About PA Lovetone
One-piece log drums, seamless and 100% timber, free of glue and adhesive. Hand-carved by Paul Loveridge in Western Australia.
True Solid construction
Each True Solid is hollowed out of the very fibres of the tree itself – one continuous piece of timber, carved whole from the log.
That is why a True Solid takes at least three years to make, from freshly cut log to finished drum – and some shells season for far longer, up to nine years. It is also why they sound the way they do: the fibres run unbroken down the shell walls, carrying the sound directly onto the resonant head. The purest tone possible – nothing between the tree and the music.
The Western Australian timber does the rest. Its density and grain structure are perfectly suited to producing some of the most distinguished snare sounds that can be heard, from species of eucalyptus that grow slowly – and, for the most part, grow only here.
Nature, framed
The magic that can appear on the side walls of these shells – the grain structure, the variety of colours – could not have been designed by human kind. It is nature at its finest.
The owner joins a very select and prestigious group: people who possess a snare handcrafted from one piece of Western Australian timber. One tree, one shell, one owner – forever.
Every drum has a story
Each snare has its own story, and Paul writes the first chapter down. Records are made of where every donor tree was growing – and thanks to modern technology, the owner can use the GPS coordinates to see their drum’s origins for themselves.
The map shows the area where the Red Morrel drum log was recovered – out along the Evanston–Menzies road in the Goldfields.
The sound
A ring akin to a metal snare, but with a prominent woody note and a warm finish on the decay. Extremely sensitive and articulate over a wide tuning range – and an exquisitely rich, pronounced midrange that is the signature of the carved-whole shell. There’s something unique about the attack, resonance and sustain that you can only get from a drum made out of these timbers, in this way.
“Born a tree. Reborn a drum – an instrument that will outlive us all.”
A decade of R&D
Over ten years of research and development have gone into ensuring the final product is 100% stable – and stays that way. Extensive research has determined which species are suitable and which are not.
Each snare receives at least three years of environmentally controlled air drying – and the densest logs wait the better part of a decade. There are no shortcuts to this; it demands a high degree of patience. Just time, and the wood.
Salvaged, never felled
Over the years Paul has built a relationship with a network of highly sympathetic arborists, supplying logs mainly from dangerous trees cut down on private land in suburban areas, or cleared for development. Many would have been pushed to the side of a construction site, butchered into mulch, left to rot or burned.
Instead, the best of them are chosen with great discrimination – only healthy, stable species that match strict growing criteria. Lately that includes logs collected for scientific studies: Goldfields timbers that are among the densest and hardest woods in existence.
No tree is ever felled from a forest because it would make a good snare drum. 100% ethically sourced material – always.
“Timber that would have been mulched, burned or left to rot – waiting instead to become instruments.”
“We are proud to say our organisation is completely independent – in ownership, in funding and in construction techniques.”