Also included are a few specialties from the workplace of DW's legendary custom shell painter Louie Garcia, like Neil Peart's Time Machine kit, Nick Mason's 'Dark Side of the Moon,' and the unique flight tickets-wrap of Josh Freese.

The video below features mainly the process of making the company's DW Collector's Series. In this DW line of kits, each drum is a unique instrument and even the tone of every single drum gets recorded and stamped into the shell. Better yet, the company knows every single detail of all the Collector's drums that are made - how the grain of the shells are compiled and everything else that is a relevant spec for each drum that is part of the kit.
Why? Because at DW you can build your drums exactly the way you want them. The company literally gives you the possibility to build your own instrument.

The double 20th Anniversary
The year 2020 in drum history is the 20th anniversary of the company in Oxnard, California, and of the company's other brand, PDP (Pacific Drums and Percussion). However, two years afer moving to Oxnard, the production of PDP moved to a DW factory in Ensenada, Mexico. Of course, we have added our video of the 20th Anniversary PDP kit below.

This also means that in 2022, DW will celebrate their 50th birthday since Don Lombardi started his Drum Workshop drum school in Santa Monica in 1972. We are already anxious to see what John Good and the team are planning for this milestone.

After teaching John drums or a few months in 1972 and becoming friends with the now DW Woodologist, their first product saw the market in 1974 in the form of the trap case seat.

Fast forwarding to 1990 when the company showcased their drum kits at the now named Winter NAMM for the first time. On the first day of the trade show the guys landed orders for 60 drumkits. The rest of the DW-story is not just history, but let's watch the video first.

During our visit it was not possible to show all the stages of the production process, like sanding the drums or adding special finishes. Below the video we do further explain three especially important stages in the DW drum making process that are also featured in the video: Timbre Matching, DW's Cool Tempering of the drum shells, and the grain orientation of the plywood.

The DW Drum Workshop Factory Tour
Your host is Brent Wetli, Manager of Customer Service at DW. The drum intermissions you hear in the video are chops by Thomas Lang playing his DW kit at his home studio in Los Angeles. Many more specialties on that are coming soon! The Josh Freese 'flight tickets-wrap' in the video was for a 6-piece drum set to feature many of his saved airline tickets.



Contents & Time index
00:00 The Veneer
00:20 The drum plies
00:54 Pressing the veneer
01:13 Building the Drum Worksop drum shells
03:00 Cool Tempering the drum shells
03:25 Reinforcement rings
03:46 Bearing edges
04:24 The Drilling room
05:29 The Hot Dog machine
05:49 Finishes & graphics - with Louie Garcia!
07:30 The Collector's Series register
08:38 Assembly: the tuning table
09:05 Final inspection at the DW White House
09:37 Snapchat?!? + Thomas Lang ending
09:45 You've made it! Now you can finally subscribe to Drummerszone's YouTube channel!

Timbre Matching
All the Collector's Series drums are timbre matched. Which means that the drums you order have the most consistent tonal and pitch intervals between the toms. For each drum kit that is made, this is mainly done by John Good himself. The area where this takes place is actually called the 'John Good Tapshell Place.' It is all done by ear.
Now, imagine doing this for Terry Bozzio's kit!

"He is the only drummer I know that called me one morning saying: 'You know, I'm feeling -F-. I need an -F- in my drums somewhere."
- John Good in a Sweatwater video with Terry Bozzio by Nick D'Virgilio

When DW was trying to make a living back in the 70's, one of John Good's other jobs was being a drum tech for Frank Zappa's band. While this quote comes from 2017, in that same year, John decided to honour Terry Bozzio with the one of a kind Black Page snare drum. (To get all the history records right: Terry had already left Zappa's band before John came in as a drum tech.)

The factory tour video also shows the incredible attention to detail beyond the production process; every single Collector's Series drumset has its own file. In short this means that if you decide to order an extra tom or bass drum for your kit, DW will build it exactly the same as the drums you already have, to give it the perfect match.
Even when you forgot some specs of your very own drum kit, you can just reach out to DW's customer service and they will instantly have your drum-data ready on your order number.

Cool Tempering the drum shells
You can see this stage demonstrated in the video very well. It is a patented process that the company uses to cool down the shells that are just formed in the heated moulds. It goes directly into a cold mould where the steel of the hydraulic press extracts the heat out of the shell in a much faster way than when it cools down on its own. Another effect is that the glue between the plies crystallizes and makes it even stronger. Which, on its turn, makes the drum easier to tune. Because the harder the shell, the more resonance it has.

This Cool Tempering process is done for all the drums in all the sizes DW makes in Oxnard, from 6-inch drums to 26" drums. Considering the dry and always fast changing climate in California, you can call this a life-saving drum shell solution, and a perfect means to have the product's standards where you want them.



Grain orientation
As you can read in DW's 2017 Book of Plies, the grain orientation of the plywood dictates DW's entire shell manufacturing process. The video explains why the plies have different directions for the grain, vertical or horizontal. You can actually choose your own grain directions at DW, but the company also has Specialized Shell Configurations (SSC).

DW has four recommended ways to build your preferred drum shells. Click here to learn more about these Specialized Shell Configurations and here for the detailed specs.

More DW Family Reading

• How DW Drumheads are made - The Full REMO Factory Tour
  Inside the factory of the best sold drumheads in the world
  
• The PDP 20th Anniversary Kit plus Select Metal Snare Drums and Finishes
  Tony Thaxton first drummer to tour with collector's item
  
• In the car with Thomas Lang - listening to his favorite music
  Legendary drummer shares his daily routines in music
  
• Tommy Lee is back with DW drums
  Mötley Crüe drummer returns home
  
• A 2-minute Drumchannel Studio Tour
  Inside the drum studio where drum legends meet
  
• Thomas Lang gives a full construction tour of the 9 Beats USA Drum School
  World's biggest Drum School expands from China to United States
  
• Watch DW's new Pure Almond Collector's Series drums
  Played by Drums & Percussion editor Manni von Bohr
  
• Drum Workshop acquires Slingerland
  Historic brand joins DW's drum and percussion family

PDP Drums 2020: 20th Anniversary Kit plus Select Metal Snare Drums and Finishes
As we said above, Pacific Drum and Percussion (PDP) was launched in 2000 when DW moved their business to Oxnard, California. In this video from NAMM2020 you get all the new from PDP, including the new Select Metal snare drums and finsishes for the Concept Series Maple drums.
Tony Thaxton, drummer with Indie Rock band Motion City Soundtrack, was the first drummer that took the PDP 20th Anniversary kit on the band's January 2020 reunion tour.


Read the full PDP 2020 article and specs here on Drummerszone.

Drum Workshop (DW) is the home for many drummers. Not only did the company produce all the magnificent drums for Neil Peart and many others, the artists on the Drumchannel roster feature these names, from legendary to relatively new on the block.

It literally starts at A with Alex Acuna and follows the entire alphabet with names like Chad Smith, Jimmy Cobb, David Garibaldi, Eric Moore, Pete Lockett, Stewart Copeland, Mike Mitchell, Mick Fleetwood, Simon Phillips, Luke Holland, Terry Bozzio, Antonio Sanchez, Abe Laboriel, Thomas Pridgen, John Blackwell, Matt Garstka, Mike Portnoy, Nate Wood, JP Bouvet, Marco Minnemann, Gregg Bissonette, Hannah Welton, Daru Jones and too many more to mention.