Pitch-matched sticks - How critical is it?

opentune said:

For example, would two different multi-ply birch shells rolling off the line have quite a bit of variability in fundamental tone for this same reason?

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I guess that depends on what you consider "quite a bit", but essentially that's true. Again, practical.considerations are more important. You tune the head, not the shell so the variation isn't going to cause anyone to throw out a drum. The real point of my post is that marketing claims of dubious substance seem to gain a lot more traction than they should.

i just dont think non pitched match sticks are what is lacking from all of our drumming to get anyone to run out and fall for this marketing ploy. Bonham didnt use em, IM not usin em!

The only purpose for pitch matched sticks is on the practice pad in my opinion, the sticks still produce different pitches because I'm hitting at different spots, my hands still work a bit differently etc.

Well, I weighed 3 pairs of VF 5a on the kitchen scale, the new ones were all 47g and the slightly used ones were 46g... pretty damn good.

Are other manufacturers this good in making "identical" sticks?

Sjogras said:

Well, I weighed 3 pairs of VF 5a on the kitchen scale, the new ones were all 47g and the slightly used ones were 46g... pretty damn good.

Are other manufacturers this good in making "identical" sticks?

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That's an easy calculation. The specific gravity of a wood is its weight in g/cc. Take that and hit the button on your calculator that says "1/x" and that's how many cc's are in a gram. For hickory, the s.g. averages about 0.83, so a gram is 1.2 cc's. A good batch of wood and a CAD/CAM lathe can do that easily. They are expensive, so only the better stick manufacturer's would have them, but VF certainly isn't the only one who can get those results.

I do believe pitch matched sticks are a good idea (if I'm playing on a pad or a ride cymbal I can often here the difference in sound between two non-matched sticks) but I trust the stick manufacturers to match the sticks for me. I don't try every stick in the store to find a match. I think the stick companies, in my case Vater, do a good job tone-matching the sticks.
I think weight and banana-ness is more important to check yourself...

Eh... I wouldn't care so long as they feel right in my hands.

Besides, most of the time, you're not hitting the same surface with both sticks anyway so you'll never notice.

Like Bermuda said, Orchestral yes, and marching band yes.
But drumset? No.

Think about it, you break a stick on a gig... you grab another one real quick... that one you grabbed probably isn't going to match the pitch of the one in your other hand, right? So who cares.

The only thing I care about with my sticks is are they straight, and is the weight okay.
As long as mine all weight around the same, I'm fine. I like them a little on the heavy side, 3 or 4 lines of grain on the butt-end or less. Any more and the stick will be too light.

larryace said:

The term anal retentive springs to mind. I will roll my sticks on the counter to make sure they're straight, but pitch? I'm not that picky.

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Better to be anal retentive than anal expulsive, I always say!

Anyway, I think matched sticks are a bunch of hooey. Assuming you get perfectly matched sticks, the first thing you will do is play them on radically different surfaces (cymbals vs. drums). So what's the point?