Denver’s Dan Briechle Makes Some of the World’s Most Unique Drums
By Isa Jones Mon., Dec. 8 2014 at 6:07 AM
A travel kit Briechle designed
Dan Briechle’s first drum set is small and old. His father made him take it a part and clean it every month…. [S]omething…inspired him, and by the time he was fourteen, he was buying old sets.., restoring them and selling them to collectors….
When he was out of his teen years, he started…building drum shells….
He developed a building technique called directional lamination, …basically…angling the inner pieces of the shells to create a wider range of tuning and allow snares and toms to be better tuned to each other. It naturally changes the pitch of the drum.
He’s been restoring for years now, working with two employees….. He only makes about three full sets and half a dozen snares a year.
He builds anything from travel sets to custom drums for audiophiles and recording studios. [H]is showroom on 13th Ave…will soon open as a shop…. The snares sell for up to four-thousand dollars, and the sets are twenty-five hundred, minimum.
[A]t Red Rocks Community College…he’s taught a class on drum making for the past three years. [M]aking drum shells is Briechle’s true passion.
Scott K Fish 