Narrator: Noble & Cooley
makes its signature snare drums
from a single piece of wood.
It's been doing it this way since 1854,
making it the oldest drum factory in the United States.
The quality of the wood
is what determines the drums' unique sound.
The company has survived two fires, economic crises,
and growing competition from mass-manufacturers.
But adapting century-old techniques
and machines is what helped keep the business afloat.
We went to Massachusetts
to see how seven generations of one family
have kept this factory still standing.
Father and son Jay and Nick Jones
work on all stages of production
alongside a handful of employees.
Jay: It's about 37, 38 steps to build a snare drum
from start to finish.
Nick: You can mess up at every single step.
And I have.
Narrator: It all starts with good wood.
Jay debarks logs by hand.
Sometimes, he even goes out and cuts down a tree himself.
Then he trims it into strips
that are 5/8" thick.
He gets a few passes in,
then turns the log over for more cuts.
Jay: By rotating a log again and again and again,
we're trying to get the prettiest, straightest grain
that's going to bend.
Narrator: This is walnut,
one of the nine wood species Noble & Cooley uses
in its shells.
Next, Jay brings the planks to the planer,
which shaves and smooths it to the right thickness.
At this point, they start to sort for quality by eye.
Jay: Yeah, I mean, that's going to be tough to make a drum out of.
Narrator: Only the best planks will become drum shells.
Jay: We're not even gonna play with it.
Over the years, we know what's going to bend well,
what's not going to bend well,
and what's worth taking a chance on
because of the beautiful grain.
Jay: We're going to start by taking down the pressure.
Narrator: Jay steams the wood for exactly three hours
in this cast-iron steam oven that's about 150 years old.
He takes out a plank, feeds it into the bending machine,
presses the pedal, and what was once a long rectangle
is now a perfect circle.
He stuffs it into a wooden form
and rolls it over to Nick, who hammers in a center support.
Jay and Nick have to be precise with their timing
to bend each shell into a form before it cools off.
Steam-bending
is what sets a Noble & Cooley snare drum apart
from many drums on the market.
Mass-manufactured ones are often made
with multiple layers of wood and glue
instead of a single plank.
Jay: You're going to see the pace that we normally do it at.
Narrator: The shells sit in forms
for about three and a half weeks
before it's time to glue the edges and support hoops.
This is one of Lou Scalzo's tasks.
The shell stays like this for 24 hours, but when it's out,
it starts to resemble a drum.
Lou uses a lathe to smooth out the surface.
He goes over the shell twice, once manually,
and the second on auto.
This is also when Nick
and Jay have to make a big decision on the drum's future.
Nick: If something is absolutely stunningly gorgeous,
we're going to set that aside to oil it,
to have it be as minimal finish and natural as possible.
If there's, you know,
the grain is a little bland or whatever,
then we're going to set that aside
for something that's going to get painted.
Narrator: Nick lightly sands the shell,
then applies boiled linseed oil with a rag.
Depending on the wood,
Nick will do this four to seven more times
before the final wax layer.
But the shell must rest for a few hours
between each coat of oil.
Nick: I love the contrast in that grain,
that varied color pattern.
We'll try to center it in the drums
to the best of our ability.
Narrator: If the wood doesn't pass Nick
and Jay's standards, it goes to Lou for painting.
For this drum, he's adding a sparkle coat.
He brings the drum over to these rollers to dry it evenly
without drips.
But no matter if it's been oiled or painted,
every drum needs hardware.
Nick: The fabrication of all the brass pieces
is all done in-house.
Narrator: Like these parts of the throw-off
that Jay designed himself.
Jay: And our drum designer said,
"You needed a throw-off mechanism
that was quiet and solid."
And this is what I came up with.
Narrator: Nick takes each drum shell
and drills out the holes.
This is one of the hardest parts,
because if you drill even one hole in the wrong spot,
the entire drum is ruined.
He's even given himself a "no-drill Fridays" rule.
Nick: Every drum I've catastrophically ruined
has been from drilling something wrong
on a Friday afternoon.
So I just don't do it anymore.
Narrator: Then he checks that the top
and bottom edges are perfectly level.
Nick: So as you can see,
there's light coming through underneath here,
which means that the shell is not sitting perfectly flat.
So we need to square and level that edge
and then cut it to a point
before we can finish it and put it together.
Jay: Again, it's just that attention to detail
to make sure it is perfect before the heads go on.
Narrator: To put it all together,
Nick lays out all the hardware
and screws each piece in by hand.
One of his final touches here
is to stamp the Nobel & Cooley logo on the inside
and write in the serial number.
He logs this in a notebook,
along with all the details like the size and finish.
The company has kept a record
of all the drums it's made this way.
Nick: We have all those notebooks kept in a safe
that we're able to pull out and reference to see
when they were built and where they went.
Narrator: Finally, the drums are ready to play.
And you'd think that Jay and Nick would be expert drummers.
Nick: My brother is the drummer.
We grew up playing in bands together,
and you don't need two drummers.
Jay: My famous line is,
"I play the radio. And I'm pretty good at it."
Narrator: So general manager Luke Garro,
who is a drummer, will often give them a play test.
Luke: This is our 14-inch piccolo maple.
It's one of our most popular models
of the solid-shell classic.
Drummers like Phil Collins
or Matt Chamberlain have used this on recordings.
And still to this day, people call up and they say,
"I want the Phil Collins snare,"
which is this in piano black with some nice die-cast frames.
Narrator: Since most Noble & Cooley drums
are made to order,
pieces can vary from about $700 for a single drum
to several thousand for a whole kit
or highly customized pieces.
Jay: We decided right at the forefront
that the world did not need another mediocre product.
And if we're going to do this,
we're going to do it top-shelf.
We're going to go after the best quality of sound
and find the best way to achieve that.
Narrator: But they didn't start out
making drums for musicians.
Back in 1853, Silas Noble made toy drums
as Christmas gifts in his kitchen.
Then in January, he and James P. Cooley,
Jay and Nick's ancestor,
decided it would make a good business.
That first year, they made about 600.
During the Civil War,
they made their first real drums for the Union Army,
which used them to communicate orders across battlefields.
At least one of these drums survives today in their museum
after a soldier picked it up at Gettysburg.
Production ramped up quickly, and by 1873,
Noble & Cooley was producing 80,000 drums a year,
most of them toys.
In fact,
musical toys were Noble & Cooley's staple business
throughout most of their history.
The factory suffered two fires,
but the business has been on the same plot of land
since 1889.
Jay started the music division in the 1980s,
around the same time most American toy manufacturing
started shifting overseas.
Throughout its history,
Noble & Cooley has been affected by major economic events,
but not always in an expected way.
Jay: The Great Depression was not a bad time for this company.
A toy drum is, No. 1, inexpensive,
and No. 2, it was large.
It looked like a lot under the Christmas tree.
So come Christmastime, we were very busy.
Narrator: The pandemic also gave it a boost.
Nick: People are at home,
they're looking to expand their kits
that they already have, or pick up a new snare drum,
replace something.
We've had to hire a couple of people,
and our back-order log is bigger
than it's been in my 15 years here.
Jay: Good afternoon, Noble & Cooley.
Narrator: Even with this recent uptick in business,
Nick and Jay still aren't looking
to go up against the big guys in the drum industry
if it means sacrificing quality.
Nick: Every drum that I'm putting in a box
at the end of the day,
I know the customer who it's going to,
or at least the shop it's shipping to.
I like that.
You know, having that ability to know
who you're building a drum for
makes you care that much more about the drum you're making.
And I don't want to lose that.
Jay: Being able to come to work with my son every day,
it's just absolutely fabulous.
I couldn't think of a better partner,
and I hope he feels the same.
Nick: Yep. For sure. For sure.
I'm just going to do my best to take it over
and run with it.