DW Bell Brass Collectors 14x6.5 Snare Drum Review

Does this snare give you "that bell brass sound" for under £1000? Don't let me selling it fool you... this is a great drum. (Sold before I could do a sound bite unfortunately, but plenty out there!).

[@SionedWillicombe]

regret selling mine.. I bought a starphonic brass to replace but it's not the same. Once you've played a thicker shelled drum the feel and sound..it's hard to stay away. Would love the gretsch but the throw off angers me so much, very flimsy and awkward

[@alsdrumcorner7311]

I have the gretsch and personally I prefer to the DW, and I haven't had any issues with the lightning throw (yet). The DW is a great drum though, and good value for a thick brass snare

Excuse me, just to understand better, why wouldn’t be a bell brass when is call like that? Which characteristics has to have to be an authentic bell brass snare? Thanks a lot cause I’m looking for one close to the Terminator Tama.

[@alsdrumcorner7311]

Hi there, if you're referring to the bell brass name then it isn't wholly accurate as bell brass snares are traditionally made of bronze (so a different alloy). I believe the early Tama bell brass snares were bronze

[@valclements1244]

Tama are really responsible for all the cheap so-called Bell Brass drums on the market these days.Tama produced cast bronze drums which they marketed as Bell Brass, simply because somwhere in the translation, the art of church bell casting from bronze, being used for snare drum shell making, got confused. Here we have DW using this moniker on what is a rolled brass drum, with an invisible seam. The PDP bronze shells use the same technology, turning sheet bronze into seamless 3mm shells. Gretsch and a slew of other drum brands are getting cheap thick brass or bronze shelled drums from the Far East, and marketing them all as Bell Brass, but it's just a name. None of them are sand-cast, so none are really Bell Brass per se.The pricing of them tell us this. The failure rate of sand cast shells is extremely high, so the eventual cost of a single shell is huge,as all the failures have to be accounted for.Why do you think the Zildjian snare drums cost so much, and the Sonor Signature cast bronze drums? The drum companies give very little information as to how the shells are made or who makes them, but if you are paying under even £1k for a Bell Brass snare, you can be sure it's not a cast shell. There may be some roto-cast drum shells made with bronze, but as with roto-cast cymbals, they are not expensive, as the process is not expensive. Thick brass shells are seldom, if ever cast, always tending to be rolled and with an invisible seam. Brass being so soft and pliant, it can easily be rolled from flat brass to a drum shell, at very little cost, and without huge amounts of learned skill