At Drum Workshop, The Drummer’s Choice® is more than a slogan, it’s a
fact. After more than thirty years of innovation and tireless dedication
to improving the way drum products are made, DW drums, pedals and
hardware are the standard by which all others are measured. To get here,
it takes more than a working knowledge of the instrument or a few good
ideas; it takes a true passion for designing and manufacturing the very
best.
“It’s remarkable that in our 31st year, the excitement level of
coming to work is every bit as much now as when we started,” DW Founder
and President Don Lombardi says.
It all began in 1972 when Don, at age
26, opened a small teaching studio in Santa Monica, Calif. He called the
studio Drum Workshop, offering both private lessons and monthly
workshops.
“My fascination with drums started at 12 with a neighborhood
teacher at a local music store,” Don recalls. “Over the years, I had
such great experiences with renowned teachers that as my love for
playing drums grew, so did my love for learning and teaching about
drums. The day I got my driver’s license, I started driving to teach at
a local music store where I had taken lessons.”
Seeing an ad for Drum
Workshop in the Yellow Pages, John Good, now DW’s Vice President, signed
up for lessons at age 17 to improve his drumming and reverse what he
refers to as “bad drumming habits.”
“After three months of lessons, Don
approached me and said, ‘You know, I’ve had lots of successful students.
I don’t think you’re going to be one of them’,” John says laughing. “So
I said, ‘Great…now what are we going to do?’”
Realizing that overhead
was eating up his profits, Don brought in investors and additional
teachers and began selling sticks, books and drums to help subsidize the
expenses. Hiring John as a part-time sales manager, the two spent hours
discussing different ways to improve the art of drumming through
improving drum products.
“That’s how the spark and enthusiasm got
started,” John recalls. “We would talk for hours about our ideas for
creating better products. Before we knew it, we were working together.”
Out of these brainstorms came the first DW product: Don’s new design for
a height-adjustable trap-case seat. Selling about a dozen seats a month,
John quit his day job and went to work full-time for Don.
“After
teaching all day, we would move the drum sets to the side and bring out
the tables to make the seats,” Don remembers. “Then I’d usually leave
for my playing job, and John would stay into the night to build the
seats and fill the orders. I even bought a sewing machine to sew on the
top of the seats, but John put his foot down and said, ‘No sewing: I
don’t sew.’” ...we had learned that if we could offer drummers products that would improve their drumming, we could be successful.
When DW received a purchase order for 100 seats from Camco
Drum Co., Don and John realized that they had an innovative product that
would sell. Thirty years later, DW is now offering a new version of the
trap-case adjustable seat, made out of a lighter weight material, called
the 6100 Adjustable Trap-Case Seat.
“I always dreamed about creating a
lighter weight seat, but we didn’t have the money to do it back then,”
Don says. “I’m as confident about this new seat as I was when we made
our first design.”
However, when DW created the original trap case seat,
they had the capacity and personnel to create only a dozen seats a
month, not 100. Don was still teaching and playing a nightly gig while
John built the products. Shortly thereafter, Camco Drum Co. owner Tom
Beckman approached Don in 1977 with an offer to sell him Camco’s
machinery, dies and molds, everything it took to make Camco drums and
hardware—everything except the Camco name itself. This gave Don the
opportunity to expand his capacity for creating the seats and to expand
his product line. At that point, Don made the decision to accept the
offer and change the direction of Drum Workshop from teaching and
selling to manufacturing.
“The idea of failing never really occurred to
me,” Don remarks. “Based on our mini-success with the seat, we had
learned that if we could offer drummers products that would improve
their drumming, we could be successful. Of course, having a desire to go
into manufacturing and having the money to do so are two different
things.”
Borrowing most of the money from his parents and some from
outside investors, Don purchased Camco’s tooling and reintroduced the
Camco 5000 nylon strap bass drum pedal under the DW name. The pedal was
refined to improve consistency, quietness, smoothness and adjustability
of its mechanical operation. As the pedal was rapidly becoming “the
drummer’s choice,” Don continued to search for ways to further improve
it.
The addition of the Chain & Sprocket drive system in 1980 not only
vastly improved the DW pedal, but also helped set it apart from others
on the market. Three years later, DW introduced a double bass drum pedal
that incorporated a unique linkage with universal joints. DW’s 5002
Double Pedal not only filled a need and solidified DW’s position in the
market as innovators, it ushered in a whole new era in drumming since,
for the first time, single bass drum players could now use both feet to
create new rhythms and increase speed. Throughout the ‘80s, DW created
other innovative DW hardware, such as the rotating two-leg 5500T and the
remote (cable) 5502LB hi-hat stands, to meet the needs of DW Pedal
endorsers like Travis Barker, Abe Laboriel Jr., Vinnie Colaiuta, Gary
Novak and Carter Beauford.
