These capstans had an annoying tendency to crush your fingers against the drum and were neither particularly stable nor hard wearing. A radial-toothed block was fixed to the tom which mated with a ratchet on the holder to maintain its playing angle, and very large capstan nuts locked tom to holder and holder to bass drum rail. This was fitted with not one, but two ratchets and by judicious use of both you could actually have exceedingly limited horizontal height adjustment. A flat, curved and slotted rail was jacked up a little above the bass drum shell and to this was attached the body of the cast tom holder itself. Triple-flange hoops, which gave a more open sound, very new to British drums, as were non-telescopic spurs, adjustable, swivelling shell mounts and cymbal arms and an abundance of tension screws and Remo heads.Р”Вallas-Arbiter designed their own cumbersome tom holder too, which might well have looked good on the drawing board, but in reality was something of a nightmare. The drums had a mixture of features which, prior to 1969, would only be seen on expensive American products. Anyway, the name was eventually shortened to the more identifiable 'Hayman'. In further homage to that famous American marque, the set's lugs were also made circular, which was well avant-garde at the time. Originally the drums were named 'George Hayman' after one of the guys in Dallas-Arbiter's Shoeburyness factory (whose surname, to confuse things further, was actually Haymon) and, possibly, George Way who made the legendary Camcos. Bingo! Loud and extremely cutting drums were here.

Ultimately they discarded the metal inserts, which were weighty and expensive and instead chose to thickly coat the drums' interior surfaces. The original plan was to affix metal liners inside the shells of rather ordinary beech Carlton drums and, indeed, some of these were actually made. It was he who, in the sixties, cleverly identified a gap in the market for a loud drum set at a time when drummers were seldom miked-up outside of the studio. They were the brainchild of Ivor Arbiter who besides being the first to actually bring guitars into Britain in quantity was also the first to import Ludwig and Gretsch drums during the 'beat boom'.

Bass drum spurs for fibes drums