The false perception of Luan

S

StaggerLee

Silver Member
I know most of you think of Luan as "that cheap wood CB kits and such are made of", but today I had my perception changed. I tried a selection of snares today all made of luan:
C&C player date snare
Angel drums meranti stave
Mysterious drums super thick indonisian dark red meranti stave snare

All were AMAZING snares, the soft wood made them really dry sounding and I must be honest, lovely sounding. The angel drums had 8 lugs and the mysterious drums one had 6 lugs and was 1.5" thick and amazing
 
It's impossible for inexpensive wood to sound good in a drum.

Isn't that a rediculous statement? It's wood! Wood sounds great. I wonder what a balsa drum would sound like. Pretty warm I bet.

Truth is, you can probably make a good sounding drum out of any material that is sufficiently strong enough, as long as it's accurate in the critical areas. I have some old solid rosewood flooring I may make a stave drum from someday.

What sufficiently strong material wouldn't sound good? Heads are what makes the sound.
 
Our friend Gary at Wac'd drums made a small set for Johnny Rabb, who played it here during clinic and one of the toms, a 14 inch one was made of a cardboard tube. Guaranteed softer the luan. It sounded fantastic
 
Bo Eder said:
Didn't someone make a snare drum out of concrete once?
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Yea, it was a guy named Eddie and it happened only once lol. You're not allowed to do that but he did and was punished.
 
The only thing I never liked about luan is that it splinters when drilled and often when you take the skins off and look inside... ever screw hole is splintered. There are ways to reduce it and it sort of works... other than that it sounds fine.

I prefer maple and birch tho' and doesn't the term luan generally refer to plywood?

Staved drums are beautiful. I had a few staved repurposed rubber tree drums pass through my collection 15 or so years back and they were nice sounding.

Here's some wiki: "Decorative plywood (overlaid plywood) Usually faced with hardwood, including ash, oak, red oak, birch, maple, mahogany, Philippine mahogany (often called lauan, luan or meranti and having no relation to true mahogany), rose wood, teak and a large number of other hardwoods. ".
 
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StaggerLee said:
I know most of you think of Luan as "that cheap wood CB kits and such are made of", but today I had my perception changed. I tried a selection of snares today all made of luan:
C&C player date snare
Angel drums meranti stave
Mysterious drums super thick indonisian dark red meranti stave snare

All were AMAZING snares, the soft wood made them really dry sounding and I must be honest, lovely sounding.
Click to expand...


Sonic illusion of sort.

Go ahead, gig/play a luan snare for a month or two, then switch it out with something of higher quality harder wood, you'll notice a big difference. The luan snare will then become what it really is by comparison.



The angel drums had 8 lugs and the mysterious drums one had 6 lugs and was 1.5" thick and amazing
Click to expand...

6 lugs on a 14" snare drum? Yup, amazing.
 
Been building speaker cabinets out of the stuff for years. Nice warm sound without being too resonant. Makes perfect sense for a drum shell if you want a soft warm sound, probably at a low tuning.
 
I agree that the stuff can be difficult to work due to the splintering and tear-out, but I also think that its sonic reputation is due more to it having been used to build cheap, flimsy drums.

The construction quality of those would mask the tonal quality of any wood.

In the '70's and '80's, Tama Imperialstars were still made of it, and Stewart Copeland and Frank Beard rocked the snot out of theirs.

It's a protected species now, so we don't have it to kick around anyway. Even the lowest-end drums don't use it any more.

I have a fondness for fixing up cheap drum sets, so I have one kit that is all lauan, and another with just the bass drum in lauan (the toms seem to be basswood or maybe poplar). They also suit my ingrained old guy post-punker anti-gear-snobbery.

Got them all for free or peanuts, and have recut the bearing edges, painted or wrapped them, and they sound good to me now that I have learned to tune. Secret weapon, that; a well-tuned cheapo kit sounds better than a poorly-tuned expensive kit. What good is all that maple and floatymounts if the heads ring sourly?

My vintage Slingerlands are my stay at home/recording kit, and the others are what I haul around. I get compliments on both the sound and the appearance of the cheapo kits, and that's nice. Let the lauan take the abuse of riding around in cars and getting loaded in and out, and let the vintage tubs relax in the safety of home.

Here is a mock-up of a logo that I plan to apply to the front heads of my Asian firewood bass drums, sort of a poke at any drum snobs that may see them (stuck to the front of my latest rescue, a much-abused Tama/Star I got at a recycling store for $10):

Lauan%20mockup.jpg
 
I've seen a few post from drummers dissing Luan shells. They probably based that on hearing cheap, entry-level kits with crappy, out-of-tune heads.

My Starclassic Performers have a Luan/Birch shell that sounds great with several different types of heads: G1, G2, Pinstripes...
To me, they sound best tuned low. Great warm sound with lots of punch.
 
Early 90's Exports are Luan (with inner ply of Birch), and to me sound great when tuned up right. No splintering on the drums and the bearing edges are great.

Only problem I see with them is their tuning range is very small. There's a spot that really sings, but outside of that it doesn't do well. But that's to be expected with soft wood.
 
its like poplar, that gets a really bad press, yet the haymans were pro kits with poplar, its also used in other pro drums as a middle sandwich ply and the new questlove ludwig kits are getting rave reviews and are being used by a few industry pros (surprised me but i saw one on jools holland and another at a Jaimee Paul concert. So there doing something right
 
Mahogany is a softer wood. That gets great press. Trends are fickle. Every material does something good. Arguably, Ludwigs magic formula was maple/poplar/maple.

I always thought poplar trees, and indeed poplar wood, looked similar to birch, kind of light. I just got an all poplar drum. It's really hard to find a older PDP 16" floor tom made from maple. They fetch triple that of a new poplar drum. So I bought a brand new 16" X7 all poplar floor tom for $89.00 shipped and wrapped it with Jammin Sams WMP special wrap. ($93.00 shipped) It's the same exact wrap PDP uses. They call it white onyx. I also removed all gaskets and brush lacquered the inside. It was kind of muddy when I first got it, not very impressive. That helped out a lot.

TBH, I like maple or birch better. This particular drum makes a higher timbre than I'm used to for a floor tom. I have some suspension feet on order, maybe that will help it out. It doesn't suck but I feel it's a little harder to get a nice deep tone from. I haven't experimented with it much, I only gig it, so that could be a factor.
 
StaggerLee said:
I know most of you think of Luan as "that cheap wood CB kits and such are made of", but today I had my perception changed. I tried a selection of snares today all made of luan:
C&C player date snare
Angel drums meranti stave
Mysterious drums super thick indonisian dark red meranti stave snare
Click to expand...

Mysterious drums ? Can't find any info.​
For those prices, they damn well better sound good.​
 
larryace said:
Mahogany is a softer wood. That gets great press. Trends are fickle. Every material does something good. Arguably, Ludwigs magic formula was maple/poplar/maple.

I always thought poplar trees, and indeed poplar wood, looked similar to birch, kind of light. I just got an all poplar drum. It's really hard to find a older PDP 16" floor tom made from maple. They fetch triple that of a new poplar drum. So I bought a brand new 16" X7 all poplar floor tom for $89.00 shipped and wrapped it with Jammin Sams WMP special wrap. ($93.00 shipped) It's the same exact wrap PDP uses. They call it white onyx. I also removed all gaskets and brush lacquered the inside. It was kind of muddy when I first got it, not very impressive. That helped out a lot.

TBH, I like maple or birch better. This particular drum makes a higher timbre than I'm used to for a floor tom. I have some suspension feet on order, maybe that will help it out. It doesn't suck but I feel it's a little harder to get a nice deep tone from. I haven't experimented with it much, I only gig it, so that could be a factor.
Click to expand...

So you have "experimental" drums and "gigging" drums. How cool is that?
 
Starship Krupa said:
Here is a mock-up of a logo that I plan to apply to the front heads of my Asian firewood bass drums, sort of a poke at any drum snobs that may see them (stuck to the front of my latest rescue, a much-abused Tama/Star I got at a recycling store for $10):
Click to expand...

Haah!! I saw that on Vintage Drum Forum and thought of it when I saw this thread.
 
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