DrumFrame -- Science Fiction or Fact?

By Ben Jacoby

This article was posted to rec.music.makers.percussion on June 30, 1998.

People have been discussing Bob Gatzen's DrumFrame (www.drumframe.com) and a lot of the talk (mostly supposition) has been negative. Since I happen to be one of the first owners of these things and I also believe in the "no BS" value of the INTERNET, I'm taking time to pass on a few of my experiences and observations. (This will take a while :)

Having heard people talking about the DrumFrame on the NET, I decided to attend one Bob's first Clinics at Columbus Pro Percussion. Seeing it close up and personal was interesting. Then Bob's explanation of the ergonomic theory of it really made sense to me. I have for a long time noticed the tendency to fall forward when playing double bass pedals, especially heel-up. The backward tilt as a solution to that problem made real sense to me. I didn't get in line to try out the frame that night, but did come back to the store a few days later to give it a go. Immediately I could feel the difference. The thing worked. I was pondering buying a rack system anyway, but this made a lot more sense to me than a rack by itself. I ordered one on the spot.

The whole sheebang goes for $1500 (whew!) Just the tilted base and throne without the rack go for $900. But I will point out that this includes a really nice throne too. So I suppose the cost is about 2-3 times what a decent rack and throne go for.

Basically there seem to be a couple of different kinds of people willing to shell out for this.

Gearheads (me) who just want to explore the concept of the thing. [now you know why there are Sunlites mounted on my DrumFrame!]
People with a ton of dough who make a living on appearance and being "hip". You know, folks who play DW, Ayotte, etc. who want to make a splash on stage and the frame is just a small fraction of what the rest of the kit cost.
Drummers with special problems. People with handicaps, or diseases for whom the ergonomic position of the Frame means the difference between playing some and not playing at all. Bob has a few customers like this he tells about at his clinics. They worship the DrumFrame.

My guess is that once people start to figure out that this thing really does something for your playing and isn't just a fad, the sales volume will go up and the price will come down. I'd expect the volume price to drop close to that of a standard rack plus a good throne. Someday, maybe.

But what I want to relate to you are some of my experiences with the DrumFrame now that I have my particular setup mounted on it and have tried it for a while. I was worried about the weight of the DrumFrame and it is true that there is 60 pounds of frame there. But the up side is that you don't have to carry all those double- braced stand bottoms. You'd be amazed at how much weight that is. I'd say it's something of a draw though the DrumFrame parts are slightly heavier and bulkier.

So if you already use double braced stands (I've got a forest of Gibraltar ATS) or use a rack, the drumframe makes great sense for you. If you are a jazz player with a 4 piece, one ride/crash on a flimsy 1930's stand and a hihat, you aren't going to like the volume and weight of the drumframe rack and base. My drumset (the full set not the "reduced" version) like fills the back of my (admittedly compact) pickup but is not that much greater volume than the no-DrumFrame setup. The largest new items being the DrumFrame base, wings, and large "chair".

Though my total experience with playing electronic drums extends only to some kits in stores, I'd have to say that if you play electronic, IMO the DrumFrame is the one and only ULTIMATE choice for you! Once you get the connectors, cabling etc, worked out the setup and take-down will blow you away and the avant guard LOOK of the thing will blow your fans away! (IMHO)

But weight is the only downside. The upside is that when you set up your kit. EVERYTHING and I mean everything always goes back into exactly the right spot. The drumset always feels exactly the same no matter where you take it or how many times you move it. No fooling with the pedals or snare. With stands, I used to use this rug with marks on it to set things up, but that was only an approximation. Now all the holders have memory locks and there is NO fooling around to get it "just right". Now it's always "just right" from the get go.

This is one of the most prime features of the frame but it doesn't happen automatically. Speaking as an engineer myself, I can say that the Frame has a great deal of thought and design put into it. BUT I also have to say that since I got one of the very first, a number of tweeks were needed to get it to be acceptable.

One very major problem is that the thing tends to wobble around a great deal. I emailed Bob and told him that the bass drum bounced in a totally "unacceptable" manner. I tried to order some parts to make a bracing leg for it but Bob had already come up with a fix which is to put an extra "spur" on the tube holding the bass. This pretty much fixed the problem. He's now working on a "foldable" support. But I still thought the cymbals and things wobbled a lot with double bass pedals. So next I put spurs and rear supports (the frame comes with only a right support) on both the right and left wings. This pretty much cleared up the "wobble" factor. As a final tweek I am going to make the spurs a little longer for even more stability. Tests indicate that these final changes turn the rack into a major stable drum base. The added spurs/supports etc. add next to no weight.

Another deal is that pedals are mounted with Velcro. The Frame only comes with enough for a normal double pedal setup so I had to order more. Bob suggested I just use less for each pedal but I didn't like that idea. Even with two 1" strips the length of the pedal base, sometimes the pedals would wobble. Therefore to fix this as well as to make my setup *exactly* repeatable I mounted pins (actually screws with the ends turned down) in the pedal wings that matched holes in the pedal baseplates. This way you just push the pedals over the pins, press them down, and the velcro holds them. NOTHING comes loose or slides around EVER! But it is kind of a hardcore solution.

Another problem with the DrumFrame has to do with the kinds of cymbal/tom holders you get. They only mount VERTICAL rods and only do it IN FRONT OF (toward you) the rack tube. So As Bob noted you "have to be inventive" to get all your crap mounted in the right spots. I had to reverse one of my cymbal booms so that it moved the cymbal *away* rather than closer. But it does work just fine. And I also quickly discovered that what you really want is some cymbal clamps that mount on the vertical legs rather than on the rack cross pieces. So I had to take three standard clamps and have the V-blocks welded on at 90 degrees. This gave me three vertical mounts at each of the front legs which I use for two cymbals on the ends and a set of bongos in the center just over the 12" tom. You should note that I HAD to do this since using standard clamps on the cross tubes not only put the holders in the wrong place, but also interfered with the back side of the toms which pass very close to the rack tube. Bob is well aware of all this but I'm not sure how he intends to eventually solve the problems. I did mail him some pictures of *my* solution :)

The point here is not that these problems were unexpected. I expected this would happen simply because I'm one of the first customers. The "pioneers" are always the guinea pigs who uncover the things nobody ever thought of before production. And the fact is that I, Will Kennedy, and some other "pioneers" have been feeding back our needs and comments to Bob so that hopefully later Drumframe buyers will have full advantage of our experiences.

Some of the things I've noticed about the DrumFrame in using it aren't so obvious before you get one. One is the sound of your drums. They sound so BIG! I had a chance to listen to another drummer playing my drums on the Frame and I couldn't believe the sound coming out of those Sunlites (!). What appears to happen is that unitary rack design somehow couples all the drums together sonically so that when you say hit the bass or a tom, the rest of this kit sort of chimes in with added harmonics. Not a nasty thing (like say snare buzz) but a real nice pleasant what I call BIG sound. Its a really nifty bonus!

And another thing has to do with appearance and floor space. When I got the DrumFrame I measured the floor space it occupied and went to Rite Rug for a carpet remnant to go under the kit. Much to my surprise, the new rug (which you really don't need anyway since the DrumFrame sits on it's own feet and since everything is hooked together so parts scooting is impossible) was considerably smaller than my old rug. And not only that, with the old rug some of the stand feet were off the rug, but now everything is ON the rug. Even though my setup is still identical from the throne, the floor space requirement has been cut by a foot or more.

But even though the DrumFrame uses less floor space, I was very surprised when people started coming up and telling me that this was the "biggest drumset they had ever seen!" This blew me away since though I do have a number of cymbals and things, the drumset itself is just a generic 5 piece! No heavy metal double bass drums or anything. As it turns out, I'd say there is enough room to add a second floor tom behind the first by simply sitting one there and the DrumFrame would still be using less space than the old stand setup! This effect was surprising. People think you are playing a monster kit when it's actually taking less space than the old stand setup.

Of course one reason people think the kit is so huge is that the "full" set has 5(!) pedals. 4 on the left (Remote spoke hat...Bozzio influence, heh; normal hat, double bass, Bongo bell) and just Bass on the right. Bob recently added the "extended wing" as an option and graciously exchanged my double bass wing for one. This gave me the real estate I needed to mount the 4 pedals. I also have a standard wing for times I just want hat and bass. (double bass actually... man, I *can't* give up my double pedals! :)

At his Clinic Bob talked about what he called the "Harley Factor" which is to say that it just looks so cool even before you do anything on it and I can say that this "Harley Factor" has been totally verified by me. And one last side effect of the impressive nature of DrumFrame looks is that you had better plan on spending some time in the woodshed. One thing I noticed right off, is that when people are so impressed with the looks of your drums, they really expect your playing to live up to those looks when you sit down to play!

What can I say: I LOVE THIS THING! I predict that once drummers start to actually PLAY on DrumFrames (especially properly setup and tweeked ones like mine) they are really going to get excited and you'll see a LOT more of them around! I *might* use a regular stand setup for some pot-boiling wedding gig or the like, but I can say that after using the DrumFrame I would NEVER give it up for any session where I really felt I needed to "show 'em what I can do". This device is NOT science fiction. It DOES work. And I'd say that you probably won't appreciate what it does for you unless you have the chance to play one for a while.

So if you see one near you (I saw on the DrumFrame site that Will and Bob are going to be doing clinic-tours), get in line, climb in the driver's seat and give it a go. I think you'll almost immediately see what I'm talking about.

And no, I have no financial interest in DrumFrame Ltd. But like many of us, I AM very much interested in advancing the art of drumming. I'd call the DrumFrame an advance.

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