(rock music)
- Hey everyone, it's Jared from Drumeo,
and we are on the road in Farmingdale, New York
at the D'Addario headquarters,
and today we're tour the Evans Factory with Sergio.
Sergio, you ready for this?
- Heck yeah, Jared, let's do it man.
- Put in the secret codes, man.
(heavy rock music)
I'll try and like, just make myself look shorter.
- I should be on stilts, right?
(laughing)
So first stop is gonna be hoop forming.
As you guys know,
drum heads are really made of two different parts.
One being the aluminum hoop,
two being the film, the striking area.
So all of our aluminum comes in
these coiled bands that you see here on top of the skid.
We unravel this and then we load it into our hoop-formers
that you'll see right behind me.
When the aluminum goes in,
it goes in as a as a flat band.
When it comes out, looks something like this.
Inside this machine, we call this our hoop-former,
there's a series of rollers,
and each of these rollers has a slightly different shape
so the aluminum is gradually bent from
that flat band into this hoop shape.
- [Jared] The little rollover
sets Evans apart from other manufacturers.
A small amount of flux solder is applied to close the hoop.
After that, it's the film-cutting.
All kinds of material go through the same process.
- Here we'll cut films into a whole bunch
of different diameters for different size heads.
Right now, it looks like we're cutting some,
maybe, 18 or 20-inch base heads,
and you know, they'll all get cut by a blade,
and then the operator here will pick them off the line
and load them onto the scales that help
keep track of all the quantities of the product.
Switching between different head sizes
is actually very simple.
This is all done digitally,
so all the operator has to do is
go over to the computer there,
type in the head size,
and it'll all get worked out through our computer systems.
Consistency is key here, alright,
and that's a big part of our processes
and we have quality control inspectors
to make sure that every time a film is cut,
that it's made to our specifications,
and, you know, we have hardly ever see much variation
in the different types of products that we make.
- [Jared] Hydraulic drum heads,
made famous by Evans in the '70s and '80s.
First she's gonna load the film,
then applies a small amount of oil onto it.
Then adds the second layer of film
and sandwiches the oil in between the two layers.
These help to control, sustain, and overtone.
It makes the drum sound fat
and minimizes unwanted resonance.
(soft acoustic music)
- This is a perfect example of some of our conga heads
before they get turned into a finished product,
so we'll layer two of these on top of each other
to create a drum head that has a very high collar
to replicate the natural shape of a conga skin.
- [Jared] Little holes are punched through
around the outside edge of the head.
This is where the glue will flow through inside the hoop,
allowing for a strong bond.
How do you know how many holes to cut?
- That's a great question.
You wanna count them?
- (laughs) How many are there?
- I don't even know, man, I have never got--
- Well come on, man!
Next is where Level 360 technology really comes into play.
They bend the collar shape into the film with heat.
After that, the film is hand-placed
inside the hoop when it's ready for gluing.
Then the head is loaded onto the gluing plate,
and the glue is applied.
When the glue is poured inside the hoop and solidifies,
the little lip curved in from the outside edge
prevents the glue from ever coming out.
- Have at it, man, see if you can do it.
(laughing)
- Let's see if I can do it?
You're not very confident in me.
There we go!
- You got it, there it is, uno.
- But it has fingerprints all over it now.
Alright, I'm a big fan of coated heads,
so this is one of the processes I wanted to see.
How exactly do you guy do this?
- Sure, so all the heads obviously get loaded and clear.
As the heads come into this box,
they start to rotate on the disc that they're sitting on,
so the nozzle will move along with the rotating head
so that coating is applied evenly across the surface.
The main kind of coating that we use is our white coating,
which you'll find on G1's, G2's, some of our base sets,
some of out most popular snare heads as well,
but we also use a frost coating
which has a translucent, kind of a clear finish.
The other kind of coating that we do is a strata coating,
which you'll find on our orchestral heads,
our timpani heads, our concert bass heads.
It's a much thinner, more sensitive coating,
doesn't have as much of a rough texture as you see,
'cause these kinds of coatings here
we really wanna amplify brush playing.
The strata coating is more for orchestral,
sensitivity and light, articulate playing.
- I want a Drumeo blue signature snare drum head,
the first signature snare drum head ever.
(rock music)
- So EC2's, they feature our sound-shape technology,
or edge-control ring, so we call them,
and those get printed on the bottom surface of the drum head
as you see happening behind me.
It's basically a giant version of
your desktop inkjet printer that you have at home.
That also has these ultraviolet lights on the underside,
so if you see under the print head,
there are those blue kind of lamps.
Those help to cure the ink as it passes over.
This is built in so you really don't have to modify,
or add more damping, to your drum head.
It's ready to go right out of the box.
- [Jared] Every single D'Addario product goes here,
in New York, before shipping out globally.
So it's been great touring the Evans Factory
and seeing how drum heads are made.
I have a much deeper appreciation for the thought and care,
and attention to detail that goes into
making these great heads.
(rock music)