Hand Percussion · Makers

Maker

Remo

Models: 15 · Categories: 3

Remo Belli's Mylar drumhead, introduced in the late 1950s, ended the era of calfskin and made drums that stayed in tune through weather and travel. The company went on to build world percussion with synthetic shells and heads — djembes, frame drums, and the tunable Roto Toms — and remains the largest drumhead maker in the world.

Maker

Latin Percussion

Models: 12 · Categories: 1

Martin Cohen founded LP in 1964 after failing to buy decent congas in New York, and the company effectively industrialised Afro-Cuban percussion: consistent, tunable, durable instruments where the tradition had relied on hide, rope, and luck. LP hardware — the Jam Block, the Cyclops tambourine, the Aspire student line — is standard equipment worldwide.

Maker

Gon Bops

Models: 3 · Categories: 1

Mariano Bobadilla began building congas in Los Angeles in the 1950s and the drums became the West Coast standard in Latin jazz. The brand went dormant and was revived, now under Drum Workshop, with the original shell profiles reissued.

Maker

Rhythm Tech

Models: 3 · Categories: 1

Rhythm Tech's contribution is redesign rather than tradition: the crescent-shaped tambourine that removed the dead hand position, mountable shakers, and hardware-friendly versions of instruments that had always been held.

Maker

Toca Percussion

Models: 3 · Categories: 1

Toca covers congas, bongos, djembes, and cajons at prices that put a serviceable instrument in a school or a rehearsal room. The Freestyle series, with synthetic shells and heads, is the line most often seen where instruments have to survive being moved.

Maker

Cooperman

Models: 3 · Categories: 2

Cooperman builds historically accurate rope-tension field drums and fifes for reenactment and early music, and a widely used line of frame drums and bodhráns. The shop has been in Vermont for three generations.

Maker

Panyard

Models: 2 · Categories: 1

Panyard builds steel pans in Ohio, including chromatically tuned instruments for school programmes and the Jumbie Jam, a small student pan that made the instrument teachable outside Trinidad.