This excerpt is taken from the complete article that appears in the February 2016 issue, which is available here.

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Liberty

Jazz Series Drumset

Top-quality modern design with tasty vintage flare.

Liberty Drums is a UK-based manufacturer that builds its own shells from nearly limitless timbers and veneers into a wide range of handcrafted drumsets and snares. In addition to allowing drummers to design custom kits online at libertydrums.com, the company also offers preconfigured setups in several series, such as Cast Acrylic, Rock, Fusion, Avant, and Jazz, which is what we have for review this month.

Jazz series drums are designed to be high-quality, modern instruments with vintage tone and appeal. They feature the company’s Opex bearing edges, which have a slightly rounded outer cut for more head-to-shell contact, and a 45-degree inner cut. The shells are cross-laminated from Finnish birch (9-ply/6mm toms, 12-ply/8mm bass drums, and 15-ply snares), and the drums come with die-cast Liberty Beetle lugs, 2.3mm triple-flange rims, wood bass drum hoops, a Dunnett SC-GW845 George Way–style snare throw-off, and Evans drumheads (EQ4 Frosted kick batter, EQ3 Smooth White resonant, J1 Etched tom batters, G1 Clear tom bottoms, Strata Staccato snare batter, and Hazy 300 snare bottom).

The finish of our four-piece Jazz series kit is the new Electric Blue Flame wrap, which Liberty says is fully bonded to the shell to maximize resonance. Drum sizes on this kit include a 14×18 bass drum, an 8×12 rack tom, a 14×14 floor tom, and a matching 5.5×14 snare. (List price is $2,491). Advertisement

Check out a video demo below.

Michael Dawson

For the complete review, check out the February 2016 issue, which is available here.