Founded by master drum builder Keith Keough and The Pub Landlord himself, Al Murray, the Stockport-based British Drum Company has made a considerable impact on the drum industry in just three short years.
In addition to its high-end drum kit and snare lines, BDC has created a host of innovative accessories such as the iTap, Joe’s Butler and now the intriguing Tomspring.
Build
Designed to combat the choking of a tom when mounted on a snare stand, these unique claw-like attachments are constructed from a semi-rigid plastic, the same polymer used to make guitar plectrums.
Each Tomspring features a fixed middle section that attaches to the drum via the tension rod. The flexible bottom section is the part that sits on the arms of your snare basket. This system allows the drum to essentially float freely from the stand, promoting optimum resonance.
The top element of the Tomspring curves over the hoop and has a cut-out section to accommodate the tension rod. Designed to fit standard die-cast and triple-flanged hoops, they sit over the chunky rims of our Starclassic tom with no issues.
Hands on
After a fiddly couple of minutes fitting the first one (and first trying to fit it upside-down!), all three springs are secured to the hoop and ready to go. When seating the tom in the stand, a small cut-out from the middle section stops any side-to-side movement while a ridged element provides extra grip for the rubber claws of the snare basket.
We did run into a small (perhaps isolated) issue in that the six lugs of our 12" tom (and therefore the springs) did not line up perfectly with the arms of our snare basket. Other members of the team who tried them reported no such problems. As a result, we had to swap to a different stand with the facility to adjust the angle of the basket arms. Problem solved.
In practice, there is a noticeable improvement in resonance with the Tomsprings attached compared to the stifled sound we get with the drum sitting directly on the stand. By effectively isolating the drum from the stand, the sound becomes closer to that of a hanging tom and the Tomsprings perform exactly as promised. They would come in particularly handy in the studio.
