I've seen some strange ones...and I own a few, too!

Peavey RadialPro 1000 drums -originaly designed by Brit, Steven Volpp, and called a Membrane-o-phone back in the mid-90's. The Peavey Company ran this line for quite awhile, even though it never seemed to catch on. The drums were really well-made...I mean the shells/woodwork. The components were (sadly) the same imported, cheap, generic crap that we all endure now with any new items...but the shells were very nice and the design allowed for the toms and bass drums to utilize extremely thin shells because all the stress was contained within the structure of the "radial bridge". The snare drum, conversely, was made to be extremely thick and heavy in order to accentuate the crisp high-end frequency range that relates to the nature/sound of a snare drum (generally speaking).

Problems with the drums mostly related to their high price as well as to the fact that they were easily dinged and dented because of exposed wood pieces which, by the way, also contributed to increasing the outside diameters of the drums -making them hard to fit into regular-sized cases/bags.

They occasionally turn up on EBay and almost always with dings and scratches n the edges of the radial bridges.

There were some lower-line versions of the radial bridge design in which the bridges were made from a composite plastic. However, these were not as well-made and I have heard stories of them coming apart at the seams. It is the "1000" line that was made from hard maple.

Arbiter -MY FAVORITE design EVER! Ivor Arbiter was my favorite drum designer. His wild ideas were completely apart and very eccentric compared to even the craziest things seen before or after (in my opinion). Ivor was a man who seemed to have a life-long goal of making drums that didn't require lugs (in the conventional sense). His first attempt (The Autotune) didn't work very well...

...BUT the second attempt DID! The title "AT" (short for ADVANCED Tuning) was originally intended to also be called "Autotune" according to someone who used to work for Arbiter...but it was thought to be too confusing to call a new design by an older name...and seeing that the initials were the same, anyway..it was decided that the moniker "Advanced Tuning" be given to the new design and that's how it was marketed.

The idea behind the design is waaay too complicated to describe. If you haven't seen it, then please check out the British website dedicated to Arbiter drums:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/autotune/

I'll likely try to take some more pictures (and get them posted sometime) of the "weird" drums I own. x-mas1

In the meantime, what "weird" drums do you guys know about?