More on Pinstripes

The distressed font
indicates rockingness to me.

Ever since reading T. Bruce Wittet's piece about the drumming equivalent of the fusion mullet, the Remo Pinstripe, I've been sort of half-determined to try to them out for the first time since the late 80's, this time with a jazz tuning. I had the opportunity the other day on a visit to Portland's wonderful used/vintage drum shop, Revival Drums with my friend (and great drummer) Steve Pancerev, where I snagged a used set they had languishing in the head dump in the back room.

First impression: I got them home and put them on my drums, tuned them up high, and they actually sound OK. The last two-ply head I've used are Remo Emperors, which always tended to sound a little tubby, with a chunky attack; the Pinstripes have a glued-together outer ~1.5", which minimizes that quality somewhat. The Pinstripes have a fuller, bassier tone than the coated G1 Evans I was using previously, and while I was expecting to sacrifice response and some nuance, they feel surprisingly good with a high tuning. Better than you'd expect. I haven't let an uncoated/untextured head near my drums in over 20 years, so that clear-head tonality is something of a novelty- I can't say I'm wild about it. Something trailer-park about it...

Days later: They're not wearing well. What at first seemed full and round is starting to feel decidedly boomy with further playing. Definition suffers substantially on anything denser than 8th notes. The attack is flabby-sounding compared to the coated Ambassadors, Remo Renaissance, or Evans G1s I normally use. The instrument feels less responsive.

Conclusion: The Pinstripe is not as dead and buried as you might have thought, and worth trying. They're usable in a pinch, at the very least. Someone seeking a rounder tone than you get with the standard coated single ply head may dig these a lot. Overall they don't work for me with a jazz tuning.

Cymbal post coming up

We don't write much about gear around here- there's something of an epidemic of misplaced priorities surrounding the topic. But I've been on a cymbal-buying kick the past couple of weeks- a heavyish vintage Paiste ride cymbal buying-kick, specifically. I'll be reviewing them shortly, as soon as the last one-a very rare 22" 602 Dark Ride- arrives on Monday.

Until I get around to that, here are a few entries from T. Bruce Wittet's list of the best, most innovative cymbals ever made:

1. Avedis Zildjian 20” Medium Ride: the staple of the modern drummer irrespective of era. he weight and the wide variation were such that the cymbals caught on with players diverse as Buddy Rich and Ginger Baker. This was a desert island cymbal, still is. If on your island old Ks were hard to find, you might be able to find that darker tah in an A medium. [Note: This is also Joe Morello's "Take 5" cymbal. The newer ones are much heavier than the older ones. -tb]

5. Paiste Traditional Medium Ride 20” (or perhaps the Trad 22” light proto). Forget all your Paiste 602 Medium Rides in jazz context and go for the Trad medium, or the medium-thin, come to think of it. This is the money shot. At the time of its debut, it was arguably the closest ride closest to the old Turkish-made K Zildjian with its archetypical dry tang with a rich underbelly. Although the tip was a little more brittle than certain legendary Ks, it gained that its ping without sacrificing the caw of the stick laid parallel to the bow.

7. Paiste Formula 602 Dark Ride. [This is the one I've got coming- tb] At one point, around the time when the Paiste Profiles of International Drummers was published, the 602 Dark Ride was the Holy Grail of cymbals in my opinion. It was a thick, heavy, cratered like the lunar surface owing to extensive machine and hand hammering. I first saw one in the flesh when interviewing Jack DeJohnette circa 1978 for MD (my first MD feature). Jack told me that he’d collaborated in the development of the Paiste Dark Ride, which was a rare cymbal that succeeded in combining bright stick attack highs with exotic, dark undertones. There was no trash in this one nor was there a lot of build up. I wrote to Paiste, half hoping they’d loan me one for review purposes, and one of the brothers sent me a letter stating that to enjoy fully the Dark Ride, I’d need to play thicker sticks and with considerable force. His take on me was that I’d probably prefer the 602 22” Medium Ride! Ah well. The suckers were expensive and each time I’d see one I’d be penniless, so it was probably just as well.

More after the break:

Pinstripes reconsidered

Here drummer and Modern Drummer writer T. Bruce Wittet takes another look at the now-humble Remo Pinstripe. For a good part of the 70's and 80's they were the drum head of choice for  many, many players, until they went out of style in a big way in the early 90's. Their rise and fall tracks roughly from the beginning of Steve Gadd's massive popularity through the end of Dave Weckl's.

For good or ill, their long, funky tone and cushiony (taffy-like?) response shaped both my touch and musical approach to the toms for some time; when you tune them low as I did, they felt good and sounded best when you lay into them. You had to play through the head, which caused me to develop something of a funk drummer's touch. Even though, with two plies of mylar  glued at the edge, they are inherently a muffled head, the body of their tone is long. Because of that slow response, your ear would tell you to play more single notes, and less, well, dense drummer junk.

So T. Bruce's big reveal relates to his first MD piece, a 1978 interview with Jack Dejohnette. Naturally, the heads Jack was using at the time:

Clear Remo Pinstripes, oh yeah. And did he sound good! In the break between shows, we sat in figure-8 relative to my cassette recorder and I stumbled and blurted out questions I dearly needed to ask, throwing aside my script. One of these concerned the wonderful tom sound I’d just heard. Jack explained that these new heads, Pinstripes, were perfect because they muffled the circumference, and thus the weird overtones, allowing a more focused tone to emerge. He told me he preferred tuning them really tightly stating, “it’s a jazz tuning, that’s all”.