Daniel Rolen

Lubbock, TX (USA)
Role(s):
Founder/Owner/Principal

Peon Percussion

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Location: Lubbock
Industry: Manufacturing
Year Founded: 2011
Number Employees: 1-10 people
Business Stage: Growth (not profitable)
Entity Type: Sole Proprietorship
Description: Peon Percussion creates snare drums using methods that reduce unit production cost and revolutionizes sound quality. I am a veteran of the U.S. army as an Infantrymen and a student of chemistry. -Drum Manufacturing Information- The current process by which drum shells are made involves several custom manufactured machines and a week to create an unfinished drum shell. The finishing process can take twice as long and is labor intensive. The finished product is a hardwood board that was milled from a log, steam pressured, and bent and glued into shape before applying finishes which add weight. Why not just tar and feather the tree and carry on? This methodology highlights my second problem with modern percussion. Resonance. A drum maker is an acoustician, a scientist creating precise sound. Resonance is the transfer of sound quality from source to environment through a third medium. Here the drum head is the source; where, without the drum shell, a loud percussive sound would be achieved without any transfer of sound qualities from the wood to the surrounding environment. Simply a flat, toneless, dead sound similar to a gunshot. The wood shell absorbs sound waves, like a trampoline absorbing energy, and pushes back new sound waves shaped by natural vibration of wood. -My Goal- My point is firstly, that to produce drum shells that resonate and thus create sound quality, the drum shell must vibrate freely. Bending and gluing creates a shell which would pull apart without the glue, therefore pressure is stealing vibration, transferring it into the energy already present, the wood trying to straighten out. This obviously weakens the shells as well, although this is mitigated with high quality glues. Secondly, the labor intensive nature push the price range of professional quality snare drums into the $1000 range. I can cut the shell out of the tree in ten minutes and finish a production set in one week. Because the drum shell is as if it were taken out of the tree surgically, it maintains every single acoustic character. The quality is unlike any other product on the market. The scraps are used to create lathed goods and sold. I am currently working with professional musicians to provide free demo custom made drums. My experience in the music industry has provided me with hundreds of connections as a means of achieving brand recognition. The way to this critical component of this market is by establishing legitimacy, most easily accomplished by an audience seeing their favorite musician put there trust in the brand by playing it. I can push very hard in this area also because of the low unit cost and production time. The funding currently needed is for production components. $25k will send product out the door.