Fugate Instruments was founded by Brett Fugate, who has been a musician practically his entire life.

The idea for the Fugate Drum was first conceived in 2010. Fugate Drums was founded on December 05, 2011 by Brett Fugate when he filed a provisional patent for a Drum and Method of Tuning and Making a Drum. However earlier in 2011 Fugate began to build the prototype drums. Subsequently Fugate filed a utility patent of the same title on November 29, 2012.

Brett Fugate began playing drums in the second grade and joined the band in fifth grade. He has been in various hard rock and metal bands over the years, the longest being Idiom, which is still in existence. While living in Chicago for 15 years, Fugate played in bands and in the musical theater circuit. He also worked at a factory making musical instruments, such as marimbas. Fugate can virtually play any instrument, including marimba, vibraphone and the drums.

Brett has an associate's degree in music from Illinois Central College and he minored in music at Chicago State University.

What makes Fugate’s drums different are that they are made of staves, which are different from veneers, which Fugate said most drummers play on. Staves are the strips of wood that are used to form the drum shell. “I went with the stave construction because ... one of the unique things about these and one of the claims on the patent is that the drum shell is tuned, so each stave is initially tuned to specific pitches,” Fugate said. Another unique aspect about Fugate’s drum kits are the way they are assembled, and the fact that no glue is used to hold them together. “Most guys who make stave shells, cut the angles on the staves and glue them together and then machine them down to the final dimension where my approach is the opposite. I machine mine and assemble them to the final dimension,” he said. Fugate said he has read that glue affects the vibration of the drum. To avoid this, Fugate joins the staves together with a rope or a string. In addition to his claim for the adhesiveless stave drum shell, he also patented some things about the tension mechanism on the drum. “We’ve been doing a lot of development with the hardware,” Fugate said. Around the outer perimeter of the drums are threaded rods with a little disc attached to it. These discs, or nodal blocks, can be manipulated to change the sound. “I can inactivate all of them and have the shell completely free floating, which means that the only thing suspending the drum shell is the two heads, or I can activate all of them and move them anywhere on this rod and I can mimic a conventional shell ... or I can activate some of them and inactivate some of them and have an in between,” Fugate said. Making these subtle changes will dampen the natural vibrations occurring in the shell, Fugate said. It usually takes about three years to get a patent approved, but Fugate said he is confident that his will be approved. In the meantime, he said he is still experimenting.

"I’m kind of trying to push the limits, and at the same time make a product that I could sell, because anyone who has tried to start a business knows it’s quite challenging to do," he said. In addition to percussion instruments, Fugate also has plans for string and wind instruments.