Allen Blaemire Snare

Allen "Al" Blaemire wasn't a drum builder by trade — he was a mechanical engineer at the Naval Undersea Center, where he worked on composite fiberglass torpedo tubes in the 1950s and '60s. Somewhere along the way, being a drummer himself, he wondered what would happen if he wound that same tensioned, unidirectional fiberglass into a drum shell instead. The result was unlike anything else being made at the time: deeper, more resonant, and more musical than the wood shells of the era.

Working mostly alone out of his garage through the '60s and '70s, Blaemire hand-built shells that found their way — often through Pro Drum Shop in Hollywood — into the hands of some of the most in-demand session players in the business. Hal Blaine built his legendary multi-tom "Monster Kit" around Blaemire shells and used it on literally thousands of hit recordings. Ringo Starr, Karen Carpenter, and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys all had Blaemire-shell kits built for them. He never mass-produced anything, never had a real catalog, and reportedly never even met Hal Blaine — the guy who made his shells famous.

How this one found me. I bought what I thought was a basic entry-level kit because something in the listing photo caught my eye. The lugs looked like Fibes. The rest of the hardware was Ludwig. I figured I was getting a Frankenstein snare at best — maybe a Fibes shell with Ludwig parts, maybe something else entirely. I had no idea.

Research turned up something I wasn't expecting: not Fibes, not Ludwig — Blaemire. A hand-wound fiberglass shell from a garage engineer whose drums ended up on more hit records than most factory brands ever dreamed of. I bought it by accident. I'm keeping it on purpose.