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Makers

Every maker, largest catalogue first.

7 makers

  • Vic Firth

    Sticks and mallets from a symphony timpanist

    Models: 9

    Vic Firth was principal timpanist of the Boston Symphony and started making mallets because he could not buy what he wanted. The company he built became the largest drumstick maker in the world, with the pair-matching-by-weight-and-pitch process as its selling point and the American Classic 5A as its default.

  • Promark

    The stick maker that brought oak to the market

    Models: 3

    Herb Brochstein founded Promark in Houston and was first to bring Japanese white oak sticks to American drummers. Now part of D'Addario, the company is known for the FireGrain heat-treated hickory process and the Rebound and Forward balance families.

  • Vater Percussion

    Massachusetts stick maker

    Models: 3

    Vater grew out of a Boston drum shop and makes sticks in the United States with a large signature catalogue and a set of house models — Power 5A, Fusion, Manhattan 7A — that many drummers use without knowing the brand's history.

  • Regal Tip

    Calato's Niagara Falls stick works; inventor of the nylon tip

    Models: 3

    Joe Calato patented the nylon drumstick tip in the 1950s, which changed how cymbals sounded on record. Regal Tip still makes sticks and brushes in Niagara Falls, and its wire brushes are a professional standard.

  • Innovative Percussion

    Nashville maker of concert and marching mallets

    Models: 2

    Innovative Percussion specialises in the implements the drum set catalogues ignore: keyboard mallets by hardness, timpani mallets by core, and the marching sticks and mallets that a corps line is specified around.

  • Mike Balter Mallets

    Keyboard percussion mallets from Illinois

    Models: 2

    Mike Balter has made yarn, cord, and rubber mallets for marimba, vibraphone, and xylophone since the early 1980s, with a numbered hardness system that has become a common shorthand in percussion scores and teaching.

  • Ahead

    Aluminium-core sticks and drum cases

    Models: 1

    Ahead sticks are an aluminium alloy core inside a replaceable polyurethane sleeve, which makes them last far longer than wood and transmit noticeably less shock. The same company makes the armour-plated cases seen on touring kits.