Drum Kits

Arco internal taxonomy

WFL Drum Company

After selling the Ludwig name to Conn, William F. Ludwig built drums under his own initials until he bought the name back in the 1950s. WFL drums are Ludwig drums by every measure except the badge, which is why they are collected as seriously and priced a little lower.

Camco

Camco built drums in Oaklawn, Illinois, and later Chanute, Kansas, for barely two decades, but its bass drum pedal became one of the most copied designs in percussion: Drum Workshop bought the tooling and it became the DW 5000. Original Oaklawn-badge kits are collectors' items.

Trixon

Trixon built conventional drums well and unconventional ones memorably: the Speedfire kit's single bass drum shell was divided internally into two tuned chambers, and the Telstar had a conical bass drum. The originals are rarer than their photographs suggest.

Canopus

Canopus builds in Tokyo with an unusually explicit vintage brief: thin shells, reinforcement rings, and a parts catalogue — bearing edges, hoops, snare wires — sold to drummers rebuilding other makers' drums. The Zelkova and Yaiba lines are its best known.

Rogers Drums

Rogers grew out of a nineteenth-century New Jersey leather business into the drum company that defined mid-century American hardware. The Swiv-O-Matic mounting system and the Dyna-Sonic snare — with its floating snare frame — were copied for decades. The brand passed through several owners after the 1960s and has been revived more than once.

Ayotte Drums

Ray Ayotte's drums were built with a keyhole tom mount that suspended the shell from the hoop rather than piercing it, and with maple shells cut thin. The company changed hands in the 2000s; original Vancouver-era kits are sought after.

British Drum Company

Founded by drum builders and a former Premier engineer, the British Drum Company builds shells in Merseyside with a deliberately British materials list — birch, maple, and the Palladium and Legend lines — and hardware designed in-house rather than sourced.

A&F Drum Co.

Ramy Antoun's A&F builds drums that look like hardware-store objects and sound like nothing else: raw rolled brass, copper, and aluminum shells, whitewashed maple, and the small Pancake and Field Drum formats. The finishes are left to patina rather than plated.

Pork Pie Percussion

Pork Pie is a small California shop known for loud finishes, oversized bass drums, and snares in unusual materials — including a much-photographed series wrapped in glass glitter and one in patent leather. The Little Squealer piccolo snares are the volume sellers.

Dixon

Dixon has made hardware for a long list of better-known brands and sells under its own name as well. The PP series pedals and the Little Roomer compact kits are the products most often seen outside its OEM work.

Natal Drums

Natal started in London making congas and bongos and became a familiar name on British stages before moving into kits. Marshall bought the brand in 2010 and reintroduced it with maple, birch, and acrylic shells.

Taye Drums

Taye was founded by an industry veteran with a factory background and made its name on hardware detail at mid-market prices — notably the SlideTrack tom mount, which lets a tom move along a rail rather than swing on a ball.

Percussion Instruments

Instruments sounded by striking, shaking, scraping, or related percussive action.