$609.79
A drum that has to be heard over a brass section
Some rooms don't have a PA. Some bands have twelve horns and a tuba, and the drummer is expected to be heard anyway.
Leather Face is built for that job. The 13-inch diameter puts the fundamental up high where it cuts, and the 6-inch depth gives that high note enough body behind it that it doesn't disappear into the horns — it stays in the mix as a note, not a click. Crank it. It wants to be tight.
Banda and norteño players, tarola players, corps-style drummers, anyone who plays hard and needs the backbeat to land at the back of the room — this one was voiced with you in mind.
The shell
Six plies of North American maple, with solid maple reinforcement rings top and bottom.
Maple is the honest choice for a drum like this. It's balanced across the whole frequency range — warm low end, present mids, and enough top-end clarity to snap. It doesn't fight you when you tune it up.
The reinforcement rings are the part most factories skip. They round the shell back to true and stiffen the bearing edge, so the head seats dead flat all the way around. That means the drum tunes higher and holds pitch under abuse, and more of the energy you put in comes back out as sound instead of getting lost in a lazy edge.
The hide
The shell is covered in genuine natural-grain cowhide in Grape — a deep oxblood that reads nearly black under stage lights and glows red when a spot hits it.
To be clear about what this is: it's leather, cut and fitted and worked over the shell by hand. It isn't a plastic wrap. Leather is dense and soft, so it takes a little of the harshest top-end edge off the shell without choking it — you get the crack without the ice-pick. And it ages. Grain marks, tour wear, the shine that comes off your stick hand over a hundred shows. It'll look better in five years than it does today.
Hardware
- Eight double-sided die-cast lugs in chrome. Die-cast mass at the mounting point keeps the shell from being pulled out of round at high tension.
- 2.3mm triple-flanged chrome hoops, batter and snare side. Triple-flange gives you a rim shot with a live, open ring — the sound that carries outdoors — and the flex is kinder to your sticks than a die-cast hoop.
- Chrome throw-off and butt plate, straightforward and roadworthy. No mystery mechanism to fail on you at a gig.
- Chrome-plated brass air vent, with the FSDC badge.
Heads
- Batter: Aquarian New Orleans Special. A 10mil single-ply clear head with a thin full-surface Power Dot bonded on top. It's a wide-open, sensitive head that still takes a beating — rimshots, press rolls, and buzz rolls all read clearly, and the dot keeps the overtones from ringing out of control when you tune it up.
- Resonant: Aquarian Hi-Performance snare side. 3mil clear with reinforcement where the snare wires cross the head, so tight wires don't cut it to ribbons.
One of one
Leather Face is a pre-built YOURdrum. It wasn't commissioned by anyone — it came out of the shop because the idea wouldn't leave us alone. Every hide is different, every cut is different, and this exact drum happens once.
When it's gone, it's gone.
Built by hand in Baltimore, Maryland. Veteran
