Sonor is a German percussion instrument manufacturer with a history of nearly 150 years, and is acclaimed for its rigorous materials and meticulous workmanship. Less than a decade after DW was founded, Sonor put up the slogan "Rolls-Royce on the Drums" and invited the smash hit Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain as its spokesperson. Legendary drummers such as AC/DC's Phil Rudd and Journey's Steve Smith then became Sonor's users. Domestically, the late Lu Xun, the drummer of the Ziyue band, also served as the spokesperson of Sonor's image in China.

 

Sonor's early drums were incredibly thick, and he was the first in the industry to make snare drums and brass drum shells out of metal. At the beginning of the 20th century, Sonor invented the industry-landmark modern threaded drum structure, which was brought back to the United States from Germany by Ludwig's founder, William F. Ludwig, and used it in his own production. From the 80's onwards, the market began to favor lighter drum pieces, and Sonor also introduced a number of jazz drums with thinner shells. The thinner the shell, the lower the original pitch of the drum, which is more suitable for the style of modern music.

 

When it comes to Sonor's drum kit series, the SQ2 is definitely a well-deserved flagship, but in fact it is difficult to call it a "drum kit" in the conventional sense. Like DW's high-end series, the SQ2 is a custom drum kit that gives the user the freedom to choose almost any drum piece and hardware. The SQ2's degrees of freedom are not as good as DW's Collector's, and the kick drum alone allows you to choose from dozens of different options in terms of size, skin material, drum cavity wood, and ring type. With a wide variety of components and a high degree of freedom, each SQ2 drum kit can be said to be tailor-made by the drummer, and the price varies widely. For more conventional assembly solutions, the price of a set of SQ2 is about 30,000 yuan. If special customization requires more, it is also possible that the price will jump to hundreds of thousands. After selecting the combination they need on the Sonor website, the user will be given a unique personal identification number (UPID), which can be used to confirm the order and pay the deposit at the Sonor dealer. After three months, the drum kit will be shipped to your home. However, there are no officially recognized Sonor distributors in Chinese mainland for the time being.

 

Not everyone has the budget and level of music to customize their own drum kits, so in addition to the SQ2, Sonor has introduced more accessible drum kits for users to choose from. ProLite, Vintage and SQ1 are the three main drum kits that are currently being promoted, with Prolite and Vintage both handmade in Germany, while Vintage and SQ1 are made in China at a slightly lower price.

 

The Prolite is more of a miniature version of the SQ2, allowing users to choose from a wide range of drum kits based on experience and consumer preferences. The Prolite uses a maple drum cavity with smooth and soft edges, giving it an elegant look and a foreign touch. All drum pieces feature hammer-shaped Turning Safe lugs with a proprietary internal guard designed to prevent the lever from loosening and make it easy for the drummer to tune. The tone sound of the Prolite is distinctive, with a distinctly aggressive initial tone, which then tends to be clear and focused, and decays quickly after a long enough resonance. Drum Magazine's reviewers rated it as "the best at medium tension" and suitable for playing rock 'n' roll. Compared to the Prolite, the nine-layer Vintage drum chamber made of 100% German beech is relatively thin, making it suitable for playing vintage jazz-style music.

 

Although not made in Germany, the SQ1 is still quite finely crafted. In addition to the Turning Safe design mentioned above, the SQ uses a rubber gasket called Sound Sustainers. The component is borrowed from the design of vulcanized ebonite in the automotive industry to isolate vibrating parts (e.g. engine mounts) to isolate metal drum racks from wooden drum cavities and improve the resonance performance of the drum. The SQ1 drum kit made of birch has excellent bass and treble, and the sound is crisp and clean, and the timbre is not as complex as maple and mahogany, but it has a strong presence in the band. 

 

AQ1和AQ2是Sonor面向入门级鼓手推出的产品，均为中国台湾制作。其可选的鼓件不多，组装简单，适合R&B、流行等音乐风格，性价比不俗。AQ2在Drum Magazine的“2018年最佳1000美元以下套鼓”评奖中名列第二，仅次于Gretsch的Catalina Club。