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Musikmesse \

Marshall Amps Buys Natal Percussion

Less than three months after Sabian shocked the percussion world with its purchase of GonBops, the venerated SoCal conga builder, Marshall, the famed home of Marshall Amps, is jumping into percussion with the purchase of Natal Percussion. Given Marshall’s enormous global distribution, drummers throughout the world will soon have the opportunity to sample Natal’s products in their local stores.

Musikmesse \

Musikmesse 2010: Drums By Hand

There's no shortage of hand drums at Messe, with some colorful innovations we've never seen in the states. Here's a quick roundup of some of the highlights we saw that weren't covered in our previous stories from NAMM in January, along with people we saw.

Musikmesse \

Yamaha Gets More Feel For Less Dough

Yamaha is introducing a new DTX kit today with a street price of 1599 (in euros, that is). The kits will feature the new TCS heads the company showed off in January. Looking a bit like pebbly-textured styrofoam, the Textured Silicone surface on the heads offer lower noise and a softer more natural feel than rubber heads, but with less rebound than mesh heads, according to Yamaha.

The company's Electronic Drum Specialist, artist Robert Terry, demoed the new models for us in the artist room of Yamaha US's Buena Park headquarters.