Business Is Booming at Oxnard Manufacturer of Quality Drums

OXNARD —  With drums from Drum Workshop Inc., more than just the sound is deep.

The company, known throughout the popular-music industry for its high-quality product, has started using 500-year-old wood that’s been sitting at the bottom of Lake Superior for more than a century.

When John Good, vice president of Drum Workshop, heard about Lake Superior Waterlogged Lumber Co., he jumped to get exclusive rights to making drums from the wood for a new line to add to the company’s custom-made maple and birch sets.

The submerged wood isn’t cheap, or easy to get--especially since makers of violins, guitars and furniture covet it too--but the lengths to which the company has gone to get it shows DW’s commitment to excellence, customers say.

Two logs cost about $40,000, enough for about 700 drums, said Don Lombardi, founder and president of the company widely known as DW Drums, which has been around since the 1970s.

In a market where a set of foreign-made drums can cost as little as $300, a whole set of Timeless Timber drums could make most drummers wince--$10,000 without hardware, such as stands and pedals. Add those and cymbals, and a drummer can leave the Oxnard showroom having spent $20,000.

The most sought-after drum in the world, according to Good, is the DW Craviotto Lake Superior solid-shell snare--one of the Timeless Timber line of drums made by master craftsman John Craviotto--which lists at $3,000.

Why the big bucks? Cells in the water-logged wood have leached out all minerals and sap, leaving microscopic echo chambers. The wood’s extreme density helps it produce a tremendously vibrant and resonant sound, Good said.

*

Such expensive drums aren’t for every drummer, but that’s not the market that has helped DW grow.

The company--which has 100 employees, including three Lombardi family members--recently moved to a 52,000-square-foot facility here.

DW Drums grosses more than $10 million a year, according to Lombardi, selling directly to retailers such as Guitar Center and Sam Ash Music. In more than 20 countries, drummers can find a DW Drums distributor.

DW Drums has been reported to have 50% of the world market for custom-made drums. Its nearest competitors, Pearl and Yamaha, are based in Japan.

“There is a long history of drums manufactured in America,” said John Parker, vice president of global sales and marketing for Remo Inc., the world’s largest supplier of drum and percussion product heads. “DW is one of the few, and certainly the largest, remaining drum manufacturers in America.”

For years, the United States dominated the drum industry. But in the 1980s, Japanese-owned companies started to take over, particularly after they moved manufacturing to Taiwan, where cheaper labor allowed them to sell their drums for less.

That meant, Lombardi said, a small company could “fill the niche--to offer custom-designed products with high standards for quality, as opposed to mass production and low prices.”

DW introduced the Timeless Timber drums in January and sold the first edition of 100 sets within two weeks, Good said. Drummers who have bought from DW include Billy Ashbough of ‘N Sync, Tris Imboden of Chicago, Neil Peart of Rush, Joey Kramer with Aerosmith and Scott Crago of the Eagles.

Danya Franklin, of the industrial rock group Flesh for Eve, has used DW drums for five years. She said drummers always notice the tone of her maple drums and Timeless Timber snare.

“The warmth in sounds makes these drums incedible,” said Franklin, who regards the drums’ exotic wood finish as a work of art. “When I sit behind my kit and the sound engineer sees that they are DW, they are always pleased because I’m making their job easier.”

*

The engineers can thank Good’s experience for that. He spent about eight years, on and off, as a drum technician for the likes of Frank Zappa, Madonna, the Jacksons and Elton John, so he knew drummers had problems achieving a consistent sound.

“Frank Zappa was the first person to notice that I had a good ear,” said Good, adding that consecutive nights of recording songs for albums meant the tone of the drums, which like many other instruments need to be tuned, had to be exactly the same each night.

So now Good himself identifies the pitch of every drum that DW makes, and the note is stamped on the inside of the shell as an aid to the drummer or technicians for tuning purposes. Then he matches the color and grain of the wood. DW Drums holds the patent for the pitch-matching process, known as TimbreMatching, and for more than a dozen other innovations.

“Every time I’ve been to the factory, they are always working on something new, striving to be better,” Franklin said.

Parker, of Remo Inc., added, “They leave no stone unturned. They look at every part of the instrument and its functionality and its relationship to the overall sound. As a result, they are responsible for many innovations within the drumming industry.”

In addition to using their own experience to develop better accessories and drums, the company owners rely on a 600-member nonsalaried research and development crew, Lombardi said.

“Our research-and-development team is our artists,” he said.

Abe Laboriel Jr., a professional freelance musician who owns three sets of maple DW drums and one birch set, said, “They are passionate about making the drums and hardware--just as musicians are passionate about making music. Some other drums may choke up, the sound will be dead or very quickly die out. But DW drums have a resonance that is very unique and inviting.”

Still, Parker said, DW has some challenges, primarily quality control. It’s a quirky business, one based on the ability to create and detect pitch, and Good will not be there forever. To make sure the company is prepared, Good, the only person at the firm qualified to match the pitch of the shells, said he is training someone to learn to do so.

In the process, Good will be perpetuating a policy of improvements in DW’s business that started in the 1970s.

At first, the company didn’t sell actual drums at all.

In 1972, Lombardi opened a small teaching studio in Santa Monica, and later, to increase income, he sold accessories and drums. Soon he befriended “one of the worst students,” then 17-year-old Good. The basis for their friendship and eventual business relationship was their common interest in how drums work and ways to improve them.

Understanding the industry’s needs, they joined forces in 1974 to make better accessories. Even though their prices were 30% higher than inexpensive hardware, drummers were buying because the products worked better and made their jobs easier.

Laboriel, the freelancer, said Good has given him hardware to take on road tours and then tell Good what went wrong or right.

“Their hardware is genius, and that sets them apart from all the other companies,” Laboriel said.

The company’s revenue was generated mainly by accessories until 1990. But that year, Lombardi and Good first took their drum sets, which they had been making for several years, to the National Assn. of Music Merchants trade show.

*

By 1999, the company had earned the drum industry’s most prestigious award given by Modern Drummer magazine--first place in three categories: most valuable product (Delta II drum pedal), most innovative drum company and highest-quality craftsmanship.

To meet the demand for low-priced drums, DW is generating a new line of starter drums, called “Pacific.” The brand will use some of DW’s trademark technology and innovations but will be made in Taiwan and sell as low as $700 per kit.

“DW has established themselves as a benchmark that other companies would compare themselves to,” Parker said. “They are the No. 1 drum company in the world.”

“We don’t consider ourselves to be the best drum company in the world,” Good said. “Being the best is an opinion someone else should have of us--that keeps us trying harder and harder, year after year.”

* HOMING IN

Homestore.com and world’s largest home builder are teaming up. B4

* MORE BUSINESS NEWS: B4-7