you who are bringing attention to it and like you said, there's a lot of great, uh, you know People such as yourself working things out and getting it all um You know bringing it bringing it to the forefront, especially like this This episode is brought to you by dream symbols dream symbols is launching the tasting tour 2021 There's going to be tons of cool symbols members of the dream team on site and the recycling program will be in effect all day At these various awesome music stores around the country October 2nd, they'll be at forks drum closet in nashville October 9th melody music in bloomington, indiana October 16th rhythm traders at portland organ and november 6th. They'll be at rup strums in denver colorado So go out and check it out if dream will be in your town Obviously, we could talk about shell types and the history and wood and all this stuff forever But let's I don't know. We got about 15 minutes or so left. Um 20 minutes. Let's talk a little bit about shells um and wood construction and and maybe Like early on you and I before we started we're talking about modern versus vintage Um, so maybe we just kind of pick a little bit of uh, you know, we pick away at this This is let's say, you know Down the line, maybe we'll do another episode. I think wood in general has got to be a multi You know, it'll come up a lot But so so let's talk about, you know modern shells versus vintage shells Um, you know the construction plies Maybe what did we see in the You know fifties we can go back as far as we want, but you know the three ply Getting into the six ply Yeah, what's the difference between all of it Well, I really break everything up into two categories the the the pre Plastic head and post plastic head, but but but in a sense uh, there's plywood shells Which are what I would call the modern shell So really a modern drum shell started with the jasper shell builders the the guys, uh Gretch rogers camco Again, like to me those are modern drums. They might have been built in the 60s, but they are For all intents and purposes, uh, they're they're modern drums. Yeah They've just gotten some age on them. There is very little that's changed between a 60s scratch and a gretch today But there is a ton that has changed from a Ludwig or Slingerland to today's drums Uh, like the modern shell didn't really need reinforcement rings Because you weren't having a head Uh shrink in the trunk of the car and crushed the drum And so reinforcement rings were pretty much ditched Uh in a company like, uh, dw's modern shells. They're entirely symbolic They're they have You know zero function sure and it's it's uh So essentially to me there's there's only two Types of drum shell. There's the vintage which I would consider a civil war drum a Ludwig or Slingerland Poplar corp because poplar is easy to bend Without steaming. It's a lightweight there's Not a lot of work into making a drum out of poplar And that's that's also why it's used in the The cheapest entry-level kits luon poplar. Yeah, uh that goes under dozens of different names Sure but I'm not trying to disparage that old style of construction Because that's the only way you're going to get that sound and I feel like Everyone should have a softwood kit and a hardwood kit because they do different things but the um The softwood kit is more of an Absorber the soft shell will absorb what is happening and and I fit more with say upright bases and fiddles And all the instruments that have come back today, which is why I think these Ludwigs and Slingerlands have come back today because if you take your Tama imperial star and show up at at a gig with an upright base and a fiddle You're going to bother those people Yeah, you're going to you're going to crush right through the mix and and be too loud And so I think that as volumes have decreased People recording at home um and for social media like All of a sudden these these kits that were almost irrelevant to some degree um are now Very relevant again and five times as expensive as they used to be Yeah, I wish I had bought in all those 300 dollar Ludwigs. I had an opportunity for Yeah now all right. So my you know again There's a million things we could talk about here and I would kind of a short time but My question would be though when we talk about the um, you know The the having a a poplar or like the gum like the shell like the the core Where they do you know different woods Kind of uh like plied together obviously plywood what what like what is the The benefit of that to have that that you know that poplar in the middle Um, can you talk about that a little bit? Well in the case of the three ply shells the Ludwigs and slinger ones the The purpose of the poplar was to be the majority of the drum And to not the plywood technology didn't really exist There there were people who would say Uh build a desk or a coffee table out of poplar And that's not very appealing to look at so it would get veneered with mahogany or maple or some You know kind of flamed wood Yeah to look really nice because poplar's ugly But the majority although there's there's some some modern poplar stuff that's looking really nice But yeah, yeah in the in the case of the Ludwigs and slinger ones It was it was not a pretty wood and it didn't it wasn't something that you could put a pretty finish on and make a an appealing uh instrument out of so They would put the mahogany or maple Uh sometimes even birch Whatever they could source because veneers were not You know hugely mass produced then either In a lot of cases Ludwig would use Whatever veneer they could get and To them it made no tonal issue Because it's a popular drum. It's a popular drum with a cosmetic plie of maple or a cosmetic plie of mahogany And and they didn't see it as something that was going to create a tonal difference So later on as people started asking hey, you know, I bought this kit from you and one of the drums has maple And the other one has poplar mahogany in it Is that okay? Just to avoid that question. They just start painting white on the inside. Yeah, yeah They're just hiding it. They're like this is not important. You guys are focusing on the wrong thing It's a it's a poplar drum And and so yeah, but people do claim that that those various paints have tonal differences I think um, yeah, and that's another one of those huge myths that that bugs me Yeah Physics has no way to tell if the paint is silver or gold or Pink There's there's there's no total. There is a total difference in a sense I mean dog ear kind of stuff like I don't know how anyone can claim but if you take a drum Or an acoustic guitar or violin And you buff and gloss the inside of that instrument. It's going to be bright It's going to be twangy and loud and if you Leave the insides rough and textured which you'll find most acoustic instruments Are rough inside They don't do anything but seal them from moisture in a lot of cases. They'll even leave They're chisel marks and they're planing marks. Mm-hmm. Yeah, just to give that just to show that it's handmade And so there the the acoustic difference on the interior is the same as it would be in a recording studio On the walls if you're using A lot of absorbative material then the sound is shorter warmer If you're using a brighter material or a reflective material, it's brighter and ringier and and so There are a couple of like the zola coat inside rogers Uh, the texture ease spray coat. Mm-hmm. Yeah, uh, the toma later used Those big rockers rocker twos had that kind of like, uh What do you call it? gray kind of Gravely look inside of them that was you know, yeah Yeah, that's that's a texture code and that's And that's an attempt like the same way as a recording studio puts texture on the walls. That's just trying to warm up The resonance because if we're trying to increase volume would still Have some warmth and those those can be a bit of a trade-off And so the but interior coating Um You know, it's it would be the to use the recording studio analogy if the walls were painted pink or the walls were painted silver It's it's it's not going to create any difference whatsoever. It's it's just a way to hide the fact that all of the jasper shell builders keller, uh keller came later with full plies, but If you take crutch rogers camco and you pull the all of them were wrapped for one You couldn't actually no one gets to see The construction of a jasper shell because it's hidden by all of all the companies Jasper didn't have full sheets of ply when they molded the shells So if it's a 16 inch deep floor tom They would stick together three eight inch deep sheets To try to or two eight inch deep sheets To try to make a full 16 inch Sheet of veneer and then they would wrap that into their molds and they would create a shell And so when you're buying the equivalent of a $6,000 drum set at the time And you look inside and you see that they're not even using full sheets of veneer Um that can be kind of a problem for some people So what most of the companies did gretz put silver over it um camco used like a dark Kind of tan I think for a little while rogers used A flat gray at first and then move to the texture coat Um because the flat gray didn't hide the fact that you can still see the seams in the plies um So really those paints were added for for hiding the fact that jasper didn't use full sheet supply And you can look inside any gretz any rogers any camco That is of the jasper era And if you look through that paint you look close enough you will find the lines Where it's interesting the inside ply is made up of sheets. So it was fully a cosmetic decision Had nothing to do with tone And still doesn't I think maybe rogers later addition of of texture Would would would have have an effect on tone, but so minimal. Yeah, but it's uh, it's fun to To be like on the you know the facebook pages or the forums people be like, oh no, you got to use this Specific kind of paint because it matches the original one most and it provides the most realistic sound to what it should be and uh You know, it's kind of cool. It's kind of the the the history and the um The legacy and it the debate rages on Oh, yeah, and and in the sense like it's the least important way to do that If if you want to flawlessly reproduce a vintage Uh gretch, you're gonna put the silver sealer in there. Yeah, of course. Sure Tonally, I don't think it's going to help you as much As cutting the original bearing edge that they were using up the gretch that you like or the rogers that you like if you're Focus is on the paint and not on the edge You're never going to get that sound Because for the most part these these brands their sound came from The bearing edge their function came from the bearing edge the shell is uh A pretty minimal factor It the way to think about The shell is there's two choices. There's hardwoods and there's softwoods Some companies Try to mix them and in the same way that a A drum head will default to a moon gel If you have a loud resonant drum head and you put just a tiny little piece of moon gel on there now you have Uh and a warmer Shorter decay. Yeah So if you take a 50 percent maple shell and put in 50 poplar That maple is going to default to the poplar You're getting here So in a sense you might as well just buy the poplar drum and And not even bother with uh complicated mixes of different woods and this type of it's it's really like Yeah, it's there's so much stuff going on that people miss the the the simpler aspects Because you know, you get sucked into a lot of advertising campaigns and that that hit me really hard and And uh, it wasn't until I could I could pick these things apart Um, you know, especially with customer feedback That I realized that most of it doesn't matter. Um, You know, you can get into the different mixes of metals in a ride symbol but You either like thick ones or you like thin ones Mm-hmm And and if you go thicker you're gonna have a louder more Pinging more projecting more volume And you're gonna have a little bit less dynamic the way that a thin symbol will Respond to your touch more. It'll have a breath it'll have Multiple different tones depending on where you hit it and how you hit it a thick ride symbol will just bang No matter whether you're on the outside There's no wrong answer. That's the beautiful thing to I think that's the takeaway I get from all this with the bearing edges and all this is I don't know. I love how you said early on about how You know Different than other any other instrument even if you're playing a drum set that has you know rough bearing edges And maybe you can't afford right now to send it off to get it cut You can still play it and still have fun because it's a drum, you know, you can hit it You can but like 100 whatever 17 episodes deep into the show. I've learned that boy We can go very deep on everything and I think As we kind of wrap up here. I think we've just touched the very very very beginning of shells and construction. So Without spiraling Yeah, the shell material If you have the most beautifully resonant shell in the world And it creates the exact tone that you want But you're not sitting on that, right? If you're not contacting that shell, right? You're never going to get the benefits of that stuff And and when it comes to bearing edges, I feel like there There isn't an opinion It's it's um, yes, can you make what you have work? You you certainly can You can make anything work, but there are very few options for what tunes Yeah, that's true And that's that's the part that bothers me um A lot of the times with with how drums are sold and how they're advertised You can go out and buy a $300 fender Guitar or you can buy a $5,000 fender guitar the one that has gone to a tech and Was made more comfortable to play more consistent to play Is the one that the guitar player is going to pick? Yeah, for sure and and You know when it comes to wood types or whatever that's not going to dissuade anybody from having a good time No, but I know a lot of drummers who will spend hours if not days Trying to figure out how to get the drum to function To just have you know, you're lucky if you find that one note where your drum is happy Yeah, and that's and that's just ludicrous like There's companies that will tell you uh The shell produces this pitch. So this is the pitch where you wanted to Yeah, but if you bought a violin or acoustic guitar that only voiced one pitch You wouldn't be happy No, you would chuck that thing. Yeah, and and really when the company says, oh, you know try to tune to this pitch or that pitch what they're telling you is that The edges on this drum are so poor We want to try to find the one spot that you might be able to tune it. No, that's Well, all right, so let's tell people If they have a drum that they've been wrestling with and they want to send it to you and want to get some Help because obviously you're you know, extremely knowledgeable about this this all Um, where can they find you? What's a good contact? You know for you and and all that good stuff as we as we wrap up here Um, I would say that there are people in your neighborhood There's a budding industry and I and I want to see it grow because I watch people struggle with Um issues on a drum set that they otherwise love Um that can be fixed for a hundred bucks or two and so really get on Facebook groups instagram and Find people in your area. There is there there is at least a dozen folks Who who I talk to regularly? And um, and they know what they're doing and they know how to make your drums perform better and um And and get out there and talk to folks ultimately The best bearing edge is reproducing the mold that made the head and If you talk to someone out there who's cutting marrying edges custom drum builders um A couple of drum shops, but mostly builders and and they understand that The mold that made the head is the best shape to use um those folks will will Will change the way you look at your drums and um my my my contact would be uh curse drums portland on instagram Or uh portland drums.com. There's there's a new website being built right now. Sure You know how that stuff goes when you're alone. I it's kind of slow, but yeah Well, people might listen to this a year from now and it'll be The current website or whenever you get it done. So so don't worry about that, but that's k i r s ch drums So jeff is obviously in you know in portland. You could probably guess from hearing portland drums.com and uh I think people should trust you with their drums or and I kind of like that your first answer was Look in your own neighborhood and you can find people but um, you know if they want to get to work specifically with you They can obviously do that. Um, and jeff is kind enough to take about uh a couple extra minutes I don't know if you still have time jeff. Hopefully you do and we'll do a quick bonus episode And talk about jeff's, you know personal Quick story of how he got into this um and learned how to cut bearing edges. I think that'll be really interesting Um, do you are you still good to do that jeff? Oh, absolutely Okay, so we'll wrap up here on the main episode and uh, and we'll hop over to the bonus So if you want to hear this bonus episode and many others You can go to drumhistorypodcast.com click the patreon link and donate a couple bucks a month And you get these bonus episodes and other cool stuff. So on that note, uh jeff man We just there's so much information. I that we just jammed in there I think we kind of we touched on the wood and there's plenty more to talk about there for a future episode, but um Oh, I need another hour on edges actually just alone Yeah, that's really, you know, there's there's so much talk about all the different types of of materials and logs and that and the other and it's like All you need is the ability to tune if you have the ability to tune and stay in tune Um, you're gonna have fun with whatever you have and there are a lot of people out there who are working on on this and and and helping folks get more out of their drums and uh Yeah, hopefully if someone's listening to this in a couple of years, there's uh There's 20 more people out there who can put good bearing edges on your kit for you. Yeah, exactly All right. Thank you very much to mr. Jeff kersh for being on the show and thank you to dave chatman and richy pain richy I know we kind of talked a little bit about wood plies and i'll probably do more later down the road, but um Anyway, yeah, thanks jeff for being on the show and i'm looking forward to our bonus conversation that we'll hop over and do now Thanks for being here. Awesome. Thank you very much 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