Armadillo Enterprises C.E.O., Elliott Rubinson recently invited Examiner out to their headquarters to tour their offices, showroom and warehouse. Many drummers reading this may be confused by the name Armadillo so let me take a moment to re-introduce them to you. Armadillo is the parent company for a few U.S. and International brands that you most likely see whenever you stop in at your local music store. The most notable of those brands for the sake of our drumming audience is ddrum. Armadillo is also the home to Dean and Luna guitars, and Dime amplifiers.
If you have been drumming for a while you may instantly get a vivid picture of small red electronic triggers or even a complete electronic drum kit when you hear the name ddrum. Other drummers may associate the name with a well designed and great sounding acoustic drum set, and are self convinced that ddrum has been developing its acoustic drum line for the last 30 years or so. Elliot Rubinson told us that all of these perceptions are at least partially correct.
ddrum started out as an electronic drum company back in 1983. The brand was created by the Swedish company Clavia (currently known for their Nord Keyboards brand). Throughout the 80’s and most of the 90’s ddrum focused on producing high end, pro level electronic drums and created the famous ddrum 1, 2, 3, and 4 kits. At that time ddrum was enjoying the electronic music boom of the 80’s and early 90’s along side of other electronic drum companies such as Syndrum and Simmons that were catering more toward the beginning and intermediate level electronic drum markets. Toward the end of the 90’s Clavia saw that their keboard brands were well out performing against their electronic drums sales and the decision was made to stop production on the ddrum brand.
The other side of the ddrum story started with Elliot Rubinson’s dabbling in buying and selling guitars out of his college dorm room in 1975. That dabbling quickly outgrew what the dorm room could handle and in January of 1976 he opened his first small music store. The store that went by the name of Thoroughbred Music grew by leaps and bounds until Elliot found himself at the helm of the 8th largest U.S. music store chain, with 7 stores, locations around Florida and in Nashville, and over 300 employees.
As Elliot’s business vision continued to develop and expand he started Armadillo to manufacture road and flight cases. In the late 90’s he sold the Thoroughbred music chain to Sam Ash Music and he began to collect some of the world’s greatest brand names that had been abandoned by their original owners. In 2005 he acquired ddrum because he saw a lot of value in using the name to launch an acoustic drum company.
Under the business umbrella of Armadillo Enterprises, ddrum continues to manufacture and distribute its famous triggers and a line of electronic drums; however, the main thrust of the company has shifted to the production of a wide array of acoustic drums, pedals, and other hardware. This year ddrum has even combined it’s electronic and acoustic knowhow and produced an acoustic / electric hybrid kit that is actually a fully functional acoustic kit that has the triggers built right into the shells.
After our interview, Elliot took me into the showroom to get the full tour of their products with ddrum’s artist relations man Felix Deluna, and we both sat behind some of the kits and played a bit. It was amazing to me that everyone that works at Armadillo Enterprises is also a player. That goes a long way when you are producing products for everyday players. By this point in the day I was seeing those results, and any doubts or previous notions that I had about the ddrum brand were laid to rest. The kits have rich tone and depth, and the hardware is incredibly sturdy. Elliot and I later toured through the 110,000 square foot ware house where it was easy to see that ddrum has obviously taken its place as a major player on the U.S. drum market.
When I asked Elliot what makes ddrum the drum to choose, he had this to say:
There are a few things, first of all our drums sound great. The thing that is different about me as the C.E.O. of this company versus our competitors is that I’m out on the road playing. I probably play 50 or 60 dates a year. I’m leaving next week for a two and a half week tour with Michael Schenker. I play with Carmine Appice regularly. So just to give you a little story, we were on the road with Michael Schenker and couldn’t get a ddrum kit one night for Carmine so we had another competitors kit. It sounded ok. The next night we broke open a box of ddrum, put it out on the band stand, Carmine started playing and even Michael Schenker turned around and said, why do these drums sound so much better. It was just an audible difference. I think the shells being thinner, I think it’s the bearing edge we use, the drums just sound fantastic. Their open, their airy, their big sounding. A lot of drums sound very dead. A lot of our competitors drums just don’t sound that great. So to answer your question, our drums sound great. I think we have sets and price points that our competitors can’t touch. Like solid bubinga kits or Ash kits. We have Ash kits that sell for a thousand dollars that are beautiful. They look like a two thousand dollar kit from our competitors. The other thing is that we have branded the company with a lot of great artists. We have people like Vinnie Paul from Pantera, Carmine Appice, Vinnie Appice. We have a lot of heavy hitting metal guys that play our drums. I think metal drummers go to our product because they know they hold up on the road and they sound great. It’s a family of people. When you’re an artist it’s not just a product, it’s the relationship you have with a fantastic Artist Relations guy. We have a great roster. The Scorpions are on their farewell tour playing our drums all over the world. We have a lot of loyal people playing our stuff. I think that’s what makes our company a little different from the others. Other people call into their company for a repair or whatever and they can’t get anyone to answer the phone. We started with a guy named Shawn Drover of Megadeth 4 years ago when, although they were big, they were nothing like they are now. Next thing you know they are on this big tour with Metalica and there’s ddrum on the stage in front of 60, 80 or 100 thousand people a night. I think that’s the difference.
If you want to learn more then click the link below to the Armadillo Enterprises main web site. From there you can click to visit any one of their individual brand sites, including ddrum. If you enjoyed this article please subscribe to this column so you are among the first to see new articles as they are published. You can also visit my Tampa Bay Column to see even more drum related articles.
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