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Last week I wrote about Greg Gaylord’s custom snare drums. I subsequently visited his shop — I needed to get my own drums repaired, and I wanted to get a closer look at those gorgeous snares.

Greg hand-builds “segment shell” drums. In a nutshell, this means gluing short segments of wood into rings, then gluing rings together into a cylinder, and then milling a shell out of the cylinder. Such shells are strong, perfectly round, and visually beautiful. And they retain the sonic characteristics of the wood from which they’re made, as evidenced by the different sounds of the 33 snare drums in his snare gallery.

Greg then goes on to hand-mill low-mass, minimal-contact lugs from brass because brass lugs sound better. He cuts his own bearing edges, and does all his own finish work on the shells. It’s no wonder the drums are beautiful; he performs every step himself. This is beyond meticulous. This is art.

Ironically, Tama sells a series of snare drums called Artwood. They’re made of plywood. In contrast, Gaylord makes what are very likely the nicest drums on the planet. There just isn’t anybody else doing what he does.

When I visited, he was getting ready to mill a 16x16 floor tom of salvaged Claro walnut, aka California Black Walnut. (What to buy for the rhythm section that has everything? How about a matching Ken Smith bass? I hope 5 strings is enough.) The pictured shell will probably spend eight hours on the lathe; there’s a lot of material to remove, a tiny bit at a time. Judging from the thickness of the cylinder’s walls, about 3/4 of the shell material will end up on the shop floor. (Greg Gaylord makes not only amazing drums, but also exotic hardwood dust.)

To give you an idea of what a segment-style tom shell looks like when finished, here’s a 12-inch tom shell, also in walnut, fresh off the lathe. (The real tom, unlike the picture, is in focus.) This shell will need bearing edges, finish sanding, paint, lugs, heads, rims, and then about five more toms in incrementally bigger and smaller sizes, and then I’ll be right over to pick it up.

My sense is that snare drums form the backbone of Gaylord’s business. Here are ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots, showing a raw 14'' shell, and a finished 6x14'' drum (in cocobolo). The finished drum is a thing of wonder. It’s the best-sounding snare drum I’ve ever played.

The August 2004 issue of Modern Drummer contains a review of a segment-shell jazz kit, made of cherry wood. I haven’t seen the review but I find it telling that the magazine didn’t want to send the drums back.