GEARED talks with ex-Reels skinsman and now established drum maker STEPHAN FIDOCK about his handcrafted instruments, past muso experience and the importance of using the right timber.

GEARED: First of all, when did you start building drums Stephan?

STEPHAN FIDOCK: Late 2007, here in Melbourne – I’ve had the same crew from the word go. I’m always looking for drummers who fit the way we do things where we approach what we’re doing – I’ve met quite a few drummers now, all of them overseas except for a young Australian guy I’ve just started to do a few things with, and I’ll be able to feature all of them on the website.

G: You’ve had an extensive experience in the music biz including playing drums in The Reels back in the ‘80s.

SF: Look, that was my brush with fame, I suppose – a minor celebrity in Australia (laughs). The Reels was a musicians’ band, in a way – we stayed at a certain level, but we never kind of lifted above that in Australia to be like Midnight Oil or Split Enz. We were really influential and that band suited me well: we were really interested in sound and fresh approaches to sound, which mean the drums in The Reels were always really interesting. It wasn’t until later on that I started thinking about making my own drums and got into the acoustic properties of timber rather than electronic gear. I’ve always liked the sound of a good grand piano, for instance, and I thought that drummers were being let down in terms of how good you could make the timber sound as a drum as opposed to other acoustic instruments. In drum making, that seemed to have been ignored – just mass-manufacturing.

G: Indeed.

SF: For me, it means that my costs are higher because of the process of making these drums – travelling to Tasmania, finding and choosing the best wood I can get my hands on. Blackwood is my main timber and all of it is being handcrafted; there’s three of us involved in making these drums but that said, they’re quality instruments. I’m not sure if the drummers fully appreciate the qualities of the instruments they play, because it’s only in handcrafted drums that you’ll really find anything that’s using good quality timber.

G: I’m guessing you’ve used your expertise as the drummer in a band in an era perhaps not so fondly remembered for its drum sounds...

SF: (laughs) Well look, what happened in the ‘80s is that drum machines came in and engineers took control of the way the drums sounded, not the drummers – I’ve spoken to a lot of drummers about this and everyone agrees with me. The drummers actually lost control of their own sound; a lot of the time we’ve spent in the studio separating various drum sounds on a drum set, sometimes recording them individually – recording the bass and the snare drum separately and mixing drum machine sounds with other sounds, even with the real drummer. The emphasis was on finding sounds that really penetrated on the radio and as the result, what we were hearing here highly doctored sounds and they were not really what the drums actually sound like in the raw. For me, getting exposed to the recording process was an important part of learning of what makes a good drum sound.

G: Which means acoustic all the way.

SF: Even with electronic and drum machines now, there’s a lot of manipulation of the sound – it still doesn’t perform as well as an acoustic instrument, because every tap produces its own sound that’s never repeated the same way. Plus, of course, you can manipulate that sound depending on your ability as a player. That’s the reason why with my drums, the features of the shell are such that there’s a lot of voice in the drum and you need a certain amount of skill to really discover the full potential – particularly with the snare drums, there’s a lot to play with at very low and high volumes. They’re designed so you can play them hard without losing any depth – it will still respond rather than choke up, which is what the drummers used to describe a drum when they hit it with a certain force and after that, it just doesn’t go anywhere. I’ve designed my drums – particularly the snare drums – so that they can be played very softly of hard and you still get a good range of dynamics and snare response.

G: Air-dried or kiln-dried wood?

SF: With kiln-dried wood, you’re blasting the cells – air-dried cells in timber will retain their shape and hold a certain amount of moisture. With blackwood that I use, it has a very open sound that’s increased when you use air-dried. And of course, when we’re bending hoops, you can only use air-dried – the other stuff will just split, compress and do all sorts of nasty things.

For more info on FIDOCK HANDCRAFTED DRUMS head to www.fidockdrums.com.

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