Models
27 models
-
WFL Super Classic
The same drums, the other badge
Drum kit · United States
Built while Conn held the Ludwig name, WFL kits are Ludwig drums in everything but the badge — same shells, same lugs, same factory, same man. They trade a little below their Ludwig equivalents for no reason a drummer can hear.
-
Deagan Vibraharp
The instrument that became the vibraphone
Vibraphone · United States
Deagan's vibraharp added motor-driven rotating discs in the resonators to a set of tuned metal bars, producing the pulsing sustain that defines the vibraphone. The instrument as it exists today is essentially Deagan's design.
-
Camco Oaklawn
The Illinois-built kits collectors chase
Drum kit · United States
Camco's Oaklawn-badge drums, built in Illinois before the company moved to Kansas, are the most sought of the brand: thin maple shells, minimal hardware, and a following far larger than the production numbers justify.
-
Leedy Broadway Standard
Pre-war American professional snare
Percussion · United States
The Broadway Standard was Leedy's professional snare through the 1920s and 1930s, and its mechanical strainer designs are the ancestors of most of what followed.
-
Slingerland Radio King
Solid one-ply maple shell, cut from a single plank
Percussion · United States
The Radio King's shell is one piece of steam-bent solid maple rather than laminated plies, and the drum's crack — dry, loud, and quick to decay — is the sound of American swing drumming. It has been reissued repeatedly and copied constantly.
-
Sequential TOM
A cheaper Drumtraks with programmable tuning
Drum machine · United States
TOM was Sequential's budget machine: fewer voices than Drumtraks, tape sound-loading, and a following among people who like their drum machines slightly wrong.
-
Sequential Drumtraks
Sequential Circuits' sampled drum machine
Drum machine · United States
Drumtraks put thirteen sampled voices, individual tuning, and MIDI into a machine aimed squarely at the LinnDrum, and its chips can be swapped for other sounds — which is why no two are quite alike now.
-
Linn 9000
Drum machine and MIDI sequencer in one
Drum machine · United States
The 9000 combined sampled drums, velocity-sensitive pads, and a 32-track MIDI sequencer, and its sampling option arrived as an upgrade. It was ambitious enough to help bankrupt the company, and its ideas went straight into the MPC.
-
Oberheim DX
The DMX with fewer voices and the same character
Drum machine · United States
The DX carried the DMX's sound into a smaller, cheaper machine with six voices and swappable sound chips, and shares its reputation among people who own both.
-
Slingerland Modern Solo
The Krupa-era outfit
Drum kit · United States
Slingerland's professional outfit through the swing years, sold around the Radio King snare and the endorsement that came with it. Original Modern Solo kits in white marine pearl are among the most photographed drums of the century.
-
Oberheim DMX
The drum machine of early hip-hop
Drum machine · United States
The DMX sampled real drums like the LM-1 but sounded harder and cost less, with individual outputs and tuning per voice. Run-DMC, Afrika Bambaataa, New Order, and Davy DMX — who took his name from it — made it the defining rhythm box of the early 1980s.
-
Ludwig Downbeat
The small kit of the 1960s
Drum kit · United States
A 20" bass drum, a 12" tom, and a 14" floor tom — the configuration Ringo Starr played and the one every jazz and small-club drummer bought. Its size is the reason 1960s records sound the way they do, and the reason the format came back.
-
Alesis HR-16
Sixteen-bit drums at a garage-band price
Drum machine · United States
The HR-16 put forty-nine sixteen-bit samples and a proper sequencer into a machine costing a few hundred dollars, and made a decent-sounding drum machine ordinary equipment rather than a studio purchase.
-
Gretsch Round Badge Snare
Three-ply maple with die-cast hoops
Percussion · United States
The Round Badge era snare pairs the same silver-sealed three-ply shell as the kits with die-cast hoops, giving a dry, focused crack that sits under a cymbal without fighting it.
-
LinnDrum
The LM-1 made affordable, and everywhere
Drum machine · United States
The LinnDrum (LM-2) cut the LM-1's price by more than half and sold ten times as many. Its snare, handclap, and cabasa are so recorded that hearing them now dates a track to within a couple of years.
-
Gretsch Round Badge
"That great Gretsch sound"
Drum kit · United States
Round Badge kits — named for the badge shape used until about 1971 — pair three-ply maple and gum shells with silver-sealed interiors and die-cast hoops. The dry, woody tone is the sound of American jazz drumming, and Art Blakey, Tony Williams, and Elvin Jones all played them.
-
E-mu SP-12
Sampling drum machine, and the SP-1200's parent
Drum machine · United States
The SP-12 let a producer sample their own drums into a twelve-bit machine with a sequencer, and its Turbo version added enough memory to be usable. Everything the SP-1200 is famous for starts here.
-
Gretsch Progressive Jazz
The bebop configuration
Drum kit · United States
An 18" bass drum with a 12" tom and a 14" floor tom: small, quick, and pitched high enough to sit under a ride cymbal rather than compete with it. The configuration is named for the music it was built for.
-
Ludwig Super Classic
The four-piece that defined American rock drumming
Drum kit · United States
A 22" bass drum with two toms, in three-ply mahogany and poplar with maple reinforcement rings — thin, resonant shells that are loud without being hard. Along with the Downbeat, this is the kit most 1960s and 1970s American records were made on.
-
Deagan Tower Chimes
Tuned tubular bells for buildings
Concert percussion · United States
Deagan built tuned chimes for churches and civic buildings as well as for orchestras, and many of those installations are still ringing.
-
Deagan Orchestra Bells
The reference glockenspiel bars
Glockenspiel · United States
Deagan's orchestra bells are still preferred by many players over anything made since, and old sets are maintained and re-cased rather than replaced.
-
Slingerland Buddy Rich Outfit
The endorsement kit of the big band era's loudest drummer
Drum kit · United States
Slingerland catalogued a Buddy Rich configuration for decades, and the association — like Krupa's before it — did as much for the brand as any shell specification.
-
Camco Aristocrat
Camco's professional wood snare
Percussion · United States
The Aristocrat was Camco's standard professional snare, a thin maple shell with the company's own strainer, and one of the drums whose reputation kept the brand's name alive after the factory closed.
-
Slingerland Radio King Outfit
The swing-era Slingerland kit
Drum kit · United States
Radio King outfits paired the solid-shell snare with maple toms and bass drums, and Gene Krupa's endorsement made them the most visible drums in America through the late 1930s and 1940s.
-
Slingerland Artist Model
Three-ply Slingerland snare of the 1960s and 1970s
Percussion · United States
The Artist Model was Slingerland's mainstream professional snare after the solid-shell era: three-ply maple and mahogany with a reinforcement ring, and the company's clam-shell strainer.
-
Rogers Londoner
The larger 1970s Rogers configurations
Drum kit · United States
The Londoner sets were Rogers' answer to the growing kits of the 1970s, offered in numbered configurations that ran up to double bass drums and five toms.
-
Rogers Holiday
The 1960s American kit with Swiv-O-Matic mounts
Drum kit · United States
Holiday kits carried Rogers' Swiv-O-Matic ball-and-socket mounting, which let a tom be positioned in ways competitors' hardware could not, and thin maple shells with reinforcement rings. The Cleveland- and Dayton-badged drums are the ones collectors chase.