European Beech is one of the choice woods on the Continent. It has been favoured for Piano Pegboards and other musical instrument uses for centuries. It is hard, relatively dense and fairly free from cracking as it dries. It is a far superior wood to North American Beech -----it might be more compared to Hickory or Oak here. Lots of European drummakers preferred Beech for shells.Trixon,Sonor,Trowa,Tromsa,Lefima, Tacton are ones I have personal experience with and everyone of those makers produced some pretty first rate drums. It is hard to beat the sound of an old long shell Trixon 20x 18 bass drum made from 3 ply European Beech. The peak of bass drum design.

Beech shells were also offered by Yamaha for a time: Beech Custom and later Absolute but these are now discontinued. I don't know what species of beech.

Mine are 9 ply beech. The thickest ply is second to the outer edge and the bearring edge is spoon bit 45 degrees in from that and the last is 45 degree out from that. the head sits on the thickest ply !!

Great sound but I`d like to point out that beech tends to miro split along it`s grain, you can`t avoid it so keep on top of the finnish.

I use beeswax and it fills in the splits after many many eventual coats. Most people use laquire wich requires sanding to refinnish because it builds up quick !! Sanding of course removes material !!

Sonor Phonics perchance given your signature?

Phonic Sound Machine !! 7 piece in need of a D506 !!

This is a early 90`s polaroid taken the last time I had them up !! (after a birthday party for the bass player...note the balloons inside the bass, I left them inside for about a year) Screw the pillow !!

You mean you don't play 'em anymore??

BTW baloons inside a BD are coool. Must look great when played.

In 92, I had my daughter, by 95 they came down to make room...time was pretty much consumed for the next ten years,..I took them out in 04, when we were swapping rooms around and had them up for another nine months.

I had them since 79, for 16 years I had a great time with them and gigg`n wasn`t to pay the bills but gave me much needed extra cash. In 2009 I had my son (here we go again), If I play them again, and I plan on it,..I`ll teach my boy and hand them down after a total restoration wich will be easy cuz they`re in great shape still. The flea market stands and snare from the trash (rebuilt) will be gone, but the roto-toms will stay. (I`ll find some hand levers for them to make it easier for him)

I probably know 10 or 15 cover songs but he`ll learn more, and I`ll teach him to come up with his own too.( that`s if he doesn`t become a doctor or something on me)

I had it filled half way with balloons and they sounded good in there, popped out the hole every now and then but bounced around like crazy !! The last thing I had in there in 04 was a purple inflatible M`M doll. He took up most of it.

makes me think that they used American Beech.there is lots of it and it is pretty inexpensive. it's a pretty good wood too----about as dense as Red Oak; somewhere between 40 and 45 lbs./cu.ft. as dried wood. To put that into perspective; Sugar Maple is about 50, White Oak,about 55 and Shagbark Hickory close to 60.White Pine is about 30. i have a pretty old woodlot with quite a lot of American Beech in it and for years i couldn't understand why it wasn't used in the lumber trade more.the wood is pretty. one of its more common uses is primarily as a junk wood; for pallets and railroad ties but it does turn out that the reason for this is that very point that Oddball brought up-----it is prone to splitting upon drying. European Beech is quite a different thing .it is not in huge supply and is not all that cheap. it is its FREEDOM from splitting that made it so usefull for piano pegboards. can't say I have ever seen a split Trixon shell, or a split Tromsa bass drum shell(Tromsa used Poplar for most of their small drums) for that matter, either.