I'm planning on having a custom kit made this summer with C&C Custom Drums. They offered me a phenomenal endorsement deal on their kits and I've been wanting a new kit for quite a while now. I really like the idea of getting to completely customize every aspect of the drums down to the number of plies per drum and specific bearing edge style and I'm going to have a lot of fun with that. It's cool being able to get EXACTLY what I want, opposed to just having to settle for the best drums I can find that are closest to what I'd like. I have a pretty good idea of what I want as far as the technical features that impact the sound of the drums, but I'm completely stumped when it comes to picking out how the drums should look. I'm a big sucker for natural wood finishes. They don't necessarily have to be brown, but I'm far more critical of woods that are stained unnatural colors. Could you guys post some cool finishes for me to look at? They don't necessarily have to be drum pictures. They can be guitars, basses, etc. I just need some ideas. For reference, I'm playing a Mapex Orion in Imperial Burst right now. Also, here's their website if you want to see some more of their work: http://www.candccustomdrums.com/ And don't limit it to just finishes. You can show me anything that could make the drums look cool/classy/interesting. I really can't wait to get this kit started. I have about half the money needed to get them to start the project. (Which means that I have roughly a fourth of the money needed overall.)
I think the natural blonde color of maple is nice enough not to need any stain, especially on a drum kit. But root beer, orange, orange and yellow, all look pretty nice and sort of have an "antique" look to them instead of looking unnatural. Quilt maple, natural finish: Flame maple, "Bengal Burst": I am STILL waiting on my custom guitar (it's been 2 years now), so I have kinda sour grapes about custom bigshot stuff right now and would say it's better to find something off the shelf, but I'm just feeling cynical about it. Congrats on the endorsement and maybe you should make sure they won't keep you waiting too long. I wish I had insisted on an invoice with an estimated completion date on it before I put down my deposit... LOTS of great ideas: http://www.suhrguitars.com/guitarGallery.aspx?gallery=1 http://gallery.mac.com/suhrguitars http://www.andersonguitars.com/cfpages/gallery.cfm (the last one has a sweet "search by finish" feature)
Get something that looks like that veneer you showed me at practice the other day. EDIT: Walnut Burl I believe it was. If I ever work on that guitar, then that might be something I consider, and then we would match!
What kind of wood is that? It looks really clean. I'm checking out all of those links right now. I kinda like a fusion of the two pictures you posted. The closest example would be the guitar Chris bought from Sherman, but that wasn't specifically crafted for him: Not sure how much that would cost covering an entire drumset. But I think it'd look really cool. I need to call them and see how much extra an outer ply of quilted/flame maple, etc. would run me. I know that adding an outer ply of walnut all the way around the kit was $300, so it may be in that ballpark. We'll see. What would you call that finish with the striated look like the one I posted? I'm a noob at woods. Yeah, that's what it was. Problem with that is that they'd have to find a sheet of that large enough to do all of my drums so that stain and everything would take the same and everything would be consistent and I don't know if they can do that. I'll bring that up when I call Jake sometime this week. That would be so cool, but I don't know if they could get a consistent look across the entire kit. Which means they may want to go with this instead:
I think the guitar is mahogany. This guy's set looks pretty nice. http://www.drummerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44494
I think maple runs around the same as walnut, usually a bit less... That guitar of Chris' that you posted is just flame maple with no stain at all (aka. natural). In other words it's the same wood as the second guitar in my pic, just without the bengal burst stain applied to it. Off the top of my head here's a bunch of exotic woods that look awesome, just google them. I have a feeling that since it's a veneer it wouldn't affect the tone one way or another. Lacewood Zebrawood Snakewood Birds Eye Maple Spalted Maple (I am not sure this one will work out on a kit) Pau Ferro Bokote Cocobolo Bubinga Koa Most of those look better to me unstained. And I think that guitar LJS posted is mahogany...
@Jazz - An outer ply of bubinga would always be a cool idea. It'd be especially cool if I could find some waterfall bubinga. So pretty. My brother actually just put a bubinga veneer on a guitar he was working on. I also LOVE the look of natural mahogany. I just decided that I really would like some sort of figured wood. I'm currently looked at a lot of the vertical-grain stuff like zebrawood, rosewood, and ebony. I think it'd look really cool having the lines going from rim to rim. Like this: I'd just want there to be a huge amount of color differentiation. All of those woods that Overtone listed would look so cool. I just need to talk to the guys at C&C and see what's feasible, both from a building and financial standpoint.
That looks badass.... I agree that a high contrast vertical stripe would be very classy! You'll have to let us know what you end up ordering.
Still undecided. I'm so bad at this whole choosing a finish thing. I'll be placing the order sometime in March. So just look through their gallery and post some images you like. I also need help choosing lugs. http://web.mac.com/ccdrums/c&c_photo_gallary/das_photos.html
I usually don't like natural finishes like this, but this really jumped out at me when i looked at your link: http://web.mac.com/ccdrums/c&c_photo_gallary/das_photos.html#2 In contrast, I'm also a very big fan of the dark bubinga finishes that Tama does, like this one:
Yeah, that first one is amazing. And bubinga is a sweet option. I'm just so flustered with all the options! I don't know what would look best!
