How many ppl actually play with home made tippers?

I know i did b4 i found bodhranshop.com :P

It would be interesting to know if some has a Tipper made by Ralf or Christian and still uses their own ones...

Cheers,
Cillian.

I do. And I also do. At the moment the only Tipper that I am playing regularly that I didn't make actually was a one off that Paul's friend the violin bow maker made for him that he didn't prefer because it was too long. I think its great though. That's not to say that Ralf doesn't make very nice sticks (which I suppose might also be home made...or basement made)!

R

Good point there Rob, I guess I meant self-made :P
Do you weight the fiddle bows with anything?
I find that they are very light without a lead weight...

Cillian.

I do still have a cut-down Pro-mark Cool-Rod - which is about as close as I get to self-made....more of self-butchered. Its very light though and it is still in the Tipper bag - although the occassions when is played with now are very rare - its there for when I want its particular sound and dynamics. Playing with Ralf's HotRods produced a better sound and so I use them 95% of the time and the 'self-made' has been relegated.

Hey Cillian,

I carry many tippers but use three mainly, Ralf's full-length fat rods (5mm dowels) the thinner version with 4mm dowels that I cut to 8" and adore and one of the other fiddle tippers that Rob was talking about.

I also play extreme tippers, extremely light (by Dave Draeger) or extremely short & light (3" baby bo)

I have experimented a lot with weighted tippers and I don't want to say too much here because I have a design in prototype, but what I will say is that every stroke you want to do on a drum, you should be able to do with a single stick of dry spaghetti. (I did say extreme didn't I).

My rationale behind this is that the skills are learned in the hand and that the tool is simply used to achieve different sounds from the drum.

The effects of this on my egg for example are say

• using Ralf's heavy fat boy rods I can get an amazing bass sound and a moderate degree of single end roll speed but I need to go into Kerry mode for fast rolls



• Using Ralf's medium rod I get very good bass response, not as PHAT as the heavier stick yet I can execute all my fastest single ended rolls and chops effortlessly, extremely versatile and my #1 squeeze. Blistering kerry rolls are possible but it takes a shift in hand position



• I use the 8" violin bow for top-end style clear upper tones, still some bass but somewhat low-middy.



• If I take that same violin bow and play on the 12" popcorn drum than I have all the bass & attack I can handle but sacrifice volume compared to the larger egg drum.



• If I take the 3" baby bo and work on a large drum it just sounds silly because it has such little mass, however when I apply that to the popcorn then whoa! mega speed, superb bass, great attack...

So, what am I saying? I'm saying that there's a match between the stick, hand, drum & skin which dictates that there is no one best stick, just ones that are better than others in a particular range of uses in YOUR hands on THAT drum.

Hence my advice or recommendation that the players' investment be put in to the hand and not into mastering a particular bit of wood that will probably be lost, left behind or 'borrowed', either that or Johnjoe will snag it.

Lightness (in weight) is not a bad thing, it usually means greater speed and attack but a limiting of the bass response unless you have a drum that responds to a light stroke in the lower frequencies, this will only work with a smaller diameter drum. IMO 12" is probably the ideal bodhran size in terms of bang-for-buckness for a player but physically impractical for many people and quiet in a session, so 14" would seem to be the next best application. 18 & 20" drums are silly unless the skin is mass-ive i.e. heavy & relying on scale to overcome rigidity.

As players progress they increase the amount of skills in their hands and therefore do not usually need the mechanical assistance (hindrance) of heavier tippers unless they want to achieve a particular range of sounds from a particular drum but I'd say to work to develop skills in the hand and use the best tool in your toolbox for the job at hand, no matter how silly it looks :)

P

Hey paul,

Yea Ur definitely bang on there, different strokes for different folks (get it :P)

I find that when im playing at home i always use Ralf's special edition Tipper as it is really light and bouncy, but it just doesnt have the volume in a good sess..

Another tipper i tend to use is one i made myself.. It started life as a fiddle bow, then became a tipper, but i already had hundreds of fiddle bows so i stuck it on a lathe and turned it into a drumstick type tipper... it has very little volume but is great for practising with bcos its quiet, doesnt wake the sisters up :P

Ralf's fat rods are great! I made a mistake when i was ordering my sticks and ordered one too few of them so i had to give the rod to my m8 :(
I hav one of the thin ones and its pretty savage aswell...

I find that recently I have bin resorting to an old kerry style tipper which is about 7" and has two rounded ends. I play it in a completely different way to my normal style.. I just like occasionally to play with it, dunno why?

Cillian.