Hand built and hand assembled, Mapex offers some of the finest drum products available today. Take your Mapex drum kit on the road, on stage, or in the studio with complete confidence that your style and creativity will not only be perfectly reproduced, but enhanced with that distinctive Mapex sound. To find out more about Mapex see about Mapex Drums.

About Mapex Drums
Every Mapex product is hand built and hand assembled in Tianjin, China. Mapex employs over 100 artisans who skillfully apply their talents to create some of the greatest drum gear around. Mapex has earned a reputation for designing, engineering and building the highest quality acoustic drums. In fact, Mapex is one of the only companies of its kind to have received ISO9001 certification, the world's standard for manufacturing excellence.

Building great drums means selecting only the finest wood to create a great product. The expertise of the Mapex Professional Wood Grading Team selects only the finest raw materials to build its drums. Premium grade hardwoods such as Maple, Walnut, Birch, and Basswood are hand-selected from worldwide sources and are then matched by the skilled experts at Mapex to ensure that every drum they produce is of the best quality and gives you the distinctive Mapex sound.

Mapex not only makes you sound great, but makes you look great, too. On all of the painted drums, Mapex finish experts hand apply an eight-coat, hand-rubbed, high-gloss lacquer to each drum shell. The durable Mapex finishes are easy to maintain and will help make you the envy of your drumming community.

Every Mapex drum, regardless of price, is build to exacting specifications. The people that make Mapex drums are the best at what they do and they take pride in their ability to get the job done. In the end, you have a drum that you can take on the road, on a stage, or in the studio with complete confidence that your style and creativity will not be only perfectly reproduced, but enhanced. You'll ultimately take as much pride in owning a Mapex drum as the expert builders did when it was made.

At Drum Workshop, "The Drummer's Choice" is more than a slogan, it's a fact. After more than thirty years of innovation and tireless dedication to improving the way drum products are made, DW drums, pedals and hardware are the standard by which all others are measured. In 2000 DW created Pacific Drums and Percussion (PDP) to meet the demand for entry to mid-level players. Read more about DW and PDP.

About DW and PDP Drums
At Drum Workshop, "The Drummer's Choice" is more than a slogan, it's a fact. After more than thirty years of innovation and tireless dedication to improving the way drum products are made, DW drums, pedals and hardware are the standard by which all others are measured. To get here, it takes more than a working knowledge of the instrument or a few good ideas; it takes a true passion for designing and manufacturing the very best. "It's remarkable that in our 31st year, the excitement level of coming to work is every bit as much now as when we started," DW Founder and President Don Lombardi says.

It all began in 1972 when Don, at age 26, opened a small teaching studio in Santa Monica, Calif. He called the studio Drum Workshop, offering both private lessons and monthly workshops. "My fascination with drums started at 12 with a neighborhood teacher at a local music store," Don recalls. "Over the years, I had such great experiences with renowned teachers that as my love for playing drums grew, so did my love for learning and teaching about drums."

Seeing an ad for Drum Workshop in the Yellow Pages, John Good, now DW's Vice President, signed up for lessons at age 17 to improve his drumming and reverse what he refers to as "bad drumming habits." "After three months of lessons, Don approached me and said, 'You know, I've had lots of successful students. I don't think you're going to be one of them'," John says laughing. "So I said, 'Great%u2026now what are we going to do?'" Realizing that overhead was eating up his profits, Don brought in investors and additional teachers and began selling sticks, books and drums to help subsidize the expenses. Hiring John as a part-time sales manager, the two spent hours discussing different ways to improve the art of drumming through improving drum products. "That's how the spark and enthusiasm got started," John recalls. "We would talk for hours about our ideas for creating better products. Before we knew it, we were working together."

Out of these brainstorms came the first DW product: Don's new design for a height-adjustable trap-case seat. Selling about a dozen seats a month, John quit his day job and went to work full-time for Don. "After teaching all day, we would move the drum sets to the side and bring out the tables to make the seats," Don remembers. "Then I'd usually leave for my playing job, and John would stay into the night to build the seats and fill the orders."

When DW received a purchase order for 100 seats from Camco Drum Co., Don and John realized that they had an innovative product that would sell. Thirty years later, DW is now offering a new version of the trap-case adjustable seat, made out of a lighter weight material, called the 6100 Adjustable Trap-Case Seat. "I always dreamed about creating a lighter weight seat, but we didn't have the money to do it back then," Don says. "I'm as confident about this new seat as I was when we made our first design." Borrowing most of the money from his parents and some from outside investors, Don purchased Camco's tooling and reintroduced the Camco 5000 nylon strap bass drum pedal under the DW name. The pedal was refined to improve consistency, quietness, smoothness and adjustability of its mechanical operation. As the pedal was rapidly becoming "the drummer's choice," Don continued to search for ways to further improve it. The addition of the Chain & Sprocket drive system in 1980 not only vastly improved the DW pedal, but also helped set it apart from others on the market. Three years later, DW introduced a double bass drum pedal that incorporated a unique linkage with universal joints. DW's 5002 Double Pedal not only filled a need and solidified DW's position in the market as innovators, it ushered in a whole new era in drumming since, for the first time, single bass drum players could now use both feet to create new rhythms and increase speed.

Throughout the '80s, DW created other innovative DW hardware, such as the rotating two-leg 5500T and the remote (cable) 5502LB hi-hat stands, to meet the needs of DW Pedal endorsers like Travis Barker, Abe Laboriel Jr., Vinnie Colaiuta, Gary Novak and Carter Beauford. As Don was developing DW Pedals and Hardware, John was on the road building his expertise as a drum technician. "Even though I wasn't a professional player, I always had an ear for drums and a knack for fixing them," he says. "I wound up on the road with bands like Earth, Wind and Fire and Frank Zappa. As I was out there tuning drums, I would find out what did and didn't work. I then came back and used that knowledge I was gaining to improve our products."

As a drum technician, John also discovered that each drum has a unique range where it sounds its best, eventually leading him to create DW's unique Timbre Matching system. "I found out that everything about a drum's shell construction, shell size, bearing edges, heads, hardware and finishing individually and collectively affects the quality of a drum's sound," John says. "Don and I began making a few sets a month, always concentrating on perfecting each one of these acoustically critical elements. "As I learned about each drum's timbre, or tonal range where the drum sounds its best, I became extremely interested in trying to control the timbre of the shell and, in doing so, improving the balance of the entire kit," John continues. "We later called this process 'Timbre Matching' and I'm proud to say that DW's 'Timbre Matching' caused a wholesale change in the way drummers think about their drums. I'm also extremely proud that every set we make today is made with the same care and attention to detail as when we were only making a few sets each month."

By the '80s, with endorsements by the world's top drummers, an expanding dealer network and a strong marketing campaign, DW's full line of top-quality bass drum pedals and hi-hat stands had created a unique market position for the small American company. Meanwhile, DW Drums were starting to attract attention throughout the drumming world as well. To accommodate the increased demand for its hardware products, DW doubled its manufacturing space, moving to Newbury Park, Calif. "I remember being on the road with Jonathan Moffett and Madonna in 1987 and calling the shop to check in," John recalls. "Don said, 'You need to come home. If we're going to make this thing happen, it needs to be right now.' When you hear that in someone's voice, you basically pack up and follow your heart."

"One of the things that helped convince me that we might have a chance with the drums was when Tommy Lee (Motley Crue) came into the shop to have his pedals tuned up," Don adds. "While he was waiting, he sat down at the set of drums John had in his office. He started playing and wouldn't stop; he was amazed at how the drums sounded. A light then went on in my head that Tommy Lee represented a generation of drummers who hadn't experienced handcrafted drums. "A short time later, Tommy bought a kit from us. That was March 7, 1989. I remember the date because it was such a big event that I made a photocopy of the check, which I still have to this day. He was endorsing another company at the time, but within a year, he became an official DW Drum endorser." With Tommy joining Jim Keltner, Chad Wackerman, Larrie Londin and other high-profile players, DW produced their first serious drum catalog and went to the January 1990 National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show, hoping to interest a handful of their top pedal dealers to each take one drum kit. "At the end of the first day of the show, my son and sales manager, Chris, pulled John and me aside and told us that we had a real problem," Don says. "Chris had taken orders for 60 sets and it was only the first day of the show. We spent the rest of the year trying to catch up on orders before the next NAMM show. Fortunately, most of our customers have hung in there with us."

Since its first debut at NAMM, DW has pioneered the Delta Tri-Bearing pedal system featuring the patented Delta ball-bearing hinge, the Edge brass/maple snare drum, the concept of smaller F.A.S.T. tom-tom sizes, the Woofer Bass Drum Tone Enhancer and the True-Pitch Tuning System. In addition, DW has perfected a wide variety of Lacquer, Satin Oil and FinishPly drum finish choices. Today, drummers such as Sheila E., Terry Bozzio, Neil Peart, Marco Minnemann, Gary Novak, and Zoro, along with drummers of popular acts such as Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Dixie Chicks, Incubus, Mana, Queens of the Stone Age, Missy Elliott, Avril Lavigne and so many more have chosen to play DW Drums, Pedals and Hardware exclusively.

To accommodate an increasing need for space, DW moved to its current facility in Oxnard, Calif., in 2000. That same year, DW created a new line of drums called Pacific Drums and Percussion to meet the demand for entry to mid-level players. The new line still uses some custom techniques, but primarily uses computerized machinery to cut costs and reduce steps to create high-quality drums in large quantities. DW moved most production of Pacific drums to a DW-run factory in Ensenada, Mexico, in 2002. Pacific Drums have now made DW's innovation and quality available to a larger market, while still maintaining the reputation of DW drums as high-end unique instruments.

"While Pacific kits are high-quality, they're not high-priced because they're not custom," Don says. "With Pacific, you're not so much selling high-end features, as mu

Gretsch has been manufacturing quality drums for over 100 years. Today the list of drummers playing Gretsch Drums is extensive including Rob Bourdon of Linkin Park, Cindy Blackman, Vinnie Colaiuta, Phil Collins, and Steve Ferrone. With a reputation for precision and quality, Gretsch has a drum kit that is sure to please drummers of just about any style and budget. For more information about Gretsch see about Gretsch Drums.

About Gretsch Drums
In 1883, Friedrich Gretsch, an immigrant from Germany, founded a small drum shop in Brooklyn, NY that would create his dynasty lasting to this day. Yet Friedrich Gretsch died unexpectedly in 1895 before he could see it bloom. Energetic as he was enterprising, Fred Gretsch, Sr. built the Gretsch Manufacturing Company on a reputation for precision and quality, making Gretsch Drums one of the finest drums available. Two decades after he had assumed direction as the boy in knickers, he moved the operation to a mammoth 10 story building at 60 Broadway in Brooklyn, where it remained until the company moved to Cincinnati, Ohio in 1972.

Fred Gretsch, Jr. managed the operations briefly, then left the company to serve as a commander in the Navy, and Bill Gretsch became president. Duke Kramer recalls, "Bill was a man with a subtle talent for inspiring people to do their best and a genius for constructive counsel. His sense of humor was irresistible. When he passed away in 1948, a legion of individuals felt they lost their best friend." Command of Gretsch Drums was again passed to Fred Gretsch, Jr., and the Navy veteran led the company into a new age of prosperity: the age of rock. It was the explosion of the music market begun by Elvis Presley and continued by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and others, and many artists of the day played Gretsch Drums, such as Charlie Watts.

In 1967, the Gretsch Manufacturing Company was sold to Baldwin and a then, enterprising young Fred Gretsch vowed to return the company to the family. Eighteen years later, Gretsch became family owned once again. The great-grandson of Friedrich Gretsch made good on his vow and still leads the Gretsch company today. Today the list of drummers playing Gretsch Drums is extensive including Rob Bourdon of Linkin Park, Cindy Blackman, Vinnie Colaiuta, Phil Collins, and Steve Ferrone.For music instruments click here