Part of Michael’s Drums series of life-long joy
Michael’s Drums 19
Sep 2024 Update
I have A Lot of different drumsticks, weights, cuts, woods…been playing over the years with sanding/roughing body, shoulder, tip…same, differing, etc. Same for the tips. I recently came across Claus Hessler via his technique of ‘crushed rudiments’ which mimicks a similar idea I’ve been exploring. Then I found he has custom ProMark sticks that offer something “ActiveGrip” coating on “firegrain”/heat-hardened hickory wood (!) and I thought I’d try something new and frivolous. Well, frivolous Not! — the ActiveGrip is pretty amazing, and the weight and cut of these sticks is unexpectedly appealing, along with the ‘deadness’ of resonance — the sticks almost play themselves…nearly nothing has been able to unseat my second-most-recent favorites, “Jazz Club”, and these Hesslers are so absurdly inverse of the JazzClubs that I’m wondering about my playing sanity…and so now of course I’m exploring this wonderful rabbit-hole of ActiveGrip sticks, firegrain woods, different-wood (acorn (!), on the wiggly-body sticks) tips, and even wild body cuts. Will add more on this.
Update March 2025 — The “active grip” wears off pretty quickly, like sticks on snare heads leaving that bare spot where the “coating” wears off (or gets beaten down into smoothness)…sticks are still playable and they still sound great. Something about the acorn wood tip. Powerful. Graceful. Very precise.
The wiggly-wood shanks. I think that first pair will be my last. Not a fave.