This website was created to share information about the minutiae of vintage drums and parts.

There are many fine drum history books and sites around (for some of my favorite examples please see the resources page), but most have some serious holes in their coverage of the more obscure bits of drum engineering. For example the excellent Rob Cook publications on the US drum makers don’t cover mounting screws, or tension rod styles.

Facebook has also become an excellent resource for expert knowledge, but the platform does not function well as an archive. VDR offers a more searchable and permanent alternative to the Facebook drum groups.