| Pickin' Up Sticks Nashville NAMM exhibitors get a grip on drumsticks.
by Robert L. Doerschuk
July 28, 2000
 What could be more primal than a stick? Could any exhibitor at the Summer NAMM Show match a simple drumstick in sheer elegance and conceptual simplicity?
On (or, maybe, in) the other hand, sticks have a built-in resistance to change. Any radical surgery would complicate rather than enhance the drummer's task of whacking on things. Thus, possibilities for innovation are about as narrow as … well, a stick. Yet the folks in this business keep tinkering with their product. Most of what they come up with is cosmetic: Hot Sticks, for example, augmented the already dazzling selection of 20 standard colors for its XL series with an explosion of wild, glistening hues. But this same XL series unveiled a subtle design change as well. With an expanded strike zone, in which the hickory is more dense, it's possible now to rim-shot bad comic punch lines without worrying about missing the strike zone and digging into the uncompressed part of the wood. Contact Hot Sticks at 228-467-0762 for price information. Another eye-burning array was on display at Emmite (www.emmitedrumsticks.com). More important than look, however, was the material -- a polypropylene fashioned to have the same stiffness as wood but three times the strength. According to Emmite, these sticks -- some of which also contain sawdust -- wear down rather than break. Since we didn't have the time or energy to test these sparkly but rugged weapons, we examined at a few eroded sticks, which looked like someone chewed on them rather than bashed them against hard objects, and accepted that as evidence. Meanwhile, over at Zildjian (www.zildjian.com), a new line called Dip Sticks features an expanded black plastic base for better grip. What's cool about these babies is that they're incredibly light: We A/B'ed them with sticks of a similar size that lacked any added grip, and they felt just about identical in weight. Other than that, though, the action on this beat at Summer NAMM was mainly about taking an idea that's worked for generations and… sticking to it.
For more information, contact Hot Sticks at 228-467-0762, Emmite at www.emmitedrumsticks.com, and Zildjian at www.zildjian.com. | 
