http://www.amati.cz/english/production/production.htm

I see you live in Monroe , CT . I'm originally from Willimantic CT , and was is in Monroe once when my high school did an exchange concert with the high school there . Many moons ago ...

First off thanks for the link.Apparently they made drums up until 1990.But continue to make cymbals,drum accerosies,as well as other musical instruments.Very cool I'm definatly going to have to shoot them a message.And no ( pardon my french ) crap,lol. Small freaking world.On another drum forum a guy has family right down the road from me.Very small world in which we live.

Hello!

It's like this with production of drums in Czechoslovakia: There was a commonwealth of factories and craftsmen, who were making brass and wood instruments (saxophones, clarinets, etc.), called Amati.

After communists' putsch in 1948, industry was organized centrally and I think they just ordered Amati to make drums and cymbals. Nowdays, you can buy tons of Amati drums from different series and in different states. Some are just trash, others are well cared for. Generally, Amati drums were not anything special, but they're still better and strudier than, for example, Stagg, so many of starting drummers use them as their first set (in fact, almost every czech drummer started on Amati). Amati cymbals are heavy, quite thick, nothing special, but I have Amati ride and it's quite cool, as far as I can say.

Their production was halted sometime in early 90s. After them, Magic Brass cymbals came, but they were no good. Amati drums can play quite well, if you put good drumheads on them, but I think that appeals to better series, because lots of Amati drums are just BAD made.

If you visist Amati's website, there's nothing about the drums... I think they're ashamed :-)

Hello!

I'm from Serbia,and until 1990,only drums you could buy in shops were Amati and Tacton from East Germany.I agree that Magic cimbals are poor sound cymbals,old Amati rides and hi hats(dimensions were something beetween 14" and 15",ha!)sounded prety good for that money.Crashes were poor.It was not so bad compere to some of today products coming from china and even got a brand name stamped on!

Amati used birch for drums(not common on today entry level set),but had problem with wooden snares,because(sorry for my english,i dont know to explane it properly),snare could not lay properly on bottom head,so you take some sand paper and take of a 1mm of wood on the 2 places when snare wholes on the bottom hoops are,and it worked ok.Belive it or not,with proper heads it worked better than wooden snares of today's sets you can find for 400-500$(I mean price for entire set)

________

*** hunk

Today, I bought 80s' Amati drum set for school rehearsal room, and I am thrilled. Bodies (?) of drums don't have very well cut edges, but heads are held by sufficient number of screws (10 on bass drum and on snare, 6 on the rest), they sound very good even without bottom heads, HH is a little bit too thick, but has nice, crispy sound and hardware is (in some aspects) better than today's cheap hardware like Stagg. Snare is poor, but maybe it's because of its head, wich is badly beaten, and because of what Dule here said.

In fact, I'm now considering buying well-preserved Amati set instead of my Stagg.

[COLOR="DarkGreen"]This is an awesome thread !

Gilnar, can you post some pictures of the drum set ?

there was also a member here, I think, who was from Hungary and he posted some Hungarian kits. Wonderful, I love seeing manufacturers from other places !

Amati drums, that is a new one to me....you see cymbals on eBay now and again. They actually made very respectable saxophones and woodwinds, brass I think, too. Some of their older saxes are highly sought-after.[/COLOR]

Yes, Amati wind instruments are still sold and as far as I know, they're quite good.

This is what I bought: http://www.sferabubeniku.info/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=7960

Some other pics of other sets:

http://medak7.rajce.idnes.cz/Documents/

http://medak7.rajce.idnes.cz/Documents_2/

I wanted to buy these: http://hudba.bazac.cz/z/10268/ , but I was too slow :-(

[COLOR="DarkRed"]VERY COOL...do you know what kind of wood they are ? [/COLOR]