Ebenor and Noble & Cooley unveil limited Primitive Brass snare

For drummers who judge a snare by how it cuts through a room, Ebenor Percussion and Noble & Cooley just put out a very specific brass instrument: a 6.5x14-inch model built around an Ebenor 3mm cold-rolled brass shell in a proprietary Primitive Brass finish, fitted with Noble & Cooley hardware and CamAction snare wires. The run was capped at 20 drums, split evenly between Canada and the United States, and the MAP came in at $1,999, putting it firmly in boutique-money territory before a player ever hits the head.

The pairing makes sense because both names are built on hand work rather than volume. Noble & Cooley has made drums by hand in western Massachusetts since 1854 and says, “Our approach is intentionally the opposite of mass production. We value craftsmanship, time, and attention to detail over volume and speed.” Ebenor describes itself as a custom maker of high-end drums in Quebec and says its handmade snares are sold from its workshop in Saint-Romain, Quebec. This is not a factory mash-up; it is two small shops putting their signature materials in the same shell.

On paper, the Primitive Brass spec is the kind of build that matters to players who actually listen for shell character. The drum weighs 18 pounds, uses rounded bearing edges, Ebenor silver-brazed bronze hoops, Noble & Cooley patina’d brass double-post lugs, a matching throw-off and butt-end, and a wood-burn badge with limited-edition numbering. Sonically, it is pitched as immediate and authoritative, with a hard, defined crack and an aggressive transient that projects at any tuning, while the brass shell is meant to stay sweet, harmonically rich, and full of body, clarity and depth instead of veering into steel’s sharper edge or copper’s drier response.

That makes this more than a prestige piece, even if scarcity is part of the appeal. Ebenor’s earlier brass and copper work, including the Noranda Copper Collection, which it says became a benchmark on the Canadian market, plus a 24k gold-plated Noranda Copper edition and an applewood snare collection, show a clear boutique language rather than a one-off experiment. Noble & Cooley’s catalog also includes brass-related snare hardware and replacement CamAction snares, so the company is not wandering into metal drums cold. The Primitive Brass reads as a serious brass snare for studio and stage, but the 20-drum limit and dealer allocation make it just as much a collector’s score as a working player’s upgrade. That is the real hook here: the drum is scarce, yes, but the shell, hardware and voice all point to an instrument first, not just a display piece.