don't know about snares but alot of people had bass drums cut down as we headed toward the be bop era

Was it "common" for drummers to do it?

I doubt it. Cutting a shell down wouldn't be a job for just anyone to take on. It would be a lot more work than the average drummer would have the tools and skills to do properly.

But, that said, there are many Dr. Frankensteins out there with saws and drills and we have all seen the results of most of their work. :mad:Hurting

That's my guess.

Hey Lugs - When you say Frankensteins, are you referring to the drums of the late 1800s to about the turn of the century or so? Those are what I’m referring to.

As far as I can tell snare drums were much deeper (for marching band and such) before the last decade of the 1800s. So somebody started the trend of the flatter (contemporary type) snare sometime after that. Do you have any, or have seen any, contemporary style snares before 1905 and if you have was it cut down or built and sold that way?

During the era when they tensioned the snare drums with ropes there doesn’t seem to be any thin models available. Have you seen some?

I guess I might be suggesting that some guys had to cut their snares down in order to actually have a thinner snare in those times.

Thanks for your response!

Bump Still wondering. Hey, if as Eamesuser says folks were cutting bass drums down in the late 30s & 40s for Jazz, then I’d think snares may have undergone a similar evolution earlier on. Thanks Eamesuser and long live “Klook”!!!

510, when O-Lugs mentioned Frankensteins, he means modified drums... cut downs, substituted hardware, mis-matched parts, and probably no inference to a time frame. Like a Slingy bass drum with Pearl legs and mounts, Rogers claws, and a Luddy Tom mount installed..... stuff like that..... "Frankendrums"

I do not think you can make that determination as a concrete statement. Not officially anyway. I have a 1905 catalog and they are a bunch of shallow snare drums

The first drums coming in to the USA were indeed marching drums for the military and the first importer was around 1809

Guys were also making their own drums and sticks so there was no reason to cut a deep drum to make a shallower drum.

I do not think there was a trend or a reason and different size drums were already being made as a natural progression. You would need to hop over the ocean and study drums from other countries many of which were hand drums which were all shallow in nature.

The military drums got deeper so the sound could reach further allowing them to communicate with other troops.

David

Yes, I am tying too get some concrete insight to the changing in snare sizes, and I do understand that the info may not be available. I would like to find out what moved drummers before there were thin snares (before 1900 probably) to create a drum size that appears to be very rare if not non-existant, in the U.S. music trade in the 1800s and earlier.

Things seem to change for definite reasons, so something was going on in the American drum world between the Civil War and 1900 that led to the demand for thinner snares. I can speculate about what caused the change (was it the sound of the music or something easier to march with or both?) but I thought maybe collectors of early pre-1900 drums might have seen signs of musicians making changes.

Wow, over seas!!! Great suggestion, I’m new enough to not have really considered that. So I will look across the pond for info. Seems like early European orchestras (symphony orchs.???) may have had shallower snares and they influenced American drummers to try them.

So have any of you folks in Europe seen thin snares earlier then say 1890?

Ultimately, I’m trying to find how the musicians were thinking about their snares and the changing music they were performing. Remember Sousa’s band was the “Rock Star” band of that time and instruments were changing just for that band. That is how the marching bass horn (a Saxhorn or something like it...no not the same as a Saxophone) became the Sousaphone. (Explanation: The Sousaphone was a bass horn with the bell of the horn turned to face horizontally so the sound projected forward and didn’t collect rain (before the Sousaphone when it rained on the band sometimes the horn would fill up with water) like the earlier common bass horns did, with their bells aiming skyward.

Thanks for helping!!!

Thanks Kevins for looking after me! I did understand that combining and such, as we here have been known to do, is what he meant. I've done it too. But there was to me, in what he said, the chance that he was talking about the old drums I was asking about, and that got me interest so I pushed on.

Thanks Kevins AND O-Lugs for your input!!!

Word Daddy-O !!!