[drum_ritual]

Forgot to mention--painted/dark stained drumsticks are not your friend. If you can't clearly see the woodgrain then how could you possibly know whether or not the stick will hold up? We would all like to think that stick manufacturers are sticklers (no pun intended) for quality control and they would never ship defective sticks from the factory--especially expensive signature-series sticks that are often stained or painted. However, the sad reality (based on my personal experience) is that about 50% of sticks are defective. Example: my brother got me a pair of Zildjian Trilok Gurtu artist series sticks with dark-stained finish and soft rubberized grip as a gift. These are fairly expensive sticks. Well, unfortunately they broke (literally) within 5 seconds of playing. Crap. The fracture indicated that the sticks had wood grain that ran diagonal to the stick.