Sonor USA... (ala Pearl Music City Customs) could it fly?

[Jules]

I am REALLY surprised (sorta) that I am not a DW guy. I mean, as far as geeking out on gear, they take it to a whole new level. Even if much of it red-lines on the bullshit meter, it's still something that I should find intriguing, but I don't.

When I had some Tama stuff last year, the snare drums should have been a gear head's dream come true. I couldn't get happy with it, though.

The irony is that as many Sonor people that SEEM to be gear heads, Sonor has minimal accessories; Basic Arm System components can be hard to come by and they really haven't seemed to try to tap into that potential.

[DaveInNZ]

The irony is that as many Sonor people that SEEM to be gear heads... and they really haven't seemed to try to tap into that potential.

Gear heads like Sonor's stuff because it's pretty much the best of the best. Not many of those understand why, and in my opinion it's because they sit in rarefied air where design matters as much as quality. And by design I mean the process of having an idea and iterating it down over and over until it's the purest, most distilled, fluff free version of that idea. That way of doing things is why people love handling the box an iPhone comes in, they love the way a car door sounds on a late 90's Mercedes, why there are couches, and there are couches and despite both being fine to sit on, people know which one they prefer.

The art of design is so important. But there's a lot of companies out there who just make pretty things - they don't work very well but they look beautiful. It's why builders hate most architects and vice versa - they're too different aspects of making a thing.

Rarely do they overlap without friction and a lot of effort. Sonor probably make drums that overlap those two things more than anyone else.

But they don't achieve it by being gearheads. Not many gearheads see design or manufacturing, they see the toy at the end of it.

To finish that train of thought off, I suspect if the factory had any/many gearheads in it, because of that ^^^^ we wouldn't get the drums we so love.

[Jules]

Quick (just waking up) response: I mean things like microphone booms compatible with the hardware (DW et. al. has them), holders for smart iPhones/iPads (or whatever brand/model devices) an the like. When I went to Fork's Drum Closet in Nashville, they had walls and walls of this stuff from multiple manufacturers and no space allocated for Sonor. This, in the same city where the US Sonor distributor is based. And by the way, there is a strong connection between the US Brand Manager and the Germany design team. All I am saying is that as a Sonor owner in 2025, I don't like that I have to get other brands of gear for things that I think should be available from Sonor. Add to that that Sonor uses pipe diameters that are almost proprietary and don't play well with others.

[krusher74]

The Head of KHS when doing video at the Namm show seemed like a John Good from temu! I dont think Sonor are in great distribution hands in the USA.

Do you have a link to that? You have my curiosity piqued.

It was some random youtube channel, doing a video on "What's New at Namm" When they got to the Sonor stand, they talked to the head of KHS, and any of us here would know he had no idea about the product from his first vague salesman sentence.

[krusher74]

The irony is that as many Sonor people that SEEM to be gear heads... and they really haven't seemed to try to tap into that potential.

Gear heads like Sonor's stuff because it's pretty much the best of the best. Not many of those understand why, and in my opinion it's because they sit in rarefied air where design matters as much as quality. And by design I mean the process of having an idea and iterating it down over and over until it's the purest, most distilled, fluff free version of that idea. That way of doing things is why people love handling the box an iPhone comes in, they love the way a car door sounds on a late 90's Mercedes, why there are couches, and there are couches and despite both being fine to sit on, people know which one they prefer.

The art of design is so important. But there's a lot of companies out there who just make pretty things - they don't work very well but they look beautiful. It's why builders hate most architects and vice versa - they're too different aspects of making a thing.

Rarely do they overlap without friction and a lot of effort. Sonor probably make drums that overlap those two things more than anyone else.

But they don't achieve it by being gearheads. Not many gearheads see design or manufacturing; they see the toy at the end of it.

To finish that train of thought off, I suspect if the factory had any/many gearheads in it, because of that ^^^^ we wouldn't get the drums we so love.

I think the Age of design/gearhead is all in the past. The R&D /design time put into their products in the 80's/90's was crazy deep. Look at the catalogues from back then and you will read in-depth design paragraphs with cutaway pictures showing you every aspect of everything! Once they had maybe the designer (which brought tom suspension to the market) it was all over and i don't think anything has got any better since then. Manufacturing and fit and finish may be making small advancements but major design is stagnant (and where really can acoustic drums go)

It's now all about price and which "john good" can hook you it of instagram in 10 secs.

Take the new momentum series, Fine drums, But 100% made from already in production parts. Its just a parts bin build to fit a better space in the market.

Back in the day the "design hunt" was about finding that product that worked better and did not fall apart, as the wrong choice could result in problems, now if you walk in the local drum store with $300 for a single pedal whether it's pearl, tama, sonor,DW, mapex, gibralter etc etc , they all work and dont fall apart. In the 70/80's sonor was designing/building better drums gear, now all the other big companies have caught up.

I wonder, since Roland bought DW, has John good backed off from the videos, or has Roland backed him off?

[Jules]

The irony is that as many Sonor people that SEEM to be gear heads... and they really haven't seemed to try to tap into that potential.

Gear heads like Sonor's stuff because it's pretty much the best of the best. Not many of those understand why, and in my opinion it's because they sit in rarefied air where design matters as much as quality. And by design I mean the process of having an idea and iterating it down over and over until it's the purest, most distilled, fluff free version of that idea. That way of doing things is why people love handling the box an iPhone comes in, they love the way a car door sounds on a late 90's Mercedes, why there are couches, and there are couches and despite both being fine to sit on, people know which one they prefer.

The art of design is so important. But there's a lot of companies out there who just make pretty things - they don't work very well but they look beautiful. It's why builders hate most architects and vice versa - they're too different aspects of making a thing.

Rarely do they overlap without friction and a lot of effort. Sonor probably make drums that overlap those two things more than anyone else.

But they don't achieve it by being gearheads. Not many gearheads see design or manufacturing; they see the toy at the end of it.

To finish that train of thought off, I suspect if the factory had any/many gearheads in it, because of that ^^^^ we wouldn't get the drums we so love.

I think the Age of design/gearhead is all in the past. The R&D /design time put into their products in the 80's/90's was crazy deep. Look at the catalogues from back then and you will read in-depth design paragraphs with cutaway pictures showing you every aspect of everything! Once they had maybe the designer (which brought tom suspension to the market) it was all over and i don't think anything has got any better since then. Manufacturing and fit and finish may be making small advancements but major design is stagnant (and where really can acoustic drums go)

It's now all about price and which "john good" can hook you it of instagram in 10 secs.

Take the new momentum series, Fine drums, But 100% made from already in production parts. Its just a parts bin build to fit a better space in the market.

Back in the day the "design hunt" was about finding that product that worked better and did not fall apart, as the wrong choice could result in problems, now if you walk in the local drum store with $300 for a single pedal whether it's pearl, tama, sonor,DW, mapex, gibralter etc etc , they all work and dont fall apart. In the 70/80's sonor was designing/building better drums gear, now all the other big companies have caught up.

I wonder, since Roland bought DW, has John good backed off from the videos, or has Roland backed him off?

You make several points that I want to respond to. You have made several references about the parts bin, referring to the fact that they haven't had a significant parts redesign in quite a while, and nothing "new" for the new series. On one side of the coin I would say if it ain't broke don't fix it. The drums SOUND amazing. The parts all do exactly what they are supposed to do. The lugs hold tuning, allow for great sustain and resonance and have the mallet design. Short of a quick-release feature, what are you going to need to change? Even the Horst Link Signatures took the parts from the Phonic parts bin other than very massive spur brackets that added some extra weight to a crazy heavy shell. But, that was also in a day when mass seemed like a good thing on drums.

You mention (paraphrased) that with the Designer, there wasn't much major drum design potential left. I agree. Designer actually took some things too far. They over-engineered some parts into failure, namely the bass drum spur brackets and floor tom legs brackets.

I agree that the old catalogs were chock full of verbiage and diagrams and such. I wonder if that changed because the market cares less about those details, or because the people marketing the drums think it's all old news anyway? Things like OST/OSM are still online on the website, just not as graphically described as before.

I think back to the days of the Sonor Ascent and the other Asian made drums of that era. They had designed a new lug and those were prone to failure in the long run. So, there is always a risk when redesigning something that you are going to have an unforeseen issue with it. So, to spend the money doing R&D, building tooling which is expensive and changing production runs just to find out you have screwed up is unnecessary when you have parts in the bin that work just fine.

I hope that others will opine as well, I would like to hear what everyone has to say.

[Syncopated_1]

Tama does this with their plant in Bensalem, PA and it works great.

[DaveInNZ]

Drums as an instrument are a fundamentally primitive thing, the basic concept of stretching something tight over a tube and whacking it only has so many variables. Manufacturing abilities though have changed immensely even in the last 10yrs and I'd hazard a guess that the main question a product designer at somewhere like Sonor now asks is 'we could do this, but is it worth trying?' rather than 'I want to do this, but I don't know how.'

Materials is a big one. We could have titanium lugs, carbon lugs, alu lugs, we could 3D print them to produce a shape that can't be cast or machined. We could be measuring how much sound vibration is transmitted to a lug and 3D printing something which has the sole purpose of transmitting those vibrations in perfect harmony via whatever weird shape it takes. We already 'print' veneers via ALPI, how far away is it from being able to print using the wood itself, what happens if a shell is honeycomb in structure for instance?

On a more simple level, as much as it may be half marketing hokum and trying for the sake of it, I do applaud some of the smaller drum builders trying different metals in their snares. Acoutin springs to mind, specifically choosing very particular alloys, irrespective of whether they're fun to work with or cheap.

There's plenty of room for R&D to go, it's now more about asking out of everything that's possible, what's worth trying out.