The Vault Edge DW/Sabian Snare Drum

Limited to 50 snares produced, John Good along with Sabian cymbals have worked together to produce an instrument like no other!

Firstly, they started with the basic design of the now “Classic” Edge snare John Good developed in 1991 with great success.

The idea behind the Edge snare was to bring together what, at the time, was two very different schools of thought,

Wood vs Metal shelled snare drums: Both have there places in modern music and each offers unique qualities to drummers looking for their signature sound. The idea behind the hybrid shell was to bring together the best of both worlds – the initial impact or stick sound so to speak would be more aggressive, similar to what a metal snare would typically offer but to maintain the body, warmth and woody tone of an all wood shell. The Edge snare was born.
Now, enter a brand new angle. Instead of just using brass rings top and bottom, Sabian cymbal alloys have been used to create the rings.

Sabian donated endorsed artists cracked cymbals which were then melted down and spun cast into long tubes.

They then cut down and machined the tubes into the rings DW needed to use for there snares. The claim is the machine process was to aircraft quality, – extremely precise!

The theory is that the artists who donated these cymbals have left a piece of there soul in the alloy which now live in these snare drums. So is there a bit of Mike Portnoy? A splash of Terry Bozio? How about a dash of Neil Peart living within these drums?

Kinda cool when you think about it!

Now for the wood: Moosehead Lake, 200 year old Birch, 11 plies in total. John is known for travelling the globe in search of unique logs to buy and turn into musical instruments in the form of DW drums.

When John was told of this Birch log that had been sitting at the bottom of Moosehead lake for the past 200 years, he jumped at the chance to investigate.

John found that the cell structure of the wood had become much tighter and dense which would lend itself to a faster more focused tone, almost naturally equed.

Most of the time when you see a drum with a specialty wood like Birds eye maple or Mappa burl on the exterior, the internal plies are most likely American rock maple, birch, African mahogany, Japanese white oak or even Cherry woods but not in the case of this drum – these are made up of 11 plies of this 200 year old log.

John along with the guys at the DW factory painstakingly cut the log into the plies needed for these drums then went through each and every ply to find the best ones to use for the internal finish and the exterior finishes.

Now this is all well and good but what about how all of this sounds?

Well you all must realize, these drums are well made, and by that I mean probably one of the best made drums you will find!

The quality is flawless, everything just works perfectly. The true hoops are flat and sit on any drumhead just right. The fine tuning lugs are threaded so nicely that the tuning key glides smoothly and with as much fine tuneing as you would ever want.

The lugs are the classic round DW lugs. The Mag throw-off and 3 possition butt plate are becoming something I am finding hard to live without on my snare drums, endless adjustability, If you can’t find it with this, let me tell you, It does not exist.

So the sound, well here is the deal: They have only made 50 of these drums and they were all pre-sold before  the official release date…….they are all gone! well exept for 1, number 40 out of the 50 made is still available for sale in a drum store in Melbourne Australia, Cranbourne drum superstore, for the more than reasonable price of $3699 AUD.

Seeing as most of us will never be able to own this drum it is kind of irrelevant but for this review I will give you an idea, close your eyes (not now, after you have read this review….), take a deep breath and clear your mind, think to yourself of the most perfect snare drum sound you can imagine……that is what this drum sounds like.

If you are the lucky *#@! getting your american express card out as you read this review and are only moments away from calling Cranbourne drum superstore, then you can live the dream but for the rest of us, well maybe the next time something so good comes alone, we can snap it up and live the dream too!

Stay tuned, for my next review i will be looking at a Pearl Masters MMP 14″x6.5″ snare drum.

Til then let the groove make you moove.