This past few years have been a great challenge for us ALL in many, many ways. Our small niche market is very much included in that. Here in Nashville, we suffered a major flood, closing down a primary industry supplier for many months. Within the span of only a few months we lost our man (and my close personal friend and drum show partner) Dennis Stauffer to the tragic auto wreck, WD Meadors (Donoho Percussion) to suicide - in both cases I was personally called on to help deal with things in various ways.

Closer to home, (and guys, believe me, I hesitate greatly to mention this openly) my younger brother put a gun to his head and my father was diagnosed with cancer - suddenly placing a lot of family commitments on my time. I was working all along the way, of course. Guys, I drove to the shop and packed three snares and crammed them into a roadside mailbox for a very unpleasant customer on the way to my brother's funeral!

I was forced to fire my right-hand-man at drummaker for stealing from the shop over a unknown but lengthy span of time, selling drums made from stolen parts on ebay and shipping for "free" on our shop UPS account - that has stemmed further with the learning of another former employee in-ca-hoots with the first, stealing confidential dealer/vendor information from our in house database - I still see OUR parts, never purchased by him, surface on his drums on our local Craiglist nearly every other week.

All in all, yes, these and many other factors have restricted the time required to email every customer about every delay, every day... from one keyboard and one pair of human hands. I wish that were not the case.

Over the past few years, We've seen industry shops drop like flies. LeeCustom disappeared. George closed his shop in OH and, along with Classic Drummer Mag, has stopped printing NSMD (I sure wish them both best of luck moving to online only). Shine Drums is no more. DF dropped out of the commodity drum parts market (I do applaud Eric for taking the reins and doing what he must to move his business forward and stand out in other ways). We have had a number of industry vendors close their doors. The cost of EVERYTHING has increased: from plastic bags to shop rent, utilities to shipping costs... oh and yes the cost of the actual drum parts too.

Now we have those who think it a nice strategy to hoard commodity parts by attempting to buy up all stock on common items to keep other honest vendors from having a fair shot; selling parts at ZERO to pennies profit to "compete" - while devaluing the very parts they offer - for themselves and our entire market! (I do not wish to debate the point, but in my opinion, simply not sustainable by any stretch of business logic - get it while you can guys).

If you've been around the drum building community for a while, you'll know... going on two decades ago, we were really the first one-stop shop for custom drum building. This forum, in many ways, was born from our drumrap forum. I only mention this to make the point that we are dug in deep, We've seen, supported and nurtured this industry from it's beginnings; We don't plan to go away anytime soon. We are committed to getting through these tough times.

We love our customers, especially the happy, respectful, reasonably patient ones. We are SO very thankful for those who kindly support us and allow us to help with their projects, they help us to keep the shop lights on, the website up, put a little gas in the car and hopefully pay the rent and feed our families from time to time.

We may have been one of the first and have stuck around for a while, but will never be the drum parts version of Amazon.com or WalMart. Don't want to be. Trust me nobody is getting rich in the drum parts world, we ain't in this for the $$$. We just want to run an honest business , help with creative and cool projects, just do our best to help push things along in the drum making world.

If you have a tour bus call next Thursday and need those hoops, let us know this when you order - we make those deals happen every week.

If you are awaiting parts that you think have taken too long, please call us, ask what's up, please be cool - we want to help - we are not out to screw you. Things just take a little longer today than we would like. We are part of a small community, let's work together.

If you gotta gotta do or die have your drum parts yesterday and at a industry crippling, crazy deal discount - We will certainly TRY our best to help you. But, we'd kinda prefer to make an honest profit for our time, services and parts - have fun with the project - keep the rent paid, make it to the other side of these challenging times... and be around to help with your project in five years, or your grandkid's first custom kit in 2020.