Bonham: Points of Style

[BonzoLikeDrumer]

I see what your saying here guy's and to add, if you keep your left arm (elbow) tucked in as Bonzo clearly has done in the picture Ev has posted, you will get more spring as your wrist tends to rotate easily with this position in comparison to if you bring your arm out and turn your wrist more down for a more up and down movement than a twisting movement you get from tucking in your elbow.

I tend to mix these stick holding grip's if I think about it, I've not even played my kit for the better part of a year so I need to go back and try again to see for sure. I'm sure you'll be louder if you bang the drum with your arm poked out and wrist turned down as you will be using your whole arm in the motion in apposed to tucking in your elbow, you'll be using mostly just your forearm.

[ludwigman1971]

What about the bass drum itself? I think bonham tuned the resonant sid higher than the batter to almost a jazz type tuning. That being said I myself have had a non official bonham kit. It was a 1971 Ludwig Classic Maple with re-rings. The only difference was the bass drum was 24" instead of 26" but it was very bombastic. I tuned the drums as similar to bonham as I could and had the bass drum tuned up and with out the res being ported and nothing stuffed in the drum. This gave one heck of a beater bounce without much effort. The air inside the bass drum has no where to go so you get that bounce. Trying to bury the beater would result in a double, but the second strike would be flubby. Can I do Bonham's right foot work......ummmm no, but that set up helped me try. I did use a felt strip on the resonant side to help keep the over tones down a bit. Why did I sell that kit? because I'm obsessed with buying and selling drums but that was one hell of a case of sellers remorse later.

By the way........Bonham is simply the best.