Although acoustic and electronic drums seem to be fertile ground for innovation, there are few companies out there specifically dedicated to providing innovative accessories for drummers. Rooster Thrones (roosterthrones.com) is looking to change that with its made-to-order drum thrones. The company was started by husband and wife team Chris and Ashley Hancock just two years ago, but it has already drawn lots of attention from some big-name drummers looking to spice up their stage presence. “Brian Frasier-Moore, who plays for Madonna and Justin Timberlake—just a huge name in the industry—he uses our thrones and loves them,” said Chris Hancock. “And we’ve got Mike Johnston, the online drum-educator guru. He loves our thrones, too.”
According to Hancock, “We’re trying to bring the drummer from out of the back corner of the stage to the front as much as possible.” Many companies attempt to accomplish that by adding lights and other effects to the drum kits themselves, but Hancock noticed an opportunity to do the same thing with a piece of drum equipment that often goes overlooked. “You can get everything custom now, and you can drop $4,000 on your dream drum set, but then you just have this cheesy-looking plain black throne behind there,” he elaborated. “So, I wanted to not only make a cool drum throne that you can do whatever you want with, but also make it comfortable and the best quality out there.”
The company uses only high-density vinyl furniture foam in its thrones and Gibraltar bases (although the thrones are designed to mount to most bases). And drummers can incorporate all sorts of effects, designs and colors into their custom thrones. “We’ll do anything you want with a throne,” said Hancock. “We’ll put LED systems on the bottom. You can bring us any logo, any image, and we’ll 3D mold it on top of your throne. We have hundreds of materials you can choose from to put on the top or the sides. So, really, the limit’s up to the customer.” There are several options available for adding LEDs, and the company is constantly expanding the possibilities. “You can have a system where you just plug it in and it lights up and stays lit until you unplug it, or we can use a battery pack to make it wireless,” said Hancock. “We can also use control boxes, so you can go straight into the lighting board and your lighting guy can control what your drum throne does. And we’re working on hooking it up with a trigger so that every time you hit your bass drum, your throne goes off…stuff like that. That’s evolving all the time.” Drummers interested in seeing what other options are available should check out the custom throne builder on the company’s Web site (click here). Once an order is processed, the company can deliver a custom throne in four to six weeks.
Hancock expected that NAMM would be the ideal place for his company to meet some of its business goals, and his expectations were definitely met. “The big goal was to reach out to some drum companies at NAMM, and to put our product with their products so drummers could get a package deal,” said Hancock. “We’re in talks with SJC Drums, so hopefully we’ll be coming out on a consistent basis with an SJC signature throne. We’ve gotten nothing but positive comments, so I’m hoping we’ll be working with some big names in the future.”
Check out more standouts from NAMM 2015’s freshman class at the links below: