Thankfully, that was not to be the end of the Gon Bops brand. In 2001 Don Lombardi of US drum manufacturer DW bought the company along with all of its patents and trademarks. Lombardi had met Bobadilla in 1978 when he used Gon Bops Timbale shells to build DW brass snare drums, and subsequently had continued to seek R&D advice from Bobadilla. It was a great fit, and it was no coincidence that the quality of DW drums and hardware continued to grow after the Gon Bops acquisition.To run his newly acquired Gon Bops brand Lombardi hired the best drum craftsmen in the US. He even bought San Francisco-based Sol Percussion in order to conscript its founder – drum builder Akbar Moghaddam – to the Gon Bops cause. Moghaddam brought along fellow drum craftsman Octavio Ruiz, and Lombardi teamed them up with Alejandro Perez, a drum builder who had worked with Mariano Bobadilla in the original Gon Bops factory.In 2010 cymbal-maker SABIAN Inc. announced that it had purchased the inventory, intellectual property, patents and manufacturing equipment of Gon Bops from DW. The deep commitment to innovation that SABIAN applied to its own instruments had inspired founder Robert Zildjian and his son, SABIAN President Andy Zildjian, to a search for like-minded instrument companies available for acquisition. And it was a happy circumstance had Lombardi had begun to seek a buyer for Gon Bops.