Birch
Birch drum shells are probably the most common ones on the market today. Birch trees are abundant, which allows the wood to be sold at a lower price. You can find both low-end and high-end birch drum sets, simply because it is an easy wood to find and work with.
Birch wood is especially known for it’s tonal qualities, with peaks in the high and low end frequencies. Birch drums tend to sound full and round, with plenty of projection.
As a standard for wood drum sets, going with birch drum shells is a sound choice.
Maple
Maple drum shells are the typical alternative to birch. Maple trees can be found just as easily as birch, but are sold for slightly higher price.
Maple is a much harder and dense wood than Birch, and is much heavier. For many years, almost all drum kits were made exclusively out of maple. This was in large part due to the Keller Drums company who made most of the high-end drums for all the major drum manufacturers we know today.
Most high-end kits that you find will be made out of maple wood, since it is known for it’s maximum resonance, and it’s slightly higher mid-range. Drums made out of maple will produce a more even sound, and a warmer tone, but won’t project as much as birch.
Overall, buying maple shells is a great choice, but be aware that they will probably come at a higher price.
African Mahogany
Mahogany shells are the third most common option for drum manufacturers today. Be wary when looking at mahogany drums since some companies will use cheaper less expensive mahogany, also known as luan, which is much softer and not ideal for drum making.
When looking at mahogany drum shells, make sure that you are buying African Mahogany. Mahogany manufacturing is a little more rare, so kits made from the wood will tend to be more expensive.
Mahogany shells are known to have much more low-end to other drums giving it a lot of “punch” and bottom end. The tone produced from Mahogany will be warm and soft, with less projection than both birch and maple.
If you are looking for a slightly different sound that is still known for it’s quality, go with African Mahogany.
Oak
Oak drum shells are very rare due to the fact that oak wood is not an easy wood to work with. Here, we are talking about Japaense Oak, and not the other types of oak wood which are more readily available. Yamaha drums has a well known to line of Oak Custom drums available, which I personally owned and loved for many years.
Today, more and more companies are releasing oak drum kits with great reviews. Oak drums, much like maple, are dense and heavy, but they produce a much brighter and louder tone due to their boosted high-end.
Oak wood makes great drums, however due to the rarity of oak and how difficult it is to work with, oak drums will be significantly more expensive, and in then end, you may never find one.
Beech
You could consider beech drum shells as another alternative to birch and maple. Beech wood is another hard dense wood that will produce very heavy drums.
Tonaly speaking, it will bridge the gap between both birch and maple, but it identifies closer to the birch sound. Drums kits made of beech wood will have slightly less lows than birch, but slightly more high-end than maple.
Beech is a common wood, and is fairly easy to work with, which should make it slightly less expensive than other rarer woods. Beech is a nice choice if you are looking for an alternative wood that doesn’t stray too far from the standard.
Bubinga
Drums made from bubinga wood, or African rosewood as it is sometimes called, is more rare to come by, and as such will come at a much higher price. Currently, Tama makes a nice Bubinga wood drum kit, but there are a few other companies that have other such drums and snares.
Bubinga drums are most related to maple drums in tonality. Drums made of bubinga will feature a much darker sound, with a full, rich sustain, as well as a nice attack. These drums are actually a very nice choice due to their pleasing sound, and it is a wonder why more drums are not made from the wood.
If you are looking for a different wood to use, I would encourage you to check out a line of bubinga wood kits.
In the end, it doesn’t seem to matter what type of wood you are using. The search for the best wood for drum shells is largely a personal one. Some woods are more common than others, and some provide more unique tonal qualities.
The choice of what to buy is always up to you. Take some time to learn about the qualities of each type of wood in order to make an educated decision.
Try this
– Java rosewood
– Borneo iron (Bulian)
– Macassar Ebony
– Teak (Jati)
Specialy java rosewood and makasar ebony its sound beautifull than 4 above.
– Tiger borneo rosewood
– Sungkai
– Merbau
If one wants to know which woods are the best for drum construction, then here is your list. Its the top ten hardest woods. Since the job of the drum shell is to contain atmosphere and provide structure, these would be the most effective woods from which to make drums … provided your cutting tools were up to the task…
https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/top-ten-hardest-woods/
Here is a spoiler alert, none of these top 10 hardwoods are listed in this article…. How can this be? Easy, they are too expensive to purchase, further they are far too hard to effectively shape without special equipment, it would be difficult to glue the lamination’s together due to the density of the grain, and finally they would simply destroy cutting tools. Now we start to understand why various types of woods are laminated together to provide strength while reducing shell thickness.
A shell built up of lamination’s of Poplar and Bubinga would probably be more structurally ridged than a pure Birch or Maple shell. Additionally, a shell built up of Hard Maple and Bubinga would be more structurally ridged than a pure hard maple shell, it would cost less than a solid Bubinga shell and would still sound like …. a drum.
Your statement regarding Yamaha Oak Drums not being made is not true and your crit above needs to be edited. The Chinese factory ha been making them for the last two years. Please correct you post. Let alone that DW Drums and a number of specialist/custom drum companies have released Oak kits, which proves its popularity
Edited!
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Very interesting article. Now, what will you end up with when you mix the wood, one ply of this and one ply of that how will that affect the sound of a drum?
Mixing drum shell material will have no effect on the sound of a drum as the sound of a drum is created by the drum heads, not the shells. Mixing of different materials is done to provide structural rigidity to the shell by using less expensive woods of lower Janka hardness with wood plies of higher Janka hardness, eventually providing a shell which is structurally harder than a single hard maple shell.
Consider plies of Bamboo, poplar and White Meranti which would result in a much harder shell (more like that of Birch or Maple) for a far less cost than purchasing Birch or Maple alone. This is why drum shells are constructed of various plies of wood.
That is not true. Different plies of wood definitely affect the sound of a drum, as does number of plies. Why would Pearl (with Masterworks) and certain boutique makers give you the ability to choose different wood plies.
Do you have any comment on African Wenge wood?
Hey Willian!
I actually don’t know too much about African Wenge. Seems to be kind of rare, and thus will probably yield a more expensive drum kit. It’s a harder wood and I’m guessing will producing a more mid-range tone. Remember that the wood is almost irrelevant if the manufacturing process isn’t stellar to begin with. A bad drum maker can make a beautiful piece of wood sound awful.
To me beechwood is more to the ear than bubinga I don’t like birch mahogany or popular I love sonor drums the best drums around by my choice better than dw
Walnut was not mentioned. I have some walnut snares that sound warmer and darker than anything else, including mahogany! If you want a warm tone with a little less projection try walnut.
Hey Lee,
I certainly need to update this page and add a few more woods! Thanks for the comment and information though! I love walnut drums!
Walnut fairly new think about how many different woods there are then trying to get them to work they say beech wood mostly in sonor drums are very loud they are right I owned a set they were Louie furniture birch luan poplar were all in the beginning of drums today we buying a walnut Cyprus pine hybrids maple they say is like the best overall but then again your set you study the woods I have been for years and it’s still all up to who’s playing before I go we really haven t touched ground on all the woods thank you good magazine I love it drum keep it up
Michael … the wood used to construct drums is structural in nature. You answered this question when you mentioned that various types of wood were used to ply drum shells. How much resonance is there between plies of wood joined together with glue?
Glue in just about any state would most certainly be a dampener of resonance. What has been proven time and again is that wood used to laminate drum shells has little bearing on the sound of the drum. Drum sound is produced by the drum heads vibrating with the atmosphere. How those drum heads vibrate is directly related to the bearing edges of the drums, the atmosphere captured within the drum, and the tension assemblies of the drum. The drum shell is simply a container. it could just as soon be made from a paint bucket as long as it was structurally sound and had flat and square bearing edges.
If shell material didn’t matter wouldn’t a brass or steel shell snare sound the same as a wood shell snare drum? The shell vibrates with the head and add character to the sound in the same way that the woods in a guitar effect the sound made by the strings. Acrylic drums sound different than maple wood drums. It’s my experience that the difference in woods in the shell is most apparent in the bass drum. And, there is a dramatic difference in bass drum sound when comparing mounted toms with unmounted. The bass drum chokes with mounted toms, although this can be corrected in a mix with the EQ. If the shell is just a chamber why would the sound be effected by mountings?
“The drum shell is simply a container. it could just as soon be made from a paint
bucket as long as it was structurally sound and had flat and square bearing
edges.”
You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried. OVERTONES, UNDERTONES, &
HIGH ORDER HARMONICS very GREATLY from using different Wood Species
in the construction of a Drums Shell. Not to mention the rest of the Frequency
Spectrum,Sensitivity, Sustain, and Volume among other things.
You would be well aware of all these imparting elements if you didn’t use
PLASTIC Heads, (mylar to you), and angled Bearing Edges. If you play
PLASTIC Heads, you hear PLATSIC, and if you suspend PLASTIC FILM on a FINE POINT it Vibrates-RINGS even longer. In turn the properties that the
Wood, or Woods in the Shell impart to the overall sound character of the Drum
become buried under a impenetrable wall of Popping, & Ringing.
The same goes for RIMS. I’d bet you are using DIE-CAST, or THICK WOOD
HOOPS. Even MORE POP! BRASS? MORE RING!
If you want to hear how Wood actually sculpts the sound of a Drum from the
bottom to the top put Mid-Weight CALFSKIN Heads, and TRIPLE-FLANGED
Steel Hoops on a 5mm, (or less) Shell, (the thinner the Shell the more it
vibrates), with ROUND Bearing Edges. ROUND Bearing Edges transfer more of
the Heads vibration into the Shell. While you’re at it don’t mount any Hardware,
or drill any Vent-Holes in the Nodal-Point of the Shell.
Do that with multiple types of Wood, and you’ll never look at drums the same
way again.
If you just want PALSTIC POP, and RING then throw some MYLAR Heads, and
DIE-CAST, or BRASS HOOPS an a Set of VISTALITES, with DOUBLE 45
degree Bearing Edges, and do RIMSHOTS all day long.
VIOLA! Your PLASTIC FILM SUSPENSION UNIT designed specifically for the
MOST OBNOXIOUS Sound imaginable is now complete.
If however you want to play, (and even more importantly) HEAR a Drum then
you must do the exact opposite.
Chaz
It would be cool if you added your take on vintage and modern American drum companies that mixed and mix map & poplar.
Thanks.
Hey Jeffrey!
Yes, this page is needing a bit of an update. Lots of new information has come my way, and there are plenty of other wood types to cover! Thanks for the reminder!
In my view maple became the choice wood for many because of the strength and balanced tonality. Maple is used in the making of many musical instruments for that reason.
I’ve seen a trend away from maple by some drum companies in top end kits. My thoughts are that this is because the used market is awash in maple drums and they want to reorient new buyers thinking towards alternative woods such as mahogany or bubinga as premium vs maple.
I saw this happening in a music store where a young buyer and parent were being steered away from maple as a common and lower end wood which is in my view simply misleading.
Drum manufacturers chose American and Canadian Maple, years ago related entirely to its structural strength, not its tonality. Maple and Birch are about equal in Janka hardness, both being in the mid to low teens. However there are variations in both Maple and Birch and their related hardness with some versions being as low as 700 in hardness compared to others which are 1500. Therefore saying one should only by maple and then not knowing which maple was used to construct the shells might be steering a prospective customer in equally the incorrect direction.
https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/differences-between-hard-maple-and-soft-maple/
The wood used to make drum shells is structural, not musical. Don’t believe that, remove your heads and bang on your drum shells and see what type of drum sound you produce. . The atmosphere within the shell is excited when the batter head is struck and depending on the depth of the shell the energy from that atmosphere vibrates the resonant head, None of the atmosphere moves through the inner lamination, through the glue to the next lamination and so on. It simply does not occur.
What maters in drum shell construction is,
The shells ability to withstand tension (hardness of the material used)
The squareness of the edge with the exterior and interior surface of the shell, before and after the bearing edges are cut.
The flatness of the bearing edges after they are cut
The tension rods, lugs and rims will more of an effect on the sound of a drum than the shell ever will. The reason many today tout buginga is because of its material hardness, which is close to that of bullet wood.
What most who tout specific drum materials, never explain is that wood is affected by both temperature and moisture, expanding and contracting with both.
Metal moves far less than wood and has no variance in size due to moisture, although some metals will rust.
Plastics react to temperature more rapidly than wood, but are unaffected by moisture
What this means is that wooden drums will expand and contract when introduced to variance in temperature or variance in moisture content, making it near impossible to keep them in tune without environment controls.
Finally there is atmosphere in relationship to acoustic drums. High altitude cause the air to be thin so acoustic drums in this situation would require more effort from the drummer to make an acceptable sound. The extreme of that condition is coastal areas where the air is froth with moisture. Air laden with moisture will dampen the heads vibration
Engineering wise all this talk about various drum shell materials (especially wood) is really a lot of hype…. it makes for good marketing but in reality a drum shell which is manufactured correctly in a controlled process will produce good drum sound no mater the material used. Try to think of the last time you heard someone from the audience say ..”Listen to those Maple or Birch or Bubinga or Poplar or Philippine Mahogany drums”…. I bet dollars to doughnuts that comment has never been uttered by anyone in the audience.
Therefore, regardless of what material the drums you use or are considering purchasing are made of, make sure they sound like drums. Look at the head where it meets the bearing edge and assure its sitting flat on that bearing edge, step back from the drums and make sure the rim which holds the head in place is square with the drum shell (no leaning tower of pizza). However when it comes to shell material, as long as the shell is made of hardwood, it will have little to do with the eventual sound of the drum, there are quite literally hundreds of tests which prove that to be the case.
TJ, I do agree with your basic premise, but it is not so cut and dry that it does not matter whatsoever what type of wood is used. The thicker the shell is, the more we hear only amplified vibration of the drum heads. That being said, when a shell is thinner, the shell itself contributes more to the sound that we hear coming from the drum. This is because thicker=less resonance, thinner=more resonance. Thus, drums that are relatively thin (I would say between 4 and 7mm thick) do absolutely impart character on the sound. Also, the movement of air over different wood grains and orientations effects the overall sound. For example, a stave shell has the grain oriented vertically, which will speed up the flow of air slightly. The opposite is true when the innermost ply (or entire shell) is oriented vertically. It will slow down the movement of air. This may sound insignificant (even to myself), but as listening experience has proven, it makes more of a difference than one would think.
When you rimshot, you are vibrating the shell much moreso than if you strike the middle of the head. I tend to rimshot quite a bit do accentuate various phrases, and ghost the notes in-between. (most skilled drummers will do this) Thus, rimshots also reveal the sound of the shell.
Basically, while you make a good point, the type of wood and how the shell is constructed certainly makes a difference.
RE; the sound of drum shells and the wood types, it makes a difference. Here are 6 yamaha kits. The exact same heads at the same tunings -played by high level drummers from the Drum Shop of Portsmouth. This is excellent and an ear opener about what are great deals and what the upper end kits deliver for the money.
Enjoy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gNuqdQqB-U
Drum woods to make drum shells in the traditional steam-bent fashion do not compare side by side with the same wood if it has been bent and shrunk using the ammonia chemical process. The new methods of using cheaper woods in laminates inside shells along with the ammonia processes on all woods have made shells cheaper and faster to make. A side bt side comparison of the same wood shell the difference will be night and day. The steam-bent shell will be more resonant and project sound while the Ammonia bent drum shell will be highly less resonant and have a deeper and dense sound. This is due to the shrinkage of the wood and the woods cell structure has been chemically changed in the way the cells bond together. Ask the company you are buying from how they make their shells.
The wood and construction do contribute to the drums overall tonality. Yes the shell might be there primarily for structure, but when you hit the skin, does not the shell vibrate? If it does, then the wood and shell construction are contributing to that drum’s sound it produces period. You can’t get away from physics.
This almost sounds like the tone wood argument guitarists had until one guy built a guitar out of cement and slapped a set of EMG pickups in it and declared the tone wood discussion over. Until this asshole asked the guy to reproduce his results with passive pickups. Where I was quickly kicked off the forum.
Back to the physics. It doesn’t matter what the shells are made from, they still contribute to the tonality a drum produces when struck. Same as when an electric guitar is played. The wood isn’t contributing much, but it’s how the materials are vibrating when played that contribute to the voice of the instrument. To declare otherwise would mean that a bell brass snare does not in any way differ from a Ludwig student snare, Black Beauty, Pork Pie, or vintage Slingerland when all dimensions, skins, and tuning are equal. Saying otherwise you’re being disingenuous at best.
I came to this article because I am going to take a stab at building my drummer a stave snare for his 50th next year and yeah woods do contribute to how a drum sounds. They do more than you think. Also the glue aspect is a misnomer. Adhesives normally do not dampen laminate construction as they harden to near crystalline hardness when cured. Some do stay flexible and those yes would dampen vibrations. Construction adhesives used in laminate build cures harder and stronger than the wood it is lying together so if anything it’ll add brightness. You guys ever hear a Marshall cabinet vibrate so much it farts out? The air pressure inside the cabinet tries to rattle the finger joints apart. The glue always holds. It won’t dampen the noise.
Where does purple heart rank?
Not too sure on purple heart. In fact, I can’t recall ever seeing a drum made out of purple heart. I’m sure there are many out there, I just don’t have any experience with them!
If you look at drums pre-1990 before companies figured out how to make shells cheaper with inferior woods inside the plys and the introduction of Ammonia and chemicals in the bending process you will see incredible professional drums both American and Asian (MOSTLY Japanese made with American Imported woods). All these drums possessed great.shells and hardware. Some were not standard sizes, they were deeper such as the “POWER TOMS” of the late-1970s mid-1980s. There is great value in these older drums that are tried and proven plus most of the records you will ever listen to are recorded with these drums. You canj ask any famous drummer what he really used in a recording then ask the engineers at these studios they will all confirm that they are using only part of what they endorse to a totally different kit. This usually starts off with the SNARE DRUM. There are mainly 2 snare drums that are the most recorded snare drums in history. Buying a new kit? Look, ASK, PLAY, the old tried and true classics to get an idea of what you want in the shells. Use your own judgment. Look at what old vintage drums sell for compared to the same year Guitar by another famous make and brand. If you spent the same amount of money in 1964 on a drum kit from the most popular brand in the most desired finish and spent the same amount on a guitar by a famous brand, you may get a few thousand dollars for that drum kit if no holes were added, no modifications and the wrap has cured and is in great condition. On the other hand, if you spent the same amount of money on a guitar that same year from a famous brand you could be getting over ten times that amount for the guitar. You do not see auctions of drum kits from famous players only guitar auctions. We’ve all see bands playing on late-night TV with the drummer playing a vintage kit that some of those brands do not exist anymore even if the name is owned by a major musical instrument manufacturer. It r5eally comes down to what you really like.
Thanks for the detailed response! Yeah, those classic drums sound amazing, and record even better!
I think your comments are the most valuable of this entire thread…including the OP. Thanks for sharing your insight!
Anytime