Terrible Noble and Cooley News

Regarding the toy drums - that was an operation owned and run by Jay's mother and father.
Jay wanted to get back into professional drums in the early 80's and with the help of designer Bob Gatzen they were making single ply snare drums used by many of the top players in the industry by the late 80's. In that regard Jay took a big risk, it was a big investment in time and money.
After Jay and Carol took over from Jay's parents, they continued to produce both toy drums and professional quality snares and kits. They would have continued with the toy division were it not for an ultimatum from certain retailers that forced the end of the toy drum business.
Regardless of the toys, N&C has been a family owned business for a couple of hundred years, based in a very small Mass community.
I'm not predicting the new business will fail, or the quality will suffer, just for me it's a new business, different.
 
One correction to Chris' post: They are still very much making the toy drums, or were when I was there in June:

www.vermontcountrystore.com

Child's Marching Drum

This Marching Drum Was in Its First Parade—in the 1880s!
www.vermontcountrystore.com www.vermontcountrystore.com

Jay showed us how they were made and even let us try our hand on one of the machines.
 
Chris Whitten said:
Oh, they must have started up again. I was there around 2008? and Jay told me the whole toy making thing was finished and gave me the story about being forced to close it down during the Gulf War.
Click to expand...

Yeah, he told us that moment nearly wrecked them as a company. I guess Carol assembled most of the toy drums near the end of their time there, IIRC.
 
I'd buy a toy N&C just for fun
 
Any updates on what Nick Jones is doing. The N&C website shows him still employed as of 2022 with N&C (I'm sure the site has not updated)
 
I've been playing Noble and Cooley drums since the 90s and I love them. If the new folks make nice drums at the company then the name lives on, if not they'll get squashed.

Most people have no idea who Noble and Cooley even is. Jay and Nick are not drummers and they made some great drums. From what I gather the new guy in charge is a drummer and other drummers will be working there.
Both of my kits had QC issues that I had to correct. Maybe the quality control will be better or maybe worse. I've read they now have 40 dealers because of the changeover. If they stayed small maybe they would have just shut down. I think Nick and Jay for historical sake deserve to have the Noble and Cooley brand out there and it's probably what they wanted. They could have said no deal to the new guy. But they didn't.
How many on this forum even own N&C drums? They ordered all of their shells except for the steam bent ones. Now everyone and their brother seems to be steam bending shells. I guess that makes my seamless tree trunk drums even more unique now.
My 8x10, 9x12, 12x14, 18x22 and 6.5 x14 CD Maples are 16 years old, time for a new paint job. I had to remove the original finish from the factory and repaint them myself when I bought them. It would have taken N&C months to repaint them and send them back at the time so I just did it myself The pool is very crowded with "builders" these days. Hopefully this turns out to be a good thing. Time will tell.
 

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kdh said:
Most people have no idea who Noble and Cooley even is. Jay and Nick are not drummers and they made some great drums. From what I gather the new guy in charge is a drummer and other drummers will be working there.
Both of my kits had QC issues that I had to correct.
Click to expand...
Initially they had Bob Gatzen designing and overseeing the builds. he was very much a drummer and owned a popular drum shop for years.
I've had four N&C kits, none of which had QC issues. But sometimes small makers have issues when they are under financial pressure or can't get the staff locally to keep the quality levels up.
I sold my CD Maples because I was moving countries, but with hindsight I should have kept it. It was the least 'special' of my N&C kits, but listening back to recordings it still sounded better than a lot of mainstream factory drums.
N&C's bread and butter is their own steam bent snare drums. The ply kits were designed by Bob Gatzen and made to his spec by outside shell suppliers. Is there any drum company offering a horizontal ply maple and mahogany drum?
 
Sweetwater started carrying N&C a while back. Time will tell if the quality can be maintained with a higher volume. Of course, I'm not certain how many premium drum sets the market can handle. Between Ludwig, Gretsch, Tama. Sonor, N&C, BDC, Yamaha, DW (PDP), Pork Pie, Roland (to some degree) plus all the buy a stock shell and stick a name on it companies....the drum business is quite crowded.
 
Chris Whitten said:
Initially they had Bob Gatzen designing and overseeing the builds. he was very much a drummer and owned a popular drum shop for years.
I've had four N&C kits, none of which had QC issues. But sometimes small makers have issues when they are under financial pressure or can't get the staff locally to keep the quality levels up.
I sold my CD Maples because I was moving countries, but with hindsight I should have kept it. It was the least 'special' of my N&C kits, but listening back to recordings it still sounded better than a lot of mainstream factory drums.
N&C's bread and butter is their own steam bent snare drums. The ply kits were designed by Bob Gatzen and made to his spec by outside shell suppliers. Is there any drum company offering a horizontal ply maple and mahogany drum?
Click to expand...
My 2006 CD Maples sound amazing! Beautiful bearing edges from the factory.
My original 90s Horizon series kit sounded even better. I believe they had a special bearing edge person at that time
Biggest mistake I've ever made was getting rid of THAT kit.
 
I have owned a few N&C kits and about a dozen or so of their snares over the years . I became interested them back in the 80’s when I saw this young drummer playing a Star series kit with Paul McCartney . Then I saw a review of their drums in Modern Drummer . I stayed a distant fan for a long time until around 2015 when I bought my first snare followed by the Black Cherry Burst Horizon 20/12/14 kit . The drums were all great and well built , I just decided to go back to using a couple heritage mainstream brands for the drums I have now . I had to sell my N&C kits to finance the purchases of my current kits .

The group running N&C have been in place making drums for about 3 or 4 years now and they have kept the high standards that The Jones family started with . I still think these are the class of the American made Boutique brands. 45D4D995-C7F7-42E0-A666-CCDD780DD8C3.jpegCBC90C19-AC69-4631-8E65-4569CE3948AC.jpeg9849EABB-1D9A-421A-BE7B-CD8CE0E06299.jpeg
 
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