This one is for Mark (idrum4fun), who helped me with tips and ideas for new hoops for my Hammered Bronze Supra, a drum which I bought used some years ago.

More likely than used, the drum had been abused. The shell was out of round by at least a couple of millimeters, and both hoops - the original flimsy 1.6 mm ones, I assume - showed signs of accidents. Except for that, the drum looked good and sounded fine with certain heads, like Skyntones.

However, when I decided to put Ambassador coated on it, it turned out to be almost impossible to tune it. I assumed this was due to the out-of-roundness. So I had a local drum builder fix it for me.

Again, even with the shell now round, I couldn't get it to sound how I wanted. So I figured the battered hoops perhaps could do with a change to something new.

My search for new hoops can be followed in a thread in another section of the forum, so I won't recap here. And this is where Mark enters my quest.

Long story short: on Mark's advice, I got a pair of Gibraltar 2.3 mm hoops for my drum, and as I tuned it up yesterday, it now sounded great. Just how I wanted it. It's exceptionally sensitive, easy to tune, and very open sounding. I believe the original hoops were probably shot, except for being kind of flimsy in the first place.

I attach a couple of pics of the drum with the new hoops. I just wanted to share.

/Magnus