Decibels for Sale

What a racket.

Former drummer Bill Talbot tapped into an unheard-of business opportunity when he opened his store in Westchester earlier this year.

Talbot sells noise. The kind produced by hand percussion instruments and the bells and whistles that go along with them. The louder the better.

That explains why the showroom in the hole-in-the-wall shop he calls Noisy Toys fairly groans under the weight of its inventory. And warbles, rasps, trills, clangs, rumbles, whooshes, honks, booms and tinkles.

The store is tucked behind a shopping strip within earshot of Los Angeles International Airport’s high-decibel jetliner approach.

Maybe that’s the perfect spot for Egyptian doumbeks, Chinese cymbals, African djembes, Guatemalan maracas, Brazilian cuicas, Peruvian tarcas, Filipino jaw harps, Kenyan agogo bells, English police whistles, Moroccan bongos, Zambian seed rattles, Andean flutes, Chilean ocarinas, Burmese nipple gongs and California ocean drums.

“I have an open mind to anything that makes a sound,” said Talbot, 48, of Inglewood. As he spoke he was whipping a rubber band contraption on the end of a string over his head. It was creating a blubbery, humming sound. Sort of like a bat circling to land in his hair.

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Talbot is a musician who spent years playing weddings, studio sessions and club gigs before going to work as a customer service supervisor at Remo, a Valencia drum manufacturing firm. He knew of the entertainment value of percussion playing from his performance days, of course. But it was at Remo that customers persuaded him of its personal, holistic value.

“People kept mentioning how relaxing it was,” Talbot said. “They’d talk about the spiritual and community value of drumming. There’s a movement today of people drumming for nonmusical reasons.”

So he quit his job late last year and emptied his $25,000 savings account--including the money he and his wife, Sharon, had set aside for a new roof for their home. Then he starting writing checks to importers of Chinese xinjiangs, Pakistani bodhrans and Mexican maracas, and to U.S.-based makers of such things as plastic fruit shakers, kazoos, nose flutes, Swiss warblers and lip whistles.

Before he even put up his sign in early April outside his 410-square-foot shop at 8728 1/4 S. Sepulveda Blvd., he made his first sale: A woman walked in to buy a child-size tambourine for her young son.

“She said she wanted her baby to grow up making noise,” Talbot said.

“I thought, ‘Wow! A couple of years of business like this and I can retire!’ But a few days later when we really opened it was pouring rain and not one customer walked into the store.”

There have been many such days since then, Talbot acknowledges.

“One time a man came in and planted his hands on his hips and said, ‘Well, I guess you can make a living selling anything these days’ and turned around and walked out. But I stay until 5 every afternoon, six days a week. I figure tomorrow is going to be better.”

For now, Talbot and his wife are living on her paycheck as a radio announcer. Except for a few small classified ads and handbills he prints on his home computer and posts in places like his auto mechanic’s garage, business is drummed up by word of mouth.

That kind of buzz was filling the shop the other afternoon.

Salim Admon, 18, of Beverly Hills was thumping on a deep-throated African djembe while a friend, Jenny Sommerville, 17, of Farmington Hills, Mich., made deafening surf sounds by holding a ball bearing-filled ocean drum over her head. They settled on an American-made hand drum for Sommerville to play at drum circles--informal gatherings held at places such as Venice Beach.

Renee Robinson, 16, of Westchester was puffing on a Chinese harmonica, looking for the perfect pitch. “I want to be Alanis Morrisette,” she said as she selected one to buy.

Next door, seamstress Paddy Douglas could hear it all through the thin wall that separates her clothes cleaning and alteration shop from Talbot’s place.

“Sometimes they can’t keep a beat. But those are the ones who don’t play for long, so it’s OK,” Douglas said with a laugh.

Talbot’s shop differs from music stores in that it stocks ethnic instruments from two dozen countries and does not sell drum sets or high-tech electronic gear, said Kay Carlson, a former big-band drummer who now teaches percussion in Inglewood and has shopped there.

“It’s a good thing to see drummers get back to their roots with hand instruments like his,” Carlson said. “Bells, bongos--those are drummers’ toys. But everybody can enjoy them.”

That kind of talk resonates with Talbot.

If he finds the right business rhythm, he’s convinced he won’t take a financial pounding.