I've been wanting to make my own custom snare drums. Hopefully, when I've accomplished that, I can move on to entire sets and marching drums. I just want suggestions on materials, styles, sounds. How much do certain items cost, and where should I get different materials. Thanks for all the help.

Check out DrumMaker

thanks man

no problem. Good luck with the drums!

Let me know how this works out for you. I would like to see what how you might be able to compare to Pearl, Dynasty, Yamaha and Premier especially in terms of your marching snare drums.

Hey man that sounds really interesting, definitely something I'd want to do if I had the money. Let me know how it works out and what you learned.

You can source shells from drummaker.com , but there really aren't a whole lot of off-the-shelf options for marching snare parts. You're going to need rims, tension rings, posts or lugs, snare strainers, etc. Unless you've got the machining facilities to fabricate them, you'll need to buy parts for Dynasty/Pearl/Yamaha/etc. drums, and that's going to ultimately cost you more than simply buying their drums.

I think it would actually be easier (or at least less expensive) to start with basses and tenors since you can get all the parts off-the-shelf.

Here's my recent project!

I converted my HTS 700 Pipe drum!

14 x 3.5 Keller Shell.. Nickel STrainer and Puresound wires!

Sounds amazing!- Also 8 pounds lighter, and sounds much crisper abd brighter!

Nathan McLaren
http://www.nathanmclaren.com
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Toronto Police Pipe Band
CADRE
I.A.T.D Member

Thanks to all of you
I've been making some tenor shells lately and i was wondering what type of lugs and heads to put on

Well,

I didn't do a full custom drum, but I did rewrap my new 14" drum. Here's a picture of it. The original wrap was just a plain stock white wrap.