Dream drum becomes a fledgling business
Throughout history, there wasn’t all that much to making a drum.
Get a strong tubular shell.
Stretch a skin over it.
Hit it.
The general principle hadn’t changed much, even in modern times.
Then William J. Bausch III had a dream.
“I was building a drum shell out of stray pieces of wood,” he recalled. In his dream, he cut wedges off the tops and bottoms of the wood, and used them to separate the vertical staves.
Three years later, Bausch has a fledgling drum-making business and a 20-year patent for his so-called vertically vented drum shell design.
Bausch’s quest for a better-sounding drum wasn’t simply a matter of following the instructions in his dream. He had responsibilities -- children to raise, a daytime job as a manager at a Blockbuster.
It was at work where he found his future business partners, Jason Kincaid and Rick Faryniak. Though neither is a drummer, as Bausch is, they bought into his vision and joined him to form Stavent Drums.
Bausch, 31, of South Whitehall Township, Pa., said he worked after-hours trying to build his dream drum. It took eight or nine tries before he got it right.
The Stavent looks different from most drums on the market today. Mass-produced drums are usually made with a two- or three-ply design of various types of wood, bent and shaped with glue.
Drums need to expel the energy created when the drum head is struck, and because most standard drums have a bottom head -- which allows the drummer to vary the tone -- the manufacturer drills a hole in the side to allow for the energy expulsion.
With the Stavent drum, the vertical pieces of wood are joined by the wedges Bausch cuts out of them. As they are fitted to form a circle, the space between the top and bottom wedges forms a small slit that acts as a standard drum’s drilled hole. The result means less glue and a sound that jumps out.
“The thing that distorts the sound in any drum is glue,” Bausch said.
Those slits between the staves, he added, “are considered an amplifier” in the patent. (The construction also produced the brand name by merging the words “stave” and “vent.”)
Bausch said he could use any type of wood for the drums and customize them. Someone in a jazz combo would prefer drums that produce a crisp tone. Rock drummers want them with a deep bottom and loud.
Bausch varies the drum’s sound by altering the wedges relative to the drum head.
The Stavent drum got its first big test a few months ago when Anthony Baker of the heavy metal band Crystal Roxx tried out a 12-inch tom-tom during a show. Baker said he could hear an obvious difference.
“I’ve been playing my whole life, and I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said. “They have a nice warm sound to them, but they project.”
A five-piece set of drums could cost up to $8,000 -- 10 times that of a standard factory-made set. But, Bausch adds, the customer gets to set the specifications and style: Bausch even etched Egyptian hieroglyphics into one drum.
Bausch said he has another design up his sleeve, but he’s not ready to disclose it yet.
Meantime, his partners say they’re envisioning a life after Blockbuster, running a company that began in Bausch’s subconscious.
“We’re going to keep him sedated so he can get his rest,” Faryniak joked.