Truth Custom Drums Brass Snare review

Truth is an American custom shop, based in Oregon. We recently reviewed a relatively standard Truth kit, and now we have a unique snare drum which shows another side of the company - Truth's ability to dream up weird and wonderful one-offs.

Build

For a price Truth will build drums using myriad materials and finishes to realise your wildest imaginings.Case in point, this 14"x8" brass drum is a true individual with its dramatically finished brass-to-red fade shell, black hardware (including the Trick strainer) and black chrome twin-point short lugs, arbitrarily mounted on the lower half of the shell. We're not sure of the aesthetics or advisability of the latter, but it certainly makes for an eye-catching design.

The brass shell has a noticeable welded join inside but is accurately round and the bearing edges are level. The elongated tension rods and washers are gold, creating a sharp contrast with the black chrome. In addition, there is just a single air vent.

Hands on

You might expect that a 14"x8" brass snare would be a great ringing, deafening clanger, but it's surprisingly tight. Centre strikes are firm, dark and measured. Likewise, rim-shots produce a clear bell sound - a chime rather than an unruly multi-frequency clamour-fest.

Part of this control can be ascribed to the interesting choice of batter head the drum came fitted with - an Evans HD Dry Level 360 batter (with standard Clear Ambassador snare side).

Tuning with the extra long top lug bolts requires care. You don't want to bend them. But getting a good sound was not difficult. We found no reason to apply any damping, though of course you might want to in some miked/recording situations.

But to re-state, this is not an open, uncontrolled racket, it is more subtly ferocious. Which is not to say it lacks power. Get your thicker sticks out and unleash your best Gene Hoglan - really go for it and it does not choke.