 Welcome to the drum history podcast. I am your host Bart van der Zee and today. I'm joined by a radio legend Jim De regatus Jim Welcome to the show. I don't know how legendary Bart, but thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you Absolutely, so you are a music journalist critic and professor, but all of that fun stuff aside We're here to talk about something even more fun Drums Drums I know I never got to talk about drums. I know this is this is you're in the right place You're in a safe space here. Yeah. Well, you know, I've been it I always say, you know the oldest joke in the book and the horriest. I am not a Musician. I'm just a drummer. You know, I actually got that We were once once my radio partner and I Greg Scott were on the Conan O'Brien show You know and I actually you got to you know, they date all the pre-production You get interviewed two or three times, right? And all the producers say, you know, we hear you're a musician and every time I say I'm not a musician. I'm a drummer, right? And they laugh hysterically and then they say don't don't say that on the air, right? But like they asked me three times I made the joke three times and then I'm on the air with Conan He says I hear you're a musician Jim. I said no, I'm not a musician. I'm a drummer and then they do this perfect spit take shift to You know, what's his face Springsteen's drummer? Yeah, shooting daggers at me. That's funny. That was his thing was the blank stare of Max. Yeah Oh, yeah, yeah, no, I think he was a little tick though. And though I'm from Jersey I am not a Springsteen fan, but okay. Good to know Well, I should mention too that your your show that's been on for so long as sound opinions that that people are probably very very aware of as listening to this but So on that note, we are here talking about acrylic drums and the history of acrylic drums, which Is super fascinating. I've had many many people request this one over the last couple years But the the credit for this connection and our interview goes to mr. Mark Fullerton who who actually connected us found your article I believe from 2002 with modern drummer. Yeah, I'd written a piece for modern drummer Yeah, on the history of acrylic drums and a resurgence at that point It was only a year or two into the 2000s that the manufacturers began making them again. Well, that's interesting I'm sure we'll we'll end up there in our conversation, but All right, Jim. So why don't we jump right in here and you can tell us about how these Very unique drums came to be. Yeah, you know, it's it's it's fascinating Bart I was thinking about your podcast, which I'm a fan of and You know when you think about it really since the early 1900s drums have not changed You know, I mean wooden drums metal hoops calfskin heads to you know fiberglass or plastic heads Remo, you know and and you know, but the basic drum set has never changed There's been a million innovations on guitars and keyboards, of course analog digital and synthesizers But drums are drums and you know as I look back at this article now, which is 20 years old Really the the biggest innovation not only Cosmetically because acrylic drums look cool But sonically I think You know has been the the acrylic drum. So, you know, I when I used to write for modern drummer just for fun I mean they paid so much less than all the other places I wrote But as a drummer I it was fun to interview drummers and talk about you know chain driven or or Spring, you know, what kind what kind of Bass drum pedal and 5a nylon tip or hickory, right? You know just geek out with other drummers And so I I probably did a dozen interviews for this piece and as I said, I wasn't getting paid that much It was just a labor of love. I I had bought a Used a Vista light amber set the bottom color And you know bottom loom so large over Vista light and Ludwig You know, I didn't have those sizes didn't have the 26 inch bass drum with my marky Ramon Ringo star Charlie Watts sizes, you know, but it was a thrill to have an amber Vista light and then that got me Curious about the history of acrylic drums, you know and acrylic. I mean we could use the word plastic, you know acrylics a fancy word for plastic Plexiglass is a name brand. So is fiberglass But basically we're talking about drums that were made of giant sheets of plastic heated shaped to form and fastened together with an industrial adhesive and You know that started with Bill Zikos You know apparently 1959 He had the idea to begin playing with making drums of something besides wood and that's revolutionary Because there have not been you know, man, what else do you make drums out of we'll talk about it But Bill Zikos had this idea, but it took him a decade You know, he wasn't selling his kits until the late 60s famously Ron bushy of iron butterfly 1969 shows up with a Zikos clear plastic acrylic set You know, it took him a long time to perfect it So we didn't start to see them until the 60s and then they explode in the 70s. Yeah, well not literally No, I don't know of any exploding. I've had people, you know people would complain about vintage Vista lights coming undone or cracking being dropped or something being dropped It was always in transit, you know, these drums take a pounding a tremendous pounding You know, but but Ludwig sold so many in the early to mid 70s that there were bound to be a few lemons like the Ford Pinto I've made a joke in my in my article, you know And that there were some that were were bumbers out of round or the bearing edges were not perfect Which really ticked off Zikos and the other big player fives because those were handcrafted and Essentially mom-and-pop companies taking a tremendous amount of pride in those in their fiberglass Acrylic drums in the late 60s early 70s. So just to like Like get the timeline straight here. So Bill Zikos in 59 can be credited with basically creating this this type of drum and I do always preface things with saying that Maybe somewhere literally even maybe in a different country Someone might have been experimenting it I feel like there's always that caveat of like you got to be careful because no you got to be careful And I'm not a there are drum historians as you well know who have documented this stuff There's an apocryphal perhaps tale might be true might be false the ginger baker decided to homemade a kit of his own out of plexiglass or or Perspex what they would call it in the UK plastic and and he heated it over the stove at home You know, I had interviewed ginger baker, but it was years before You know, I did the acrylic drum piece and and you know, I was something I wished I'd asked him when I was talking He was he was on another planet and he was living in Greece on his olive farm Great guy, I can see him doing that, you know, yeah with a sig hanging out of his mouth with like a three inch ash He's melting plastic. Yep. Yep. He was okay. Mostly. We you know talked about olives, you know Talk about olives. So so vibes. I think fives it got to the market quicker Uh, then then zikos, you know, as I said Bill has this idea and he begins experimenting 59 by 69 We see Ron Bushy playing a zikos Plastic set with iron butterfly You know including that epic drum solo in a got a divina, right? and You know, it really made people look because one of the beauties of Acrylic drums is the way they catch the light and Reflect especially with a group like iron butterfly the psychedelic lighting, right? You know, they're gorgeous to look at and also, you know drummers are not in general very vain We could come up with a fun show just listing exceptions, right? Sure, but you know, I mean, here's this instrument, you know, especially in in in metal bands or progressive rock bands that are Obscuring 85% of the drummer, you know, and you could never see them And now you could see a little more of the drummer through the see-through plastic stunning visually and Stunning in an audio way. So, you know, it was by the early 70s 7172 zikos is making a thousand Plexiglass kits a year, but it was fives. There were there were two guys in upstate, New York Bob Grosso and John Morena, you know, they formed this company fives taking Kind of a hybrid of vibes good vibes, man and fiberglass, right because they're gonna make acrylic drums and You know, they start out and by 70 Martin guitars, which was a big company at that point bought them out And so it goes from again a mom-and-pop like Bill zikos to a bigger company and You know, they called there is crystallite and Their drums start selling Billy Cobham, you know, plays a double bass crystallite set with Mahavishnu orchestra, but he rich Favors a fives snare, although he's endorsing other drum companies, right slinger Leon I believe it Ludwig, right, but he likes it. So why would build, you know, why would buddy play a fiberglass snare because they're loud They're louder. They're louder and that made them not so desirable for a lot of jazz musicians zikos was, you know, was big in the jazz market and jazz musicians find out that playing acoustically These plexiglass fiberglass acrylic plastic sets. They're blowing people off the drum stand, right? But ah, nobody is gonna be louder loud enough Drummer-wise if you're an iron butterfly or of course Led Zeppelin Yeah, you know, Ludwig We love Ludwig, we all love Ludwig, but they are a big corporation, right? So they see zikos and fives making money And they don't want to be left out and so you have the birth of the Ludwig Vistalite You know, they didn't do them first many people say they didn't do them best, but they sold tons of them starting in 1972 They were clear and then there were five colors blue amber Red yellow and green in that order of popularity And you know the drum manufacturers always keep wanting to sell drums. So over the First lifespan of Ludwig Vistalite They keep offering other Innovations 75 you get the rainbow Vistalites you could choose you could custer custom order up to three colors alternating in one of six striped patterns and 78 they add Christmas lights Tivoli lights, right the Tivoli set came with a transformer Built-in lights. I've never found anyone who owned a set of those I would now with LEDs, you know, you can get a hundred and fifty thousand hours of lifespan out of a tiny LED But but those Christmas lights, I mean how many times sometimes you take them out of the box and a day later They're burning out. I don't know how reliable those Tivoli sets were and then also in there You know Ludwig at some point dropped the green So if you're a collector after the bottom set In amber in his sizes, right? Anybody can have an amber Vistalite set I did but if you don't have the 14 by 26 the 10 by 14 the 16 by 16 the 16 by 18 He usually played his his metal snare, but if you don't have the bottom side So the number one collectible from vintage is the Ludwig amber Vistalite in the bottom sizes Number two is a green Vistalite. So they didn't sell Ludwig dropped them Eventually they added white black and an opaque smoke and of a combination of white and black But though those were the Vistalites and thousands of them sold. I think the the the Dark colored Vistalites, I guess it would be a black or the smoke Vistalite was always really interesting to me because Before I really got into this and really understood it as a kid I would look at it and go but that's not a Vistalite It's you can't see through it until I obviously, you know, I didn't realize when I was younger that like yes You can it's just much darker and it's the it is the acrylic, but I think they're really really cool but obviously it's sort of a different it's a little more subtle than a Perfectly clear Drum that you can see through so I just thought those are kind of interesting this the smoky ones, you know, it's it's different Yeah, but I you know if you're gonna have plastic drums when I make them see-through I I never had any interest in the black, you know or the white really same thing Yeah, you know it was those colors that were so vibrant and and vital and they showed off the Ludwig badge nicely You know, it really pop that old blue badge on your Vistalite set Oh, yeah, you know, but it was ultimately Bart. It was the sound I mean, I did get to interview John Paul Jones a number of times never got to talk to Bonham. I'm not that old, okay? and Jones Jones he told me he fondly recalled the amber Vistalite said it was just so cool to look at Bonzo playing that But I asked him about the sound of it and he said it didn't matter Bonham was loud no matter what he played he remembered Bonham occasionally a backstage warming up on those old Cardboard cases for the drums and sounding like Bonham He said he could sit there in the corner and play on his cases And you would have to state take a giant leap six or eight feet back because he was that loud It's just whatever but other drummers have said, you know, there are nice things Acoustically because everything you think you know about acrylic drums is wrong. You think they would be harsh or ringy They're not there are far fewer overtones. And in fact, so when I first bought, you know, that that used Ludwig Vistalite I put on You know, Remo pinstripe and I'm thinking, you know, I'm gonna need a little dampening, you know And they don't know no no no what you want are the thinnest clear heads possible because You know, these are loud drums, but there are no annoying Overtones and you can tune them really high up or you can tune them really loose. There's a consistency And I don't you know, it's not just me imagining this many drummers talk about they record better They mic up better live They're louder they cut through You know, it's Yeah, they're not organic, right It's the perfect drum for rock and roll because rock and roll is not organic, right? No, it's not but let me ask you this. So Now I've played I believe some newer like a DW acrylic kit just you know at a drum shop I've tapped on an old like a pink fives kit that was here in Cincinnati at Badges drum shop But so let's say one set to another zikos to fives to Ludwig in that era Even to modern times. Is there that big of a sonic difference between these? You know what I mean because because it's plastic like are you getting differences? I don't think so I don't think so not in the way that Vintage drum collectors can talk about types of wood and three ply or five ply. I don't think so I think an acrylic set is an acrylic set and the differences were just you know, Ludwig could have They were mass producing them. So there were some some quality issues You know, whereas fives when it came back on the market in the early 2000s I mean, you know Tommy Roberts bought out the name He owned a place called Tommy's drum shop in Austin, Texas and you know every band Above a certain size in the world makes it through Austin at some point, especially because of South by Southwest The big annual music festival. So, you know, everybody would make the pilgrimage to Tommy's and the fives kits He were building were beautiful the the hardware the rims The lugs every every, you know, so I have now a green Fiveset that I bought to celebrate doing this article I probably made a hundred and fifty dollars for the article and spent three grand on my five set You're a drummer, but it was a business expense part now my drummer Yeah, I and and I tell you those are the best sounding drums I've ever had and I have a I have an old slinger land set Late 50s early 60s my stepdad used to playing go-go bars. They're beautiful, you know They're the three ply with the reinforcing. I mean, they're really beautiful sounding drums And for a while I owned a Yamaha, you know Rosewood recording custom, right? This is the first real drum set. I bought new, you know, and and I don't know I'm not good enough drummer. I'm Charlie Watts or Markey Ramon So I sold that to some guy who wanted to buy two of them to combine for a Dave Matthews set And I knew it was the wrong drum set for me when he was interested, you know, I'm like Dave Matthews You know So I never miss those, you know, and I you know every time I go to the drum shop like you I'm banging on whatever's there You know, we have a great Indie mom-and-pop drum store in Chicago a Chicago drum exchange right next door to Chicago music exchange Which is where you go if you want to buy a $15,000 semi vintage Rick and backer, right? you know the drum the drum store has great, you know old and new and You know, I I've never heard anything better than the modern fives. Yeah. No, that's that's good to know and and and Tommy was dedicated to following, you know, the methods that Fibes Mach 1 had used so yeah, I'd never played 70s fives, but I can't imagine it sounded Any better than the 2000s fives. Okay, so that leads me into my question now of When they were first made obviously, it's it's the plastic It's the acrylic that would be rolled and then and then connected with the seam Which as we know the seam would oftentimes right split or break or that's where That's where things get dropped. That's the problem area, but as time went on they became more seamless I don't want to jump ahead 30 years. Yeah, no, they absolutely did that seam was harder to see Was bonded better. Yeah. Yeah, okay You're absolutely right. So technology advanced and and I was saying about this earlier I know that someone out there is thinking the same thing about the Everyone out there has seen, you know, the bones brigade stuff or the or I should say the dogtown And z-boys kind of thing where they had the skateboard wheels that became the rubber as opposed to the hard Plastic it seems like it's this era of Plastics just getting better made a lot of things in the world easier And I loved in your article about how you had the quote from the graduate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, plastics plastic is the future Yes, you know, which he doesn't follow that advice, but it was it was good advice I you know, I mean a little ancillary Note here that I didn't get into because the modern drummer only had so much space But I was talking about how acrylic drumming really drums really were the the biggest innovation We've seen in this, you know, 120 years of drums, right? There also was this brief period late 60s Mid 70s where we had the North and staccato drums. Yeah, you know those Oh, yeah I've had Roger North on the show and he referred to staccato as big underpants because they have the like yeah They were out. They were ugly. They look like big pants drums Whereas North looked more like horns and again, you have the big companies copying it, right? If you recall, I mean because I used to treat the Ludwig and Slingerland and Tama catalogs in the 70s and 80s When I was in high school as as like other kids treasured their penthouse magazines, right? I would spend hours looking at that, you know So Ludwig also, you know, not to be cut out made those for a while acrylic plastic scoops that you could put at the bottom of a Single-headed Tom, you know, and they had a brand name for it. I'm forgetting what it was but You know, oh sound projector Ludwig put the sound projector, right? It's not only do you have to carry your? Drums now you got to carry these things and they broke apparently pretty easily, you know I've heard, you know, I've recorded a couple of albums for my punk bands and What I lived in Jersey for a sort of art rock band called speed the plow and I've had recording engineers tell me how refreshing it is to to mic up a Fiberglass plastic set just because there's none of those weird Ringing I mean no moon gel, you don't need it and yet they're loud as hell, you know No overtones. No, no weird harmonics. They just are very easy to tune and And then they're ferocious Yeah, I have the studio where I'm an engineer We have a pearl wood fiberglass kit that has been there forever and I have recorded so many songs little demos whatever just on that fiberglass kit and it's just It's easy. You set it up. It sounds good all the time put new heads on it tune it up Yeah, and it's got something special to it. They're pretty heavy those the pearl ones I'm referring to are heavy drums. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what was even heavier You know not to jump ahead to the sad end of the story of the first generation of acrylic drums, but in the mid 70s, right, we have the The war in the Middle East Where was there's been so many wars since then? And it leads to the Arab oil embargo Mm-hmm and of course a key ingredient of plastic is oil, right? Yeah, and suddenly the pricing of Plastic drums shoot through the roof and it really becomes impractical Ludwig stops making fistulite You know Zikos stops Fibes stops now part of Martin you know at that point and The end, you know the era of plastic drums is done basically by 81 82 You know whatever's left in stock sells at bargain prices, right? if we could only take the wayback machine and go to when they're being phased out and by those kids new You know, you were you were telling me before we started They are the fabled idea of somebody coming up with a stash of new vintage, you know a Store full of musical instruments from 1972. I'd love it. Oh, that'd be nice You know the idea that there was still a niche market for drums that were not wood Prompted Ludwig to make a 100% stainless steel set And it only lasted two or three years and those were really super expensive But a couple of years ago I I scored one in at the last half hour of the Illinois vintage drum show Yeah, yeah, and nah that is That is a fantastic sounding set too And I love my fives, you know crystallite and I love the stainless steel Ludwig vintage and they both have a sound that to me is very different from wood drums Sure. Yeah, you know and and ideal for aggressive music punk rock or or there's a lot of stoner rock bands There were a fair number of prog players who played Acrylic in the day But but there is something when I said, you know, the non organic seems to fit rock and roll I mean, let's say there's nothing say it or write then electric guitarist sitting there without his amp Right, you know, I mean it doesn't come You know rock guitar until it's cranked through the Marshall, you know, or if you're you know Fender twin reverb if you're a little more persnickety and sensitive, right? But it's an electric music It's a non organic music and and I think to get philosophies the rock critic in me brother, you know, you know there's something about the Acrylic drums that that fit rock and roll absolutely and you see a lot of people who mix and match and take an acrylic bass drum and and it even leads to Like Orange County drums and percussion OCDP where like you'd see the jelly bean kits where they're multiple different colors I mean, yeah, that was like the blink 182 that kind of no doubt Look of for these drummers was to have the jelly bean kit with With the multiple colors. It definitely fits. They have different generations and eras which you've Definitely referred to so Yeah, it's a way to stand out. You know, it's a way to stand out on stage Exactly. And but also, you know, sonically and and visually Yeah Okay, so it ended obviously there's the oil embargo, which I find fascinating Obviously, it's reminiscent to other times World War two when there was the metal rationing people couldn't use metal boom Yeah goes to wooden hardware Little bit less serious than that obviously because it's you know acrylic. It's just a sub category of drums That's kind of the whole shebang with the wood stuff This episode is brought to you by dream symbols I want to talk a little bit about the dream symbols recycling program The recycling program is simple bring your broken or unwanted symbols all brands accepted into your local dream dealer And you can earn $1 for every inch of symbol you bring in towards the purchase of a new dream symbol For example bring in two 20 inch symbols for recycling and receive $40 off the price of a new dream symbol It's that easy they in turn take the symbols recycled and use them to create new products like the reaffects crop circles and the naughty saucers Check them out online at dream symbols calm and follow them on social media at dream symbols When I think of the 80s, I don't particularly think of too many Vista light I think of the 70s For sure, but what was going on in the 80s with acrylics? You know, I think they disappeared, you know, I think the innovation in the 80s is that electronic sets are are, you know or electronic elements the early syndromes and and You know are coming into Vogue and the Lindromes and and people are are looking to bring a different element to drumming through electronics And so I think that That that Eclipses acrylics you would think one of those manufacturers would have continued through the 80s But but there really are no new plastic drums coming on the market, you know Until people begin looking back and you know, I'm sure that that old-school kind of conservative drummers You know, we're laughing at the idea of acrylic drums in the 70s, right? But you know, they would have have you know laughed even harder and people would have laughed at them To think that by the late 90s mid 90s, you know, people were lusting after vintage acrylic You know, if they were considered fake drums to begin with right now there is you know, you know There's for a generation the fabled radio king, you know or snare or the vintage black beauty, right? And now you have people lusting after the amber Vistalite 1972 kit, you know, I love that. I love that. I Love seeing them. I would love to get a set. I feel like I see the you said it was the most popular I think under Vistalite. I see the blue Vistalites for sale the most I'd say on on Craigslist and stuff like that those seem to be yeah They were they were the biggest most popular and also, you know It wasn't just the hard hard rock drummers Karen Carpenter played a blue Vistalite set a good drummer a really good drummer and to sing as well as she sang while drumming, you know, but obviously I Obviously Richard being her brother Richard being the the sonic maestro there They didn't go to Vistalite for the hard rock attack I think they went to it for she was the front person of that band And how are we going to see her better? What's going to be more eye-catching? I think it was purely visual. There's nothing wrong with that. No, no, no, no, you know Why why would it be you know from the beginning Louis Belson was a showman buddy rich was a showman, you know Drums were part of the show and and and the biggest part they took a lot of real estate on stage You know, you look at those those turn of the century early 1900s kits where they have, you know Cowbells and wacky gongs and you know, I mean the drummer was always If you're gonna take up that much real estate give me something to look at Yeah So, um, and I know that there were some other players I know and I I can probably quickly google it, but I know slingerland made an acrylic kit at some point and I think it was very Rare, I can't remember the name. It's something you can kind of guess what these names are They have something to do with like You know being clear light or they all are crystallite. Vista light. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No and tama tama was making them At the same point. I wonder though about, you know slingerland, tama the other companies Are they subcontracting like zikos or fives drums? They're not going to get ludwig You know and putting their badge on it, you know, how many people and I'm never I I didn't get to do any interviews with folks who were making the acrylic drums in the 70s But I'm sure they would tell us You know because they took up it took a lot of room in the factory too because uh, you know ginger baker may or may not depending on the legend Have done it in the kitchen But uh, you know, the my understanding is that the drum the serious drum manufacturers were retooling pizza ovens In order to heat up the sheets of flesh Which is amazing, right? You know, because I mean think about all the you know all the tooling and the dyes and everything that that are needed for The metal parts and the wood parts to begin with and now you got to have pizza ovens on one end of the factory floor for the fiberglass Yeah, no, it's it's unbelievable and the thought of the tooling I mean the the the the companies who make their own drum shells Obviously have to have a massive amount of infrastructure for wood But then like you're saying is exactly right to get into this world of like and I'm sure you want these drums to be nice and clear You don't want Particles and little things getting in that hot plastic. So there's got to be all kinds of precautions Yeah vacuum pumps and and and uh, and I don't know at what point the dyes were added to the plastic Or were they getting it from plastic manufacturers already in those colors? Uh, but you know what you mentioned seeing a pink set pink five set at one point I mean there are weirder colors out there that that some of them might have been one offs Who knows uh, or somebody ordered it unique But the fact that you could get your rainbow vista lights, uh with three colors any of the ones they used Uh in in six different patterns. I mean that's that's really Uh a lot of variety And you know some of the the the the other super collectible besides bonham Apparently reggae drummers Really really loved having the colors of the african flag. All right, and uh Bicentennial sets were huge 1976. Sure red white and blue. So those those were super popular as well man What's crazy to me is as uh, and I'm loving learning is is I didn't know I always see them like on reverb or on ebay the different like stripe kits And uh, I never knew that though those were custom ordered because I always see different ones and I think to myself like Okay, who's standardizing these well Ludwig Ludwig. No doubt. Um, you know made uh, a bunch of them That weren't custom ordered just to have one in every drum shop, right of which there used to be so many more Um So they were probably putting them out there and who knows I really wonder You know how how when in theory Uh, when you buy a new car, you know, there's seven or eight colors And there's one you really love and yet you go to visit three or four dealers They never have that color and they say we'll order it for you and it takes nine months You know, I don't know. You got cash in pocket Uh for a drum set. I don't know if you're gonna like like wait nine months for it Or whatever. I doubt we could turn them around very quick So I don't know how many people actually custom ordered. Who knows Yeah, and Ludwig is proprietary about a lot of that sort of stuff. You know, yeah No, that's a good that's a good point where you might technically be able to but but again, it takes too long Yeah, it's just a nice idea that that in theory nice idea in theory that you could have done that Yeah, right and I and I guess if you were custom ordering you could have done like different Trios and different stripes on every one of your drums and boy that would have been some Yeah, they would have I'm sure the guy who like reads the order would be like, oh my god seriously Right, right, right. All right. So, um Well, last question here with while we're in the um in this, you know, the the phase one, uh So five's made crystallite. So then vistalite is obviously just kind of a let's just call it a ripoff on the crystallite Name, right? Yep. Okay. Yep. Yeah, I mean I I I do love Ludwig, but but Ludwig was uh, you know, they were they were A big company, right and big companies don't appreciate little companies innovating. They're gonna put their mark on it Yeah, this light's a really cool name Oh, it's awesome. But yeah, it's kind of cooler than crystallite, but No, I I agree folks got there first Yeah, I agree and another another note on fives too. That's kind of cool if everyone hasn't googled it already, but fives has some like, uh, Like they're not perfectly clear. They have almost like the like, uh, like Like showered like window glass like foggy glass. That's like kind of opaque. Um, that's not perfectly see-through But it's got like a uh, a frosted look to it is the word i'm looking for. Um, which those are super cool They are super cool. They they, you know, uh, it was always neat, you know as a music critic as a music journalist I I made 25 years in a row going down to austin south by southwest It's a real shame that tommy was not able to sustain Uh, the fives name because you know, so 550 bands would come from around the world to play over five days of showcases It's south by southwest six or eight bands a night part and you know, you go into every Club and you know, you got a back line when you got 35 minutes, right? So you'd go into every club, uh in austin And they're they're literally worth 30 or 40 and see a different vibe set on every stage It was wonderful, you know, and the and the old Country roots rock, you know, would be those beautiful, uh sets that vibes was making with the kind of, uh, You know kind of kind of like rockabilly Vibe and then the you know the alt rock or the stoner rock, uh, club would have the the the crystallites It was great. Yeah That's awesome doesn't get any better. Yeah, I'm never I keep I keep my I keep my crystallites in the rehearsal space So I don't have to play out with them ever because I don't want to carry them Now stainless steel. I mean, uh, yeah, those'll those literally would I I could throw them at a car if I got mad at somebody and they'd bounce back. Okay. Yeah That's funny. You just have to clean the fingerprints Yeah, yeah, but you know, you just windex, right? Yeah, that's a really good point I mean learned learned the hard way um, you know the absolute best way to clean acrylic drums is If you go to the auto shop, there is a line of polishes and sprays called novice novice one two three and You can get a gouge a nasty gouge, you know, let's say the the you know that I don't know the basis is helping you load off any gouges your your Plastic drum with the edge of the symbol Stand right, you know, you can Using the three polishes in order the heaviest to the lightest, which is like a windex spray You take two or three passes at that gouge with your novice polish Uh, a little bit of water a nice, uh, like the fancy car rags when you're you know, if you have a Custom car and you want to polish it and uh, and it just makes scratches and plastic disappear Disappear it's really it's really handy and even you know, and even just having the the the lightest novice Which is I'm sure it's better than windex. It's designed for all of the plastic and resin Uh car companies and like vinyl tops and stuff like that all of that. It's the right thing to clean with Interesting the stainless steel like I could probably hose them off in the backyard Yeah, but the plastic drums I'm I'm careful with No, because uh, I've learned it on some symbol episodes as well where you you think like, oh, let me just clean this off But there's even with plastics and and wraps. There's still a thin layer of like a clear coat Just kind of on top or you don't want to rub that off. There's there's things that are designed right for that Yeah, and the old jazz drummers used to say let your symbols be fully it adds to the Character, yeah, absolutely So you're calling it phase one kind of the the first, you know iteration of acrylic drums When in your opinion did they start to come back? I think it's the early 2000s, you know modern drummer thought it was enough of a trend in 2002 and I think uh, You know Ludwig had just started, uh with big fanfare announced. Vista light would be coming back initially in one color You know and uh, you know, so I think it's it's a new millennial It's a new millennial phenomenon But uh, you know fives comes back in business, uh, Ludwig and then everybody follows You know, there are there are very I don't know. Are there any manufacturers today that don't have some, uh, Plastic, I don't know. I and frankly Bart. I don't want to look into it I mean I own four drum sets now, you know, and if I was to do this article again now I'd probably wind up buying another one and nobody needs five drum sets, brother I also did a phenomenal interview with Uh, uh, there was a guy who oh, I'm not remembering his name There was an italian drummer who was a collector of ludwig and he had uh, like 800 sets And I was on vacation in italy And so I got to ride off the trip because I went and did a story on him for modern drummer Kind of made up for losing three thousand dollars by buying a new fives Uh, but he had them in these little sheds all in his, uh, village in northern Italy And he had you know, he had like one of every ludwig and he did a book on it You know was fascinating. So yeah, I guess there are people who don't believe you can have too many drum sets But that's my wife speaking right now. I know we needed a new water heater. So Yeah, real life things like that. Yeah, we had no hot water for a week, you know Yeah, I've been there. Yeah, he was a great guy great guy. We had at lunch with him We had uh, and I and he showed me all the drum sets. So Wow, that's awesome Now maybe we uh, we touch on some of those so so my experience with one of the newer brands that I saw was crush I worked at a drum shop and the guy Who owned the shop was getting these He was like if you win an acrylic drum set five piece, you know, standard sizes 22 inch kick I can get you one for four hundred dollars because he was getting them wholesale They were coming in off of uh, you know, like a barge from I guess china Somehow it never worked out and as I was always bummed that it just like they were seven months behind or something But you're absolutely right where I think now Every single brand has one tama pearl D w which I've seen the dw ones and thought hey, maybe that's an affordable way That I can get a dw kit Even though it's not. Mm-hmm. Yeah, right, right, but um, anyway that sort of uh Leads me to a question slash statement about So right now I see the price of acrylic drums as being cheaper than their wood counterparts Where I think you mentioned on the phone when we talked last week acrylic drums used to be more expensive if not As expensive uh as wooden drums. Is that the case? Yeah, yeah, you know, they they were not manufacturing to scale with wooden drums in the early 70s Uh, so they were they were you know, and as Tommy Of fives mock two said they were actually more labor intensive to make than handcrafted wood drums because fives did both Right, so they're more labor intensive and they're new so they're not making as many so initially Uh, plastic drums were more expensive than the top of the line Ludwig slingerlands rogers You know kits in the early 70s then so 1972 crude oil costs three dollars a barrel And then you have the yam Gippur war and by the end of 74 In so in the space of a year and a half 12 dollars a barrel So now the main ingredient of plexiglass fiberglass That's in 74 and I don't think the heyday really ends until if we want to say 79 I think the year that martin Uh stops making fives crystallite is probably the death knell of the first round Ludwig follows shortly thereafter Uh within months, which tells you something, you know, they were trying to keep a leg up on fives the whole time And they're ludwig so of course they had one so it's done by 79 basically done by 79 And I think it just took a couple of years from 74 and that price increase But they were more expensive than ever when they stopped manufacturing 79 And then they were pretty expensive again when they come back And I I really credit fives with bringing them back First because they proceed ludwig again Uh, they were not cheap. Yeah, you know a a standard five piece set was going to cost you about $3,000 in in 2001 2002 But now I think the prices have come down again though. I I don't want to I haven't gone shopping in a long time I don't want to be tempted Now what I've seen though is like I said the dw kit or kits like that I think when I saw it it was around like a five piece kit was like and it's very easy to google But I think it was around 1200 bucks For an acrylic kit, which you know, I just think they're so cool So it looks like I'm just googling here 1500 1600 bucks, which again is not cheap. That's fair, but You know, and I'm sure no other other brands are a little bit cheaper than You know dw and I do need to throw out there because I always talk in some form about the japanese brands I know in the 70s that there was some Copy stencil japanese drums that were acrylic Well, I'd I'd love to see one of those rob cookbooks like he's done on slingerland and ludwig on acrylic drums And they sure would be pretty to look at, you know, but uh, uh, uh, you know We've lived long enough where where they're now considered vintage and collectible Yeah, you know whereas before there was really a period I remember, you know in like the indie rock 80s 86 87 88, you know your basic punk band all they could afford was a beat-up blue Vistalight set and it'll they look like hell they were scratched to hell You know, there had been so many of them dumped on the market and then nobody wanted them You know, yeah, and now I think people have you know taken the novice one two three polish and restored them gotten the scratches out You know one thing that we haven't you know, it probably hasn't been long enough But when you talk about radio king, you know snares or something From the 20s, right or those three ply uh maple reinforcement hoops, right? We know wood ages wood is organic right, but I Would bet you that a 1971 crystal light or Vistalight sounds exactly like a 2022 Vistal Acrylic don't age Yeah, yeah, exactly But I do know that we talked about it before about how before it was rolled And kind of joined with a seam where I believe now what they're doing and I don't know you probably know better than me But it's it's a long tube of acrylic That's factory, you know, I guess there's just no seam and then it's it's sliced You know almost like a long God, what's one of those doughnut or those cakes where they just cut it down like a tube like a war or italian pasta Like my grandmother would make yes zee. Yes exactly. Uh, yeah Yeah, but I wonder about that. I mean because they're you know with different sizes of drums I I bet there's some sort of heat polymer Join now as opposed to uh, I mean at some point, you know that there's got to be a join, right It play plastic isn't manufactured in a tube shape um Yeah, I know that on the old amber vista lights, which I stupidly sold at one point. I got divorced You know, you could see the seams really You know and and Ludwig, you know The badges were to the front and and the hardware was to the back And so they were pretty well obscured on the bass drum was on the bottom But my fives unless you're right on top of them. You can't see where that seam is Yeah, that's good to know. I mean Boy, they are collectible. So I mean, uh, obviously if people are out there looking, um Like jim said, obviously zikos and I want to mention too that So, uh for the the podcast there's a zikos episode that's going to be happening. That's very specific Obviously, uh, jim's done a great job of like talking about these these brands, but With anything you can go way deeper. So I know I'm gonna do one Specifically about zikos and fives with, um, Tommy That has been mentioned on this show, um To get even more nitty gritty details about those specific brands, but, um Wow, okay. So it sounds like we're as we're kind of close to the end here that that you know, we're in, uh, another generation of of Of acrylic drums because I see them all the time. I mean, I see them constantly, you know Old, new people use them Yeah, yeah, and as I said, I for certain genres, uh, I think that they're Fantastic, uh, you know, I don't know if you'd want to play old country, you know on a on a Acrylic drum set. I don't know if you'd want to play jazz on an acrylic drum set Um, but anything, you know, uh where you're competing with the amplifiers. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know Look not for nothing not for nothing. Do we think a bonnum always as synonymous? You know, it's it's uh, that was the sound and its song remains the same the concert film and it's uh, you know And and and like I said John Paul Jones said he could play the trap cases and and sound like bonnum but You know something about the aggression and the boomingness of those drums the volume and the power You you do not have to you know, I've been in recording situations where I've had engineers tell me, you know Hit the drums harder. We're really trying to get uh, and that's that's when I used I have a purple wood wig wood set That's using that set. I've never had anybody say that with the stainless steel or the uh, uh, especially the the the plastic I don't have to hit harder and uh, I'm plenty loud It's what it's all about. Yeah, exactly and and another thing that's there there's the um, uh, not to keep talking about dw but there's the other uh We're talking about different uh Techniques to make drums dw made that concrete snare which was interesting Which I know I've I've seen a few that I think weighs a ton It seems to sound really good that I've what I've heard on youtube I miss that one It's a concrete snare Wow, that's kind of neat. That's that's a neat idea Well, why shouldn't you know, I mean, it's it's where we're such Luddites in some ways. I mean really we are the the descendants of the first drummer was a, you know Neanderthal banging on a hollowed out wooden log. No doubt, you know Um, but but it's it is really striking when you see the innovations in especially on the electronics ends of uh, of keyboards and and and guitars and basses, you know, uh, so much innovation Uh, and yet drums, you know Two kinds still to this day. Maybe three if we count concrete, but how about a whole concrete set? Wow, unless it's a permanent back line at a club that that would be fatal. Yeah. Yeah, you'd fall through the floor and fellow, uh fellow, uh acrylic drummers, uh Do not skimp on the really quality carrying cases Because that that is just what you know, it's not it's not dropping the drum even It's it's it's that thing where the bass player knocks over the cymbal stand And the the the lug nut, you know scratches your drum You know can happen, but I've never had a problem with a bearing edge. That's interesting. Um Man, okay, Jim. Well, um, yeah, this has just been awesome And it's so cool that uh, you've been able to uh your article from 2002 That's what I love about all of this and I think the podcast kind of falls in this category of uh, it doesn't Like history doesn't change your article is still It's still very relevant. You know what? I mean the 1970s history isn't really changing that much. Um, so it's it's it's All very true today. No, no if anything, you know, we're just going to have uh the historian types Uh dig deeper, you know and have even more access than I had for one piece in modern drum Which is great, you know when we saw that happen Nobody was interested in the history of drums at all until people like rob cook begin, you know Forwarding that and that's great. And now there's great scholarship out there. So, you know, eventually it'll be acrylics turn Yeah Someday and then they'll probably discover I got six things wrong in my modern drummer article But uh, but it was it was difficult at all to find anybody who knew anything in 2002 about acrylic drums All right. Well as we wrap up here per usual, I want to say that Jim has been kind enough to hang out and is going to do a patreon You know 10 15 minute bonus episode with me and we're going to talk about Uh in his kind of extensive career here, we're going to talk about uh, some of the cool interviews He's had with some drummers and musicians and uh, some drum related stuff Maybe hear more about that ginger baker experience where he's um, you know Talking about olive farming. Yeah talking about olives. So um, and of course, I want to give a shout out to mr Mark Fullerton who has sent many emails that are great suggestions And really appreciate him connecting me with jim and finding that article. Um So jim, where can people find you? Where's a good, you know, uh, if they want to find your podcast slash radio show Tell us all about that. Yeah, you know sound opinions.org Uh, you can you can uh podcast where on all the major platforms, uh, apple and and spotify But our website you can you can stream directly from there join the mail list We're going to be taping our eighth hundredth Uh weekly episode soon and we're on in most. Wow Public radio markets across the country Geez, that's awesome. I'm a huge npr. Yeah, no, I know I know public radio is uh, it never talks down to its listeners You know, it is a smart and vital part of being, um, you know plugged in Yeah Yeah, I've I've worked on uh, I recorded or I should say I streamed from the studio a guest uh on 1a Obviously, which is very popular npr show twice. It was a guy who was uh, a Uh proponent of teaching uh teachers how to use guns in the classroom to protect the teachers So that was a that was a hot button topic So I just sat there and I was like, yeah, I'm not going to get into this Don't you know face don't betray any emotion right now. Yeah, exactly Um, all right, so then jim and I are going to hop over and do the bonus episode So if you guys want to hear more from uh, jim D regatus then head to drumhistorypodcast.com and click the patreon link and Couple bucks a month you can get a bonus episode every week in early episodes and all that stuff. So Um, jim, thanks so much for being on here and sharing your knowledge and uh your your love of acrylic drums Oh, it's my pleasure. Absolutely If you like this podcast find me on social media at drumhistory 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