Hello fellow drummers!

I've been playing drums for some time now but always changed stick brands; the stores here always run out of stock of one brand or another..

I've used Regal Tip, Vic Firth and Vater all were 5B's. I tried 5A which are nice but a bit too light, like almost all drums, I play fairly hard.
From my experience, Vic Firth are the first to break. A good pair of regal tips will hold fairly long(they have this lead line inside of them or something) and to my surprise, Vater which have a weird "feel" are lasting the longest.

What brand do you guys recommend? I'm looking for the ones which last longer and feel "natural". I know it's kinda silly, but it's just that I want to buy a bulk of sticks and I don't feel like buying 20 sticks that'll break after an hour of drumming.

oh and do you know any online store where I can buy a bunch of sticks for cheap?

thanks and sorry for this kinda dumb post.

Vater used to be my go-to drumsticks years ago. Tell us more about the weird "feel" you get from the Vaters. I found they they were never balance-matched well at the factory like other brands, which made a huge difference for me. One stick almost always felt heavier than the other. Do you think it's this, or something else? The shop I bought them at would pull out a mess of sticks and let me try sticks from different packages (all the same type/size however), and I'd match my own pairs.

I bought Regal Tips exactly twice, and each time the tip snapped off after about 30 minutes. The shoulder of those sticks are as brittle as baby's bones. Bought a set of Zildjian sticks once. They were almost twice the price as the others and splintered really weirdly. They did not feel like standard hickory wood.

After a while I switched to Vic Firth, and they have been my favorite stick every since. Almost always balance-matched, and the Vics always lasted me weeks, until the center disentigrated from too many rimshots -- I don't think I ever broke the tip off a Vic Firth. My guess is this is just a factor of how different people hit stuff differently I guess.

I bought a bunch of off-brand sticks from Musiciansfriend.com once, and got a good price, but they were not matched for balance at all, like the Vaters. I had to mix-and-match them myself. All you can really do it play as many brands as possible to see what suits you best... then search online for bulk.

i use vic firth 5B wood tips.

tip: sift through every pair of sticks in the bin - there is a huge discrepency in the wood weight/strength among the same batch of 5Bs. the pair may be matched to itself, but the pair isn't matched to the lot. i find the heaviest ones in the lot and use those and they last quite a long time. on the flipside when someone randomly buys me a pair and they are the "light" 5Bs, i can break them in 5 minutes.

offal wrote:I bought Regal Tips exactly twice, and each time the tip snapped off after about 30 minutes. The shoulder of those sticks are as brittle as baby's bones.

A baby's bones are in early development and relatively soft compared to adults whose have hardened, and therefor much less brittle. Just sayin'.


Back to the topic at hand.... My drum teacher said every pair of sticks he has owned have been slightly different weighs. An "X" on one and a "O" on the other provides some feeling of regularity that I have grown to like.

I absolutely recommend Pro-Mark Elvin Jones signature sticks, they're good enough to turn me in to a passable drummer (nearly).

Of course, if you really want to be able to play those drums, you need the Neil Peart signature sticks and carry case:

simmo wrote:

I really hope he actually uses the appropriate set of sticks depending on which album the song he's playing was on. Mental.

What's the deal with the Elvin Jones sticks? I've been using ProMark since forever, I used to use the natural finish 5Bs and switched to the Japanese oak 5As for the last 5 years or so. Way better than any other drumstick maker I've tried.

I'll second the Vater issues. I bought a bunch of 5B's because they were out of ProMark sticks. Big mistake. They are wildly different in weight and break super easily. I've been using the ProMark 5B's and I dig them. I also tend to like Vic Firth 5A's for lighter stuff, or turned upside down for the heavy.

I like the ProMark 747 series sticks, which are the Neal Peart signature sticks. I've never seen any that looked anything like the picture above. They either have black printing on them, or green, I think it's depending on which type of wood. I find them to be a better diameter/length and weight balance than 5B's, though they're not hugely different. I am not a big fan of Neal Peart, or his drumming, or whatever. They're just the best sticks I've used. If they were available without his name and signature, I'd enjoy that option.

I also bought Vater sticks, but only once. One of them broke within a few minutes, in a way that had everything to do with terrible construction, with the wood just separating apart from itself effortlessly. Crap, crap, crap.

Caveman drummer here:

promark 2b wood tip oak sticks.

I will play the hickory ones in a pinch.

vic firth american classic 2b wood tip

i wanted a stick i would be able to find in any ass-backwards place. i never break them, but the middle disintegrates after a month or two..