Lug screws: Very important, as you describe, they go BACK IN THE LUG POSITION THEY CAME FROM! They are 'self-tapping' TORX screws - the fit is UNIQUE / ONE TIME! Number / mark each the screws and lugs. Lay out only a few lugs and screws at a time so you know which screw goes in which hole - no need to take them all off at once - clean, if you have to, AS YOU GO! My advice? Don't change anything unless something is actually broken so don't take the screws out. Clean the lugs ON the drum. It will never be the same again if you remove them and no longer be "factory correct". ❤🎉😎✅
Unglaublich tolles Video mit einem unerwarteten und traurigen Ende. Habe es nicht mitbekommen. Seit ich Schlagzeug spiele ist Sonor etwas Besonderes für mich und Gerd Stegner als großer Teil der Sonor Community. RIP
I wasn’t really ready for the poignant reminiscing at the end of the video, but I choked back tears all the same. My own connection to, and fascination with Sonor comes from my father too. These drums aren’t just instruments, they’re family and the love for them runs very, very deep. I admire and honour what you’re doing here keeping these magnificent drums alive. ❤
A beautiful sentiment to your Dad. These drums are so beautiful too. I always thought the hardware was more marketing hype than function and that the true genius of the veneer finishing choices was under appreciated. I first saw a kit at Sam Ash in the early 90’s. I was mesmerized at the details and quality. But the price and weight were eye watering. And then the market changed, thin and light were in, big hair was gone. Thanks for the well researched post.
I was thinking that this was immediately a new favorite Sonor related video long before getting to the end. The tribute to your father and the Sonor introduction hit home so hard. My Dad introduced me to Sonor in the late 90’s and it would have been his birthday two days ago on the 25th. Thanks so much for this piece as well as your commitment to producing parts that Sonor no longer offers so that maybe one day these heirloom caliber drums can be cherished and enjoyed by our children.
I believe that the Sonor Designer 8 piece kit that I once had was probably the best sounding Drums that I have ever played or owned. I do like all Drums, but for me, Sonor is what I prefer. By the way, "UNKAPUTTBAR" can be found, and in English it is "INDESTRUCTIBLE" Indeed it is! I am sorry for your loss of your Dad, Gerd Stegner.... much too young to be called away. You are a good Son! Thanks and Blessings!
Top your video !!! Thanks a lot ❤❤❤❤ I love SONOR for many years now (more than 35 years) and I have 2 SQ2 kits and a lot of SONOR snare and it’s a pleaser to see vids on it !!! ❤
Thanks for putting all the effort into this video. I really enjoyed it. I'm currently not able to play drums but still dream of a high end Sonor double bass kit, maybe in blue sparkle. I think I still have a bunch of 90s Sonor brochures in a box at my mom's. Look forward to future uploads, keep up the good work! 😀
The Sonor kits from the 80s and 90s are most beautiful, durable and with an exquisite sound. I always liked those power toms and those big bass drums. Thanks for the video, greetings from Chile.
Thank you for this great video ! The in-depth analysis is something you don't stumble across so easily these days. I love the Designer series, they are beautiful drums. Unfortunately I don't own a Designer kit yet, but a guy can dream, right :) ? I do own a Sonor Birch Infinite kit and I'm in love with it. I have the 05/06 Complete Sonor Guidebook, too, and I was glad to see it featured in your video ❤.
What an incredibly beautiful documentary. Insanely detailed and at the same time smoothly delivered. Watched 3 times already. Wonderful. I recently got a Sonor Designer Drukmit and learned a lot from it. And surprise: it turns out to be a Designer Vintage Maple. Great that I can find my spare parts at St Drum. Good for years of playing pleasure! Thanks for all the work and effort. Keep up the good work :)
thanks a lot for the nice feedback! And WOW! I wouldn't have thought that anybody would watch it more than 1 time except me during editing😅 thanks a lot!
Great video! The Designer was my dream kit when I was a kid in the 90s. A visit to the Sonor factory with my drum teacher at the time was the foundation of this special relationship with Sonor. I ended up buying a Pearl Masters Custom MMX in 1998, which I still play today (I later became a professional designer instead of a drummer, so maybe the name of the series had an influence on that)
Great vid! I too love my Designers.. first generation glue badge..long lug, maple light in birdseye natural. Been using this kit much more since finding a 12x10 rack..seeing as they are square sized, now can just put the 12x12 to the left. Wicked drums!
Great video, Lovely drums, but I have couple of comments: 1. One of the most important and unique characteristic of the Designer was the "wave cut" for the joint of the plies in the shells. Early Designer at least had that; 2. The 4,25" snares have their lugs tilted because of the rubber inserts in the holes, that would allow the torque created by the two ofsetted bolts to rotate them counterclockwise.
Thank you for this wonderful video on these wonderful drums! I owned a set of Designer drums in the second Bubinga finish from 1999 to 2011. By the time I’d finished with it, the set comprised 19 drums including three snare drums Sonor made especially for me with the “staggered” single lugs now found on SQ2 drums. These snares were 10x5, 14x5, & 14x6.5 with Hella hoops. Lovely drums!!! One tiny detail I noticed on my floor tom legs was that the slotted screws for the memory locks on each of the three legs per drum were each a slightly different length making it easier to remember which leg went into which bracket. A nice little touch that I’ve not seen anywhere else and that I’ve not mentioned anywhere other than this comment.
Thanks a lot for the nice comment! Wow! That sounds like an awesome kit! Also thanks for the info about the memory lock: Now that you mentioned it, the 3 piece set in the video that we had here also had different screws on the memory locks, but I thought that some of the screws were maybe exchanged because the got lost, and a previous owner just used whatever length he had there. But now it makes a lot of sense! Thank you for adding that detail 😁
That bass drum brackets whatever it is. That giant rail thing. Ugh. So much nostalgia. I know I’m not the only one totally feeling on this. Hope you do Ludwig’s
Thanks for the nice comment! I am actually doing research and script-preparation for a Phonic video rightnow 😁 but before that a couple of other videos are already in the making
love it. @24:31. Actually, it was several independent drums stores that were considered "five star" dealers. For example, I believe Bentley's Drum Shop in Fresno, California was a Five Star Dealer.
Beautiful video and wonderful sentiments at the end that I relate with so much. Thank you for what you do to keep these amazing instruments--and the memories attached to them--alive!
I used to own a Sonor snare with the black chrome hardware, it was a Long & Mcquade limited edition snare I believe from 2011.. Love the video, Keep it up!
In 2005-2006, when they ran the proto SQ2 "Drum Design" Designer, you could also get beech shells (labeled as Maple Light), and have veneer inside of shells.
Thanks a lot for the comment! I realized they had these small grub screws in there but I didn't even realize what they were made for... next time we have a designer in our shop, I will do a second part to the video 😁
I own a HiLite Red kit,very nice 10,12,13,16,22 also I got a bebop kit with 10” and 14”Designer long lugs and a 18 bass drum DeLite all in Birdseye’s Maple Light Amber , very nice finish. Because I liked so much this kit I war looking for a 12” Designer Tom but it was impossible to find it .Later I got lucky and I found a 12” DeLite Tom in the same finish, then later I found a 8” Designer short lugs . In the meantime I found a 22” Bass drum DeLite In Birdseye Azure . I forgot to mention that I have also a 12” Hilite snare drum in Piano Black . So that’s my Sonor treasure 😊
Danke für dieses informative & sehr persönliche Video über die DESIGNER-Serie von Sonor. Eine Frage: Verfügt ein Designer-Vintage Version über runde Bearing Edges?
Danke für den netten Kommentar! Soweit ich weiß hatten alle Designers 45° Gratungen, auch die mit den Verstärkungsringen. Die abgerundete Gratung findet sich bei Sonor heute an den Buchenkesseln der Vintage Serie, aber ansonsten soweit ich weiß nicht
Great video, but I think you forgot one big elephant in the room. The introduction of the Designer series marked the end of the beech shell at Sonor. That’s hard to believe as there was decades of only beech and is a reflection of the new ownership group, the international design team and globalization moving away from everything made in Germany. The 2003 price guide shows beech as a shell option but I have only ever seen a snare that was badged Designer beech shell.
Thanks for the comment! You are right! I didn't even know about the beechshell detail. I learned so much in the comments of the video already, I think we need to make another short designer to include that info aswell 😁
I'm lucky enough to own 2 designers, One early blue sparkle with maple light shells and one of the last designers made with vintage maple shell's with designers badges, its in a green figured veneer, I'm lead to believe that there's was only 5 ever made in that finish, 3 in Europe and 2 in the US.
I have the same strainer as the snare in 22:55 on my D454 but the butt end just keeps loosening. I'd like to replace the strainer with a common one you can find on the AQ series (and most of the Force series earlier) but the holes don't line up. Do you think it's possible to drill and tap another hole in the strainer and use it instead of the old one (I noticed there might be a guide pin in the way...)? I know there are strainers with the same spacing out there but I'd like to keep it Sonor. Thank you.
Thanks for the comment! Well is it the buttend with the thumpscrew that loosens, or is it the strainer with the trumpet-lever? The strainer actually has two small screws in the back that you can adjust once the strainer is removed from the shell - this could solve the issue. However if it's the buttend, maybe you can add a spring under it to keep it pushed to the outside a bit. If you want to exchange it with another strainer / buttend, you would have to measure your particular hole to hole distance and let us know via email. I think the D454 buttend has 12mm distance - I don't know of another part with that hole distance. Also most modern buttends have horizontal drillings, so probably it is necessary to drill new holes. But try the spring and the screw on the back first please 😉
@@stdrumsgmbh The butt end loosens, I already have a spring underneath but with heavy rim shots it still loosens over a very short period of time. I resorted to a piece of gaffers tape holding the thumbwheel in place, tho it's ugly and I hate it... I thought I would replace the trumpet handle strainer with a modern one with string tightness adjustment and leave the butt end out of the adjustment equation completely. The hole spacing is 22mm and fits a Trick GS007 throw off, tho I'd much prefer a Sonor brand one. That's why I'd like to know if it's possible to modify hole spacing on the Sonor Select Force style throw off it's self, make it 22mm instead of the factory 16mm. I observed that drilling and tapping a new hole might intefere with a guide pin and it's plastic rails... what do you think? Or is there a Sonor throw off without the guide pin? (there might be one off a marching snare, but I'm not sure and I don't want to get in too deep financially...)
@@tomashorenin1294 Yes with the one they use on the larger Select Force and also AQX and other cheaper models, you might be able to drill another hole in the strainers back and cut a thread for a fixing screw in there. I think it might be possible to disassamble it to the point of just having the back of the strainer to modify the hole distance
I love my Designers. I have two kits in Maple Light, both gifts from my wife. The first one is a 1999 Stain Black with 10x9, 12x10, 14x12 and 16x14 toms with a 22x16 bass drum. I later ordered a 16x16 floor Tom with legs to replace the 14 & 16 hanging toms. The other kit is a 2005 with 10x8, 12x9, 14x14 floor tom, 22x18 bass drum and 14x5 snare. That one was lightly used and has a custom ordered Blue Violet sparkle finish. Sonor wouldn't make me a smaller bass drum in that finish, which was disappointing to say the least. Both kits are now home practice kits, since they are both too heavy to carry to gigs now. The Acoustigate on my 10x9 tom just broke recently 😭
Wow! Blue violet custom finish sounds amazing! I would love to see some pictures 😁 And regarding the acoustigate: Is it just the rubber that broke or part of the metal aswell?
@@stdrumsgmbh it is the black plastic part that the knurled screw threads into. It just split in the middle, leaving the ends still plugged into the holes of the bottom part of the H mount.
Yes I think the green and red sparkle were discontinued. But they did offer custom colors later, so probably they were still able to make these colors on request in the 2000s
As great as and innovative as the Sonor drum company is, they really had, albeit not many, but a few "What were they thinking" moments, such as slotted tension rods, which can only be used with their specially designed slotted drum key, and if you don't have one, good luck cause it's special order. Their design for slightly undersized shells, designed with the timpani concept for perfect head seating make for perfect tuning, which is a fantastic innovation. Metal hoops on some of their earlier 60s and 70s drums, making the shells even heavier, and unwanted, unnecessary noisy reverberation, was also a crappy decision, and their extremely oversized power toms (think Nicko McBrain from Iron Maiden) were also inconvenient and I'm sure, an awful pain to set up and lug around. There are other little design flaws that i can't remember at the moment, but every company has them. Creativity in design will always be accompanied by flaws to ultimately achieve a flawless design, and out of all drum manufacturers, Sonor is second to none. I only wish I can afford an SQ 2 vintage maple set, but that's only in dream land for most of us workhorse drummers. Great segment and historical information on these great drums !
Thanks a lot for the comment! Yes, things like the slotted screws with their own thread and other details are usually comming from a historic background of the brand, that they held on to for a long time. But I guess changing the tensionrods to the standard but still offering slotted versions on request was a great decision of Sonor. Yeah from the 70s to the 90s most of the highend sonor drums were extremely heavy - I guess during that time they focused on mechanical durability and sound first, before they thought about the workhorse drummers, who did't have roadies to carry their stuff 😅
Resonance, resonance...and then they drill the large holes in the shells and fill them with rubber parts...if that 's not dampening I don't know what it is...Overall, just like the Signature set Designer is overcomplicated and overengineered product with many features like rubbers you mentioned that will often fail in use...maybe it's the kit for the studio and little tweaking, but not for the road...especially it was very heavy for hauling
You are absolutely right. In Germany we have a word for this kind of engineering - verschlimmbessern - trying really hard to improve things, but the result is worse than before. Sonor has taken many wrong paths over the years. I prefere the KISS philosophy - Keep it simple and stupid. For this reason I'm more than satisfied with my Yamaha Recordings for 40 Years now. And they look so elegant. Timeless, unobtrusive, not pretentious design. Regardless, the people at ST Drums are doing a great job and the video is also great.
and Sonor is actually my favorite drum brand！BTW，dear stdrum，if you send me an email address，i can send you some photos of my drums，which is the limited edition shown at 25:25 in this video，i am definitely not joking！
