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• Review

Since its inception in 1996, Spaun has been a strictly custom drum manufacturer. In that time it has brought some memorably original designs and extroverted finishes to the market. The new TL Series is the Californian company's first project away from high-end drums and takes the brand into more affordable, production-style kits.

Build

Before you start contemplating swapping your £600 set for a Spaun kit, it is worth noting that the drums on review top two grand with the snare included. While this places the kit unambiguously in pro territory, it does represent a huge saving of around 40 percent on the price of an equivalent custom Spaun kit.

"The balance of saturation and sustain achieved is hard to resist - as, many bouts of overplaying later, we were forced to concede"

Wherever possible the specifications of the TL kit mirror (or get close to) those on custom Spaun drums.

In a similar vein, Spaun competitor DW entered the world of production drums earlier this year with its environmentally-themed Eco-X Project kit. High-end Spaun and DW drums both share reach-for-the-sky prices, but the TL kit undercuts the Eco-X Project kit substantially.

This pricing differential becomes more relevant in light of the knowledge that the TL shells are, in fact, made by DW. This doesn't make the TL kit a rebadged DW, however, as Spaun has its own drum-making philosophy and has worked closely with DW to ensure that the shells are made to exacting specifications. If anything it illuminates how small the drum world is.

TL series shells share exactly the same qualities and proportions as premium Spaun drums; they are 8-ply maple and are a super-thin 5.5mm thick across the kit. Spaun believes that keeping the shell thickness constant gives a wider tuning range and more consistent voicing.

Similarly, it is adamant that reinforcement rings affect a drum's sound to its detriment and so doesn't fit them (with the obvious exception of its Edgevent kit).

The bearing edges are cut in Spaun's trademark double 45 degree shape. As both sides of the edge are cut symmetrically, the point of head contact is moved fractionally towards the inside of the shell. This means that the head aligns with the drum on a flat area rather than its collar, allowing it to seat properly.

The vintage-style tube lugs which the series is named after are machined from solid brass before being chrome plated. Each lug has a single point of contact and they are fitted in a ratio of two lugs per tension rod (joined by a short length of tubing) across the drums. The snare drum is the exception to this rule as single lugs at the batter and resonant end are linked by longer lengths of tubing, creating full-length lugs.