A teacher of mine in the mid 70's had one. I don't remember much about it except that it was split all the way around, like two shells stacked with a gap you could adjust. I think that teacher (his name was Craig Reiner) used to go down to Boston or NYC to meet with Fred Hinger. He bought me a set of Hinger aluminum sticks that look like cigar tubes, real fat - 3/4". I still have them and they have an unusual feel and actually sound very good for orchestral work. They are easy to play very accurately with, perfect for that clean "Mission Impossible" snare stuff.

[IMG]http://i415.photobucket.com/albums/pp231/kaaawa2000/HINGER.jpg[/IMG]

The rubber sleeves slide and are weights to give you different feels.

Normally, aluminum sticks, the whole concept would make me sick but somehow the amount of bead contact with the head combined with the adjustable weights and super light aluminum did make an unusual, useful stick. They can dent with rim hits, forget rimshots, and cymbals are out.

Sorry to hijack about the sticks, but I haven't heard that name in a long time. I've never seen one of the snare drums since then, on eBay or anywhere.

From the few stories I have heard, Hinger snares were usually sold to students of Fred Hinger or to university orchestras. Anyone seen a recent sale?

Fred Hinger played in the Philadelphia Orchestra for many years. There's another post on the forum somewhere with better info about the company than I can give. Hinger's products were geared strongly towards symphony orchestra percussionists. Most of his timpani, snare drums, sticks, and such would have been bought by music schools or students with aspirations of being orchestral performers professionally. There are several models of Hinger's timpani sticks are still produced by Malletech. A modern day parallel to the Hinger company might be Black Swamp percussion.

The Hinger snare drums show up every now and then. I came across one last summer when a student walked in with one. He bought it from his previous teacher who is an orchestral percussionist who had bought the drum new in the early 80s or so. Don't know what they would go for but there is a market for them if you find the right guys - orchestral players or collectors.

I could see a snare drum in nice shape selling for $500 maybe Just my guess.

I passed on this one a few months back. If my memory serves me well, I believe the guy was asking $400.

Lee's right on the money.

Years ago, sometime in the late 60's I think, all the Philly orchestra percussion guys were having a barbeque at Fred Hinger's house. After a few drinks and some food, the conversation went to gear (as it always does with us drummers) and everyone made their way to Fred Hinger's shop to mess around with drums and various percussion things.

Hinger was constantly inventing things and coming up with new ideas. The sticks that MaestroSnare has are a good example. He also radically changed the common timpani with his patented timpani mechanism, and made the first (or at least first widely-used) synthetic shell snare drum. He made a couple dozen or so "sewer-pipe" drums that were basically 30lbs+, one of which Roy Haynes loved to use.

While in Hinger's shop, someone started playing on a snare drum in a corner and everyone noticed that the sympathetic resonance started to buzz the snares on a drum that had the batter head off for some repairs. Out of curiosity, they put the working drum directly above the dismantled snare drum and realized that the volume and tone of the drums changed drastically depending on the distance between the two. Hence, the idea for the space-tone model was born.

I don't know how much time went by before they went into official production. I have no idea how many are made, they are somewhat rare, but most people that have them for use in the orchestra tend to keep them because they can be great for cutting through 100 musicians playing at full volume.

$500-$600 seems about right unless the drum is in REALLY good shape. I heard of someone in the Pittsburgh area that had one, went over to his house to purchase it, then found it to be so out of round the drum looked like a football - needless to say, I didn't even attempt to buy it.

Send me an email if you're interested in selling it vintagetone. I would love to add this drum to the arsenal for regular use.