Rob: We actually spray metal inside a wooden shell. We have four options: black and gold, black and silver, cream and gold, and blue and silver. Rob: We’ve had guys get them in natural or black, but we thought it would be cool to offer duco as a standard finish. We changed our shell makeup and the bearing edges, and then it found itself.ĭB: Are all the Super Vintage kits coming with the two-tone duco finish? But that’s not a concept we’d put out, because it detunes quickly, so we started working on something that would make a similar sound. We tried the six-lug drum, and it worked. The fewer lugs you have, the fatter the drum sounds. We did a six-lug snare drum for a guy, to emulate some of the old six-lug drums. Rob: We had talked to a couple of drummers who wanted that sound. But with the PVS, the air resonates the bottom head completely before it escapes through a few holes in the bearing edge.ĭB: How did the Super Vintage, which is designed to sound like classic American drums from the early and middle 1900s, come about? We put the vent hole as close to the bottom head as we can on all of our drums. If you have one air hole in the side of the shell, the drum doesn’t resonate fully, because the air escapes. When you hit a drum, you’re moving a column of air. It was a cool idea, so we tried it and it’s worked out great.ĭB: Is the vented bearing edge designed to make the drum more sensitive? The PVS, which has a ventilated bottom bearing edge, was developed by one of the guys in the shop, Pete Levine.
One of the guys in the shop might think of something cool to try, and then one day we start making it. Rob: We’re a little bit on the organic side over here. We used to own that market back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, but now we’re having a lot of success with more specialized products, like the Revolution and PVS snares and the Super Vintage series. Some companies seem to be a little bit successful with it, but it’s a harder pitch for us to get that customer now. I don’t think that approach works in today’s society. Rob: We’ve been taking a page out of Apple’s book by focusing on some specialized products, as opposed to when we used to offer everything.
From there on out, GMS would be widely regarded as one of the world’s premier custom-shop drum makers.Ī lot has changed in the drum market since GMS paved the way for other boutique brands over two decades ago, so we decided to make a trip over to the company’s workshop in Farmingdale, New York, to sit down with Mazzella and talk about how GMS went from a pet project to an internationally recognized brand, and also to get a feel for how he and Gallino are primed to adapt to today’s ever-evolving music industry.ĭB: Where is GMS in 2013? What’s your focus these days? But there was a clear demand for it, as Rob and Tony soon found out when orders came pouring in after their NAMM Show debut in 1988. That’s been the GMS way since the Long Island natives Rob Mazzella and Tony Gallino began building custom snare drums twenty-six years ago.īelieve it or not, back in 1987 not many drum companies could claim such a fluff-free hands-on approach to doing business. No fancy robots, no marketing focus groups, no overstated advertising campaigns-just great-sounding and great-looking drums, handmade by drummers for drummers. GMS founders Tony Gallino and Rob Mazzella in 2012 Web Exclusive! GMS Looking Back and Stepping Forward With New York’s Original Boutique