Sleishman Origins

The Sleishman design challenges the very concept of conventional drum construction.

Looking back in history, ethnic, tribal and marching drums were made very simply. A shell was covered with skins which were stretched over the top with leather, twine and rope.

As the industrial age evolved into the early 1900's, the shell began to take the tension by the means of bolted fittings.This is still the way that drums are constructed today.

In bolting lugs to the shell, the drums' performance is reduced in 2 ways:

1. The shell's natural vibration is inhibited.

2. The shell is locked & unable to move in concert with the drum heads' natural vibrations.

With the Sleishman drum, the shell rests inside the skins allowing unsurpassed resonance.

How did we come to this invention?

We simply observed the natural sound laws which apply to all acoustic musical instruments.
All of these instruments employ two basic principles for sound production. These are:

1. The Basic Sound Source

A. String instruments - The string

B. Brass/Woodwind - The mouthpiece

C. Drums - The skin

2. The Acoustic Chamber

A. String instruments - Body of instrument

B. Brass/Woodwind - The horn/bell

C. Drums - Shell

Combining the Sound Source and Acoustic Chamber gives us the instrument we are used to hearing.

The Basic Sound Source is activated (struck, blown or plucked), then the Acoustic Chamber adds the tonal character and amplifies the sound.

If the Basic Sound Source (skin) is activated but the Acoustic Chamber (shell) is choked or inhibited in some way, then the sound waves will be interfered with.

A more simple approach would be to compare the drum to the violin.

The town of Cremona in Italy is famous for its high concentration of violin makers.

They have worked painstakingly for years to achieve the perfect marriage between the Basic Sound Source (string) and the Acoustic Chamber (hollow violin body). When achieving the perfect rich sound depends on the tiniest detail, they would never dream of bolting metal fittings into the body. The sound that this would produce would be much like that of a solid body electric guitar without amplification.

Don Sleishman took this philosophy and applied it to the acoustic drum.

This concept became evident to him in the early 1970's. He held a drum shell from the inside, on the tip of his thumb, tapped it and found that it gave a warm and resonant tone.

By drilling and bolting just one tension block on the shell, he found that the shell lost its tone and resonance.

The rest... luckily for us, is history.

This dream was turned into a reality by Don, and as countless Sleishman drum owners can attest, the Sleishman system works.