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48 Cards in this Set
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- Back
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3-way pickup selector |
A switch found on Gibson Les Paul and other guitars with two pickups. The switch can select the neck pickup alone, bridge pickup alone, or both pickups together in parallel. |
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3-way toggle switch |
For well over half a century, the 3-way toggle switch was the ipso facto standard pickup selector for dual-pickup Gibson guitars. Not long after its introduction, most other manufacturers in the U.S. adopted the toggle. It’s about as simple as you can get, yet it still gets the job done. Even Fender chose the toggle switch on some models like the Jazzmaster and the hollowbody Coronado. PRS began production with rotary pickup selector switches, but by 1994, with the introduction of the McCarty, it began using toggle switches on some models. |
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AlNiCo Magnet |
A compound word drawn from Aluminum, Nickel, and Cobalt. Alnico (AlNiCo) is a powerful permanent magnet alloy containing iron, aluminum, nickel and one or more of the elements cobalt, copper, and titanium. Alnico magnets have been used in loudspeaker construction since the 1940s, when a particularly high-energy formula (Alnico V) was developed; it had a much greater energy-to-weight ratio than common ferrite (iron) magnets.
Electric guitar manufacturers also were (ahem) attracted to Alnico magnets for pickups due to their consistency and even distribution characteristics. Two different formulas are commonly used – Alnico II and Alnico V. |
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Archtop Guitar |
Archtop guitars are steel string instruments, which feature a violin-inspired f-hole design in which the top (and often the back) of the instrument are carved in a curved rather than a flat shape. If you look across the top of the guitar, you’ll notice the wood arches in the middle and dips down where it meets the sides of the guitar. Not all archtop guitars have f-holes. Some, especially early Gibsons, have round or oval soundholes. The arch of the fine archtop guitar is carved from a thick plank, an expensive procedure that requires quite a lot of skilled handwork to do correctly. Guitars of lesser price and quality have laminated or plywood arched tops and backs, which are pressed into shape.
Lloyd Loar of the Gibson Guitar Corporation invented this variation of guitar after designing a style of mandolin of the same type. The typical archtop is a hollowbody guitar whose form is much like that of a mandolin or violin family instrument and may be acoustic or electric. Some solidbody electric guitars are also considered archtop guitars, the most notable being the Gibson Les Paul. However, “archtop guitar” usually refers to the hollow body form. Archtop guitars were immediately adopted by jazz and country musicians and have remained particularly popular in jazz music, usually using thicker strings (higher gauged round wound and flat wound) than acoustic guitars. Archtops are often louder than a typical dreadnought acoustic guitar. The traditional archtop acoustic guitar is known for its mellow tone, smoothness through all ranges, relative lack of “sustain” and tremendous “cutting power” when played hard. Along with drums, the archtop guitar was half of the rhythm section in the “big band” era. |
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Bigsby |
This is a vibrato tailpiece developed by Paul Bigsby. Bigsby tailpieces were options on many Gibson guitars, while quite a few Gretsch guitars (the Country Gentleman, Nashville, and Tennessean to name but a few) came (and still come) with Bigsby tailpieces as standard equipment. The design is quite basic, with the strings extending across the bridge, and attached to the Bigsby. A bar or handle is used to bend the pitch of a note or entire chord up or down. A heavy-duty spring inserted under the handle helps return the strings to proper pitch. |
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Bobbin |
This is the frame around which the wire is wound on a pickup. The term is most often used when discussing coverless humbucking pickups or humbuckers that had their covers removed. All of Gibson’s humbuckers originally had two black bobbins in each pickup, but in the late 1950s, the company’s supplier of plastic ran out of black and substituted cream plastic. Once it became fashionable for guitarists to remove the nickel covers, they discovered that some pickups had two cream bobbins, while others had one black and one white, leading to the term “Zebra Coil.” As usual, overly obsessive collectors convinced themselves that guitars with zebra bobbins sounded better — a fact that has never been proven. |
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Bookmatching |
Bookmatching refers to the cutting of the wood used to make a guitar top or back. When wood is bookmatched, two pieces for the body are cut from the same piece of wood, and then placed in a manner that creates mirror image grain on either side of the instrument. |
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Bridge Pin |
The parts used to anchor the strings to the bridge in acoustic guitars are called “bridge pins.” The string is passed into a hole in the bridge, then the bridge pin is pushed into place to secure it there. The other end of the string passes over the nut at the end of the fingerboard and is then attached in to the machine heads, where the string is then tuned to proper pitch. |
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Capo |
A capo (short for capotasto, from Italian, literally; ‘head of fingerboard‘) is a movable bar attached to the fingerboard of a fretted instrument to uniformly raise the pitch of all the strings. There are several different styles of capo available, utilizing a range of mechanisms, but most use a rubber-covered bar to hold down the strings, fastened with a strip of elastic or nylon, a cam-operated metal clamp, or other device.
The use of a capo is considered by some people to be a crutch for technically inferior players. While it can be used for this purpose (for example, allowing a novice guitarist to play chords in the relatively difficult key of Ab by playing the much simpler chord shapes for the key of G), it also facilitates making use of the instrument’s natural qualities in certain keys and allows for the use of techniques and sounds that would otherwise be unavailable.
Because of the different techniques and chord voicings available in different keys, the same piece may sound very different played in D or played in C with a capo at the 2nd fret (at the same actual pitch). Additionally, the timbre of the strings changes as the scale length is shortened, suggesting the sound pf other short-scaled stringed instruments such as the mandolin. Therefore the use of a capo is as much a matter of artistic expression as of technical expediency.
The use of a capo also obviates the need to learn a song in several different keys if accompanying singers who sing at different pitches.
For guitar playing, some styles such as flamenco and folk music make extensive use of the capo, while it is used very rarely if at all in other styles such as classical and jazz playing. |
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Carve-top guitar |
The original carved-top electric guitar was the 1952 Gibson Les Paul “Goldtop.” Because Gibson had the specialized tooling with which to create a contoured top that was similar to the arched top of a fine violin, Maurice Berlin of Chicago Musical Instruments (or CMI, Gibson’s parent company) believed this would set the Gibson solidbody guitar far ahead of the competition (chiefly Fender at the time). Initially, the rough carving was done by a machine copying a 3-dimensional pattern made of steel. The cutter marks were then smoothed by a luthier using a stroke belt sander. The operator would hold a cushioned pad against the running belt pressed to the top of the instrument in order to create the desired contour. Today, much of this is accomplished using computer-controlled carvers, after which hand finishing adds the final touch. |
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Chambered body |
Some timbers can be exceptionally heavy. In the original run of Gibson Les Pauls, which had mahogany backs and maple tops, the weight could vary from just under 8 pounds, all the way to a whopping 11+ pounds. That’s because each piece of mahogany has a different density, and density equals weight. To help keep the weight down on some guitars with mahogany bodies, hollow chambers are sometimes carved into the wood before the top is glued on. Some manufacturers also use specially designed acoustic chambers to help tune the resonance of certain guitar bodies. |
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Coil split |
Turning off one of the coils in a humbucking pickup to create a single-coil-style sound. The Holy Grail is to achieve a Fender-style single-coil tone, though this tends to be difficult to achieve using conventional humbucking pickups both because of the differences in a coil in a humbucker versus a true single-coil and because of physical pickup placement differences between a humbucker and a true single-coil.
Having said that, a humbucker with a coil split can create a convincing single-coil sound, and offers a convenient and simple way to expand the tonal versatility of an electric guitar equipped with humbuckers.
Note that turning off one of the coils in a humbucker does eliminate the humbucking capability the pickup possesses — it becomes a single-coil pickup, with all the associated noise issues single-coils have. |
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Coil tap |
In general a coil tap is an access point somewhere along the wire that is wound in a coil or transformer. The tap could be anywhere along the wire, and the resulting voltage present at the tap will be related accordingly. Transformers may have their coils tapped to provide different voltages in a power supply that may be required for the operation of some device, for example. A coil may also be tapped at its halfway point, which in effect produces two coils of equal size. If the middle point is connected to ground, or some zero voltage reference, the two ends of the coil will appear to have equal, but opposite in polarity, voltages with respect to that center tap. The is one way balanced or differential signals can be created. Similar results can be achieved by taking a tap from a point between two identical coils wired in series with one another.
In guitars a coil tap is a case of the latter. Humbuckers, or dual coil guitar pickups generally produce a fatter, warmer sound than their single coil counterparts. However, single coil pickups are known for their crisp and bright sound, and also for their propensity to pick up stray EMI. By the late 1970s manufacturers realized that musicians wanted both kinds of sound – crisp and bright along with fat and warm – and so they developed ways to split the coils, which is known as coil tapping. A selection between dual coil (humbucking) and single coil is provided by some type of switch on the guitar. Normally selection of the coil tapped mode causes one of the coils of a dual coil pickup to be turned off, and the signal is obtained between the other coil and the “tap”, thereby making it into a single coil pickup. There are some other, more sophisticated designs that allow the single coil sound to be achieved without giving up the second coil and thus the benefit of humbucking but those techniques aren’t, by definition, considered coil tapping, though they may be referred to as such. |
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Drop D Tuning |
“Drop D Tuning” means you are tuning the low E string on an acoustic or electric guitar a whole step down, to a D. This is one of the simplest alternate tunings you can use, and one of the most versatile. Songs as diverse as “Dear Prudence” (The Beatles), “Blackwater” (Doobie Brothers), and “I Love This Bar” (Toby Keith), all use the Drop D Tuning. Guitarists who use this often replace the standard E string with a heavier gauge to keep the string from being too loose and, thus, prone to going out of tune. If you use a .046 E string, replace it with a .052, and you should be fine. |
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DynaSonic Pickup |
Originally known as the Gretsch-DeArmond Fidelatone (a real mouthful), the DynaSonic single-coil was the Gretsch standard pickup beginning in the late 1940s. DynaSonic pickups were among the first to offer individually adjustable polepieces, and featured glossy highs and tight bass response. According to Gretsch literature, “DynaSonic Pickups Yield a Tone of Incomparable Power and Fidelity!” In 1957, the Filter’Tron “Electric Guitar Head” was introduced at the Summer NAMM Show in Chicago. These were true humbuckers and by 1958, they had effectively replaced all the DynaSonics. The use of the word “head” rather than “pickup” was most likely Gretsch trying to make their specific design seem different or better than others. |
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F-hole |
While the vast majority of acoustic guitars have round soundholes, early Gibson archtop acoustics such as the L-5 and Super 400 substituted “f”-shaped soundholes in the 1920s and ’30s, which are patterned after the soundholes found on traditional bowed string instruments such as the violin, viola, and cello.
Eventually, Gibson added pickups to its archtop guitars, but kept the F-holes. By 1958, Gibson began building the ES-335, which had F-holes, as well as a solid block of maple running down the middle of the guitar to help eliminate feedback. Other manufacturers such as Guild and Gretsch followed Gibson’s lead and used traditional F-holes on their hollowbody guitars. Oddly enough, Gretsch eventually stopped employing F-holes in their hollowbodies and substituted painted-on decorative substitutes, most likely to help reduce feedback problems at high volume levels. |
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FilterTron Pickup |
This is the Gretsch name for its humbucking pickup, which appeared in 1958, about a year after Gibson started putting humbuckers on their high-end guitars. It replaced the single-coil DeArmond pickups on almost all of the Gretsch line. The FilterTrons had two rows of adjustable pole pieces versus Gibson’s single row and thus could be coaxed into delivering a slightly brighter sound. But the real innovation is one which most guitarists never saw: FilterTrons were connected to the wiring harness inside the guitars by a 3-prong plug. That’s right, no soldering necessary! |
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Flat Top Guitar |
A flat top is simply a guitar whose top is flat. The thickness of the top determines the tone of the instrument. The guitar top, or soundboard, is a finely crafted and engineered element often made of spruce, cedar, or mahogany. This thin (often 2 or 3mm. thick) piece of wood, strengthened by different types of internal bracing, is considered to be the most prominent factor in determining the sound quality of a guitar. The majority of the sound is caused by vibration of the guitar top as the energy of the vibrating strings is transferred to it. Different patterns of wood bracing have been used through the years by luthiers; to not only strengthen the top against collapsing under the tremendous stress exerted by the tensioned strings, but also to affect the resonation of the top.
The term “flat top” usually refers to the acoustic steel string guitar, such as a Martin D-28, but is also applied to electric guitars. An example would be the Fender Telecaster or perhaps a Gibson SG. The body size of an acoustic flat top is usually significantly larger than a classical guitar and it has a narrower, reinforced neck and stronger structural design, to sustain the extra tension of steel strings which produce a louder and brighter tone. The acoustic guitar is a staple in folk, old-time music, and blues. |
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Flatwound |
Flatwound strings feature a core that’s wrapped with flat (as opposed to round) windings. The result is a string that is smooth to the touch and produces a mellow, warm tone. Flatwounds are most commonly found on electric basses, but they’re also used by some players on guitars. Favored by some jazz bassists because of their smooth tone, flatwounds also reduce the amount of string noise produced. Flatwound strings are similar to the strings used on orchestral stringed instruments, such as double (upright) bass and cello. |
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Floating Bridge |
A floating bridge functions as any other bridge would with the exception that it’s not anchored to the top of the instrument, but rather is held in place by the string tension. Floating bridges are used on instruments that cannot physically have a bridge permanently mounted to it due to thinness or composition of the top. For instance, banjos use floating bridges because the top head is much like a drumhead, which obviously won’t hold screws for the bridge. Floating bridges are also used on instruments such as violins, double basses, and even some electric guitars and basses. |
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Floating pickup |
A magnetic pickup mounted to the end of the fingerboard or the pickguard on a guitar (or to a non-vibrating part of other musical instruments). Floating pickups are sometimes used on archtop acoustic guitars so that adding a pickup won’t interfere or change the vibration pattern of the top. Frequently the pickup jack, volume, and tone controls are mounted right on the pickguard, making the guitar’s electronics entirely removable. |
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Floyd Rose |
The Floyd Rose Tremolo is a tremolo system designed, manufactured, and patented by Floyd Rose, also called a “locking tremolo” or “double-locking tremolo.” A double-locking system is so named because both the floating bridge and the nut clamp down on the strings, locking them in place and preventing them from going out of tune when the vibrato arm is used and abused. The concept behind a double-locking system is that there are three points at which the strings can bind or slip out of tune when a vibrato arm is used: the bridge saddles, the nut, and the tuning machines. By clamping the strings at the bridge and the nut, all three of these points are removed from the tuning stability equation. |
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Hardtail |
“Hardtail” refers to a guitar that doesn’t have a vibrato tailpiece. There are many designs, with the most famous being Ted McCarty’s Stoptail bridge, which he invented while he was president of Gibson during the 1950s. |
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Hexaphonic Pickup |
A guitar pickup with a discrete output for each of the six strings of a standard guitar. Often employed in synth guitars, this arrangement permits separate processing – effects, amplification, etc. for each string. A hexaphonic pickup attached to a converter can sense the pitch coming from individual strings for conversion into MIDI note messages. |
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Inlay |
For hundreds of years, the builders of stringed instruments from lutes to kotos to guitars have used mother-of-pearl and abalone to add accents and further decorate their work. Inlays may be as simple as a pearl dot position marker on an inexpensive electric guitar, while some inlay work consists of hundreds – or even thousands – of hand-placed pieces, effectively turning an instrument into a work of art, as in the PRS Dragon Series, which may also include other materials as diverse as gold, ivory, onyx and other semi-precious stones. |
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Kerfing |
Kerfing is tapered strips of wood that are glued around the inside seams of a guitar. Their primary function is to add strength and stability where the sides meet the top and back of the instrument. The word “kerfed” actually means “articulated.” When we talk about kerfing, we’re talking about strips of wood that have had slits cut into them allowing for easy bending and flexibility, perfect for fitting around the curves inside an acoustic guitar. Kerfing is sometimes called lining, or kerf lining, as well. |
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Locking Nut |
This is a type of guitar nut design that clamps the strings in place in order to maintain tuning when using a vibrato tailpiece. Typically, screws are tightened against small pieces of metal, which squeeze the string(s) against the base of the nut. While locking nuts can often eliminate tuning problems associated with “vigorous” whammy-bar usage, the tradeoffs can be difficulty tuning; difficulties if a string breaks or stretches during a performance; and, according to some players, tonal changes as compared to a bone or synthetic nut. (Though other players prefer the sound of locking systems versus non-locking systems. Viva le difference!) |
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Locking Tuner |
This is a special type of guitar tuner that actually locks the string to the string post and thus makes string replacement easier and tuning more stable, especially with heavy vibrato arm usage. Many manufacturers offer locking tuners; these include Sperzel, Gotoh, and Phase II PRS/Schaller.
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Locking Vibrato |
This is a type of vibrato system that locks the strings at the nut and bridge saddles, in an effort to stabilize tuning, particularly when a player makes extensive use of the vibrato. This is sometimes also called a double-locking system |
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Open Tuning |
When dealing with guitars, an open tuning is where the strings are tuned differently from “standard” tuning (EADGBE) in such a manner that strumming with no strings fingered or fretted generates a major or minor chord. For example, tuning a guitar to DGDGBD low to high is Open G, and strumming with no strings fretted sounds a G major chord in second inversion. Open tunings are often used when playing slide guitar, and were popular with early folk and blues players, and later utilized by rock guitarists with heavy blues influences, such as Keith Richards and the Blues Explosion. Open G was used on the Stones classic “Honky Tonk Women,” among others.
One advantage in using an open tuning is that you can change chords by simply placing a finger across all six strings and moving to the desired fret. Open tunings also make fingerpicking, particularly root-fifth bass patterns very easy to play.
Open G (DGDGBD) and Open D (DADF#AD) are the most popular open tunings, though any tuning that can be achieved without making the open strings too loose or too tight can be used. |
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P-90 Pickup |
Refers to Gibson’s first successful single coil pickup design, found on many Gibson guitar models originating in the 50’s. It is larger than many modern pickups and are commonly found in the “soap bar” design, named so because it has a size and shape similar to a small bar of soap, or the “dog ear” design, which is characterized by a large triangular mounting surface at each end. P90’s are known for high output (for a single coil) and biting treble response. Nowadays there are many strengths and styles of “P90” pickups from several manufacturers. |
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Piezo Pickup |
Short for piezoelectricity or piezoelectric effect. Piezoelectricity is an electric charge that occurs in some substances when they are squeezed or otherwise subjected to mechanical stress. It is also possible to cause these materials to vibrate when a voltage is applied to them. Quartz is one of the better known piezoelectric materials, and is commonly fabricated into small pieces, called “crystals” that are used for frequency standards. A crystal of specific size and shape will vibrate at a predictable and very stable rate when a voltage is applied. This makes them ideal for use in things like watches or clocks for digital audio equipment. Piezoelectric elements have also been used various types of transducers such as phonograph cartridges, microphones and loudspeakers. Piezo microphones can be quite small and still have relatively high output at a low cost; however, their less than ideal frequency response prohibits use in critical applications. Piezo loudspeakers usually come in the form of tweeters, or very high frequency elements. They generally have very low distortion in the 5 kHz and above range, but haven’t widely been used in sound reinforcement due in part to their relatively low output levels. It takes dozens of the average piezo tweeter to equal the output of one medium-sized compression driver. |
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Quarter Sawn |
“Quarter sawn” is the term used to describe lumber that has been cut with the tree’s annual growth rings perpendicular to the surface of the finished board. Many of the famous flame-top Les Pauls of the late 1950s and early ’60s used a combination of quarter sawn and flat sawn lumber. |
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Resonator |
A metal cone over which the strings of a specially constructed “resophonic” guitar pass. The resonator is sometimes referred to as a “pie pan.” Resophonic guitars are designed with 1 or 3 cones, which give the guitar a distinctive metallic twang. The pie pans were originally employed to produce more volume than a wooden soundboard. With the advent of electric amplification volume was no longer an issue. The distinctive tone, often used in country or blues, is the reason to play one of these instruments. |
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Scalloped Bracing |
A technique used by luthiers for shaping the braces mounted to the underside of an acoustic guitar’s top, typically by shaving away wood in the middle of the brace. Martin used this technique for their famous vintage “Pre-war” guitars built prior to 1944. (From 1945-1976, Martin used “straight” top braces, and since 1977 has offered guitars with both straight and scalloped braces.) There main reason luthiers scallop braces is to reduce brace mass for better top flexibility. The result is more bass response – some players like this, some don’t. Today many manufacturers offer scalloped bracing on some or all of their guitar models. |
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X-bracing |
X-bracing refers to the pattern of the strips of wood used in luthierie to strengthen the top of an acoustic guitar. The term derives from the pattern of the main bracing on the inside surface of the guitar’s top. X-bracing was invented in the 1850s by C.F. Martin & Co to serve the needs of the modern steel-string guitar, as opposed to the traditional fan bracing of the classical guitar. This pattern comprises two main braces running in an “X” from the upper bout to the lower bout, with the “X” crossing somewhere between the soundhole and the bridge. There are several auxiliary braces as well. Bracing serves two seemingly disparate functions: Strengthen the top of the guitar in order to accommodate the 185lbs (approximately) of constant tension it must endure, while allowing the top to vibrate sufficiently to produce tone. A top thick enough to withstand the pressure could not vibrate properly. Interestingly enough, bracing also plays a major role in determining the tone of a guitar based on placement, pattern, and physical shape. In many ways, these elements affect the final tone of the instrument as much as the actual tonewood. |
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Bearing edge |
The edge of the drum shell, upon which the drumhead rests. The bearing edge may be shaped to a wedge to the outside of the shell or to a centered point, and may be slightly rounded — the shape and location of the bearing edge determines where and how the drumhead breaks over and contacts the shell. For proper tuning, it is essential that the bearing edge be straight and level.
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Butt plate |
On a snare drum, the butt plate, along with the throw off, are part of the system that engages and disengages the snare wires. While the throw off moves either up and down or side to side, the butt plate stays locked in its position. Think of it as the anchor for the throw off. Some butt plates on more high-end drums have screws to loosen or tighten the snare wires and, in the case of some DW snare drums, there is system to have three different positions for the snare wires, giving the player a lot of flexibility for creating different sounds using one drum. |
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Cajon |
A cajón is a box-shaped percussion instrument originally from Peru, played by slapping the front or rear faces with the hands, fingers, or sometimes implements such as brushes, mallets, or sticks. Cajones are primarily played in Afro-Peruvian music, but has made its way into flamenco as well. |
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Bongos |
Bongos are an Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed drums of different sizes. In Spanish the larger drum is called the hembra and the smaller the macho. |
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Bongos |
Bongos are an Afro-Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of small open bottomed drums of different sizes. In Spanish the larger drum is called the hembra and the smaller the macho. |
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Chain drive kick pedal |
A kick drum pedal mechanism that uses a metal chain to connect the foot treadle or pedal platform to the beater.
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China Cymbal |
A type of crash cymbal said to be a descendent of Chinese gongs. The rim of many China cymbals is shaped in the reverse direction from the main curve of the rest of the cymbal’s bow area. Some China cymbals also feature a conical bell rather than a dome-shaped bell; the cymbal is often mounted upside down, with the end of the bell facing down rather than up, and with the rim curving away from the player. Other China cymbals have only some or even none of these design characteristics. Sizes range from 6″-12″ China splash cymbals to 27″ models.
If Turkish-style cymbals are said to be “sweet” sounding, then many drummers would describe China cymbals as “trashy”; the characteristic sound is more metallic, harsher, more cutting.
There are several types of traditional Chinese cymbals (the Chinese were making cymbals earlier than most other cultures): ching, jing, water, and others. Most Western musicians refer to all of these simply as “China” cymbals.
In most Western music, China cymbals are used for special accents and as “effects” cymbals. |
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Conga |
Congas are single-headed Afro-Cuban drums traditionally used in Latin American dance music and played with the hands. Gradually, congas have found their way into rock music. There are actually three sizes. The Tumba is the largest with the deepest tone, the Conga being the middle sized drum and the Quinto being the smallest of the three with the highest pitch. Congas are usually played in pairs which are generally placed into stands. |
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Cowbell |
A small, hollow bell often heard in in Latin and rock music. Originally used by herdsmen to keep track of their livestock, the cowbell has a unique tone that can make any groove more funky or driving, depending on how it is played. |
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Crash cymbal |
A type of cymbal typically used for loud accent hits sometimes accompanied by cymbal chokes. Crash cymbals come in various diameters and thicknesses, which affect the pitch and the tone of the cymbal. A rock, country, jazz, or pop drummer may use several different crash cymbals in a drum kit, to provide a range of colors.
The crash cymbals used with a drum kit are usually single cymbals, suspended from or mounted to a stand.
The crash cymbals used in orchestral or wind band situations are usually dual cymbals, which the drummer holds by straps in each hand, clashing them together to create a crash or accent. |
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Direct Drive Kick Pedal |
A bass drum pedal mechanism where the beater is directly connected to the pedalboard. (As opposed to a belt or chain drive, where the beater is connected to the pedalboard using a flexible belt or chain.)
Direct drive offers a more instantaneous connection between pedal and beater motion; opinions vary among players as to whether this is a good or bad thing. Those whose performances and style rely on fast action, quickly repeated notes and blast beats, and high volume tend to prefer direct drive, as the pedal responds exactly to what the player is doing and because all of the energy of each footstroke is translated to the beater, with nothing lost in the physical connection. |
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Djembe |
An African hand drum, usually carved out of wood, and topped with an animal skin. Djembes are shaped like an hourglass, and can range in size from small to large. |
