The week started off with a photography visit to a recent customer, Rob Bowman, who purchased a beautiful 10-piece Myrtle burl kit to split off into two different sets.  At NAMM we were able to meet up with the legendary Johnny Craviotto, master solid shell builder who personally hand-crafts every shell used in our Craviotto “Fat Boy” series of snares. The last night of the show found us enjoying a performance by Caleb Quaye at the Marriott main stage backed up on drums by Doug Matthews who played his 6.5×13 walnut tri-tone snare. Afterwards, we were able to meet up with UK drummer Louis-James Davis who took snare #100 back to England to help stir up a growing Orybon fan base there. Check out the gallery below.

In addition to NAMM-related events, The Lying Game on ABC Family aired episode 114 on Monday, January 23rd, featuring Orybon drums on five of the show’s jazz tracks. Have a listen here:

Track 1 — Listen here
Track 2 — Listen here
Track 3 — Listen here
Track 4 — Listen here
Track 5 — Listen here

In 1999, Ory left DW on good terms with a dream to develop his own line of world-class drum and percussion instruments. For the next five years, Ory returned to hands-on woodworking as a finish carpenter for high-end homes in the Beverly Hills area. At the same time, he developed his own unique design of drum shell and construction process in pursuit of a new sound for the drum world.

In 2005, when his designs were ready, he launched Orybon Drums.

Today, Ory personally inspects, tunes, and plays each drum that leaves the production floor to ensure that it is worthy to bear his name. Ory’s passion for the instrument and relentless demand for excellence will live on in his instruments for generations to come.

Click on the above image for more pictures of the build process.

Here are just a few of the friends who have helped spread the word about Orybon:

Bill Maxwell plays Orybon for NAMM showcase

Bill used one of our loaners to demo them for a Harman Professional showcase for NAMM in Studio A at Capitol Records. He’s joined by Greg Mathieson,  Abraham Laboriel,  Justo Almario and  Bill Champlin.

Check out the video after the jump.

Pretty incredible for a four-mic setup: kick, snare and two overheads. Big thanks to Bill Maxwell for his support!

The deep, rich, mellow tones of drums provided the backbone of the rock and jazz sounds of the fifties, sixties and seventies. This sound drives the vintage market today. The vintage tone allows the wood in the drum to speak. Unfortunately, for modern applications, this same quality often comes at the cost of sustain and crisp definition.

The late eighties and nineties saw a push in the drum market to brighten drum sounds and create more melodic tone with longer sustain. To use a guitar analogy, the drive produced a “single-coil pickup” sound, with crisp high-frequency attack followed by a long-lasting sustain carrying a mid-high frequency tonal component. This sonic character allows drums to break through the mix and shine but also creates challenges for engineers who find themselves constantly gating and compressing the signals to prevent cross-talk in the mix.

These modern engineering challenges gave veteran drum builder Ory Brochet pause. With a drum-building mentoring and knowledge-base pedigree running all the way back to George Way of Leedy, Ludwig and Camco (George, builder of Leedy/Ludwig/Camco, which became DW, influenced John Good, who hired and mentored Ory in 1992), Ory set out to tackle the challenges associated with the modern “single-coil pickup” sound. He was convinced that the tonal qualities which make modern drums special could be retained while the less desirable side effects could be reduced or eliminated.

It turns out that Ory was right.

After many iterations and attempts, Ory arrived at the “Orybon Voice,” a rich, mellow tone that allows the natural wood grain of each drum to speak. But unlike their predecessors of the fifties, sixties, and seventies, Orybon Drums also posses a killer crisp attack and epic sustain. To return to the guitar analogy, this tone would fall in the category of a “humbucker pickup”–rich, crisp sound that seats beautifully into the mix and makes its presence known without overpowering other frequencies. This characteristic is what makes Orybon Drums favorites among studio and live engineers, who can finally pull all the gating and compression off the drums and fill the mix with that incredible modern-vintage sound: the Orybon voice.