Slingerland Launches Timekeepers Series Featuring Drummer Griffin Goldsmith

Griffin Goldsmith settled behind a 4-piece Slingerland Studio King Outfit at Fremont Recording Studio while Slingerland ambassador José Medeles asked him the questions most gear videos skip: not just how the drum sounds, but why it sounds that way, and which musical contexts it actually serves. That conversation became Episode 1 of Timekeepers, Slingerland's new short-form series posted to its YouTube channel on April 2.

The series is a deliberate play for a brand working to re-establish itself with players who care about heritage and tone, not just specifications. Slingerland has been producing drums again out of Oxnard, California, and the Studio King Outfit sits at the more accessible end of its current lineup. The configuration Goldsmith evaluates runs a 5-ply maple-poplar shell with nickel-plated hardware, designed to hit that warm, focused sweet spot between a modern high-tension maple kit and the looser, more open resonance of the 3-ply mahogany shells on Slingerland's Radio King line. The difference in ply count is not cosmetic. It changes attack character, note length, and how the drum responds to head choice.

Goldsmith, who tours and records with Dawes and has played alongside Jackson Browne and John Fogerty, brings genuine vintage drum credibility to that kind of technical discussion. His role in the episode is not to deliver a sales pitch but to work through the Studio King's build quality, tone, and real-world fit the way a drummer who actually plays the thing would. Medeles draws out that specificity rather than letting the conversation stay surface-level, which makes the episode more useful than a standard product reel.

That practical framework also maps directly onto what to look for when shopping a used vintage kit with similar DNA. Shell composition is the first variable worth confirming, because a 5-ply maple-poplar drum will behave very differently in a session than a shallower 3-ply mahogany original from the same era. Hardware condition comes next, and nickel shows its age honestly: pitting and uneven plating are reliable indicators of how hard a drum has been worked. The snare is where the most attention pays off. The Studio King snare is tuned toward warmth and sustain, which means snare wire tension matters more than it would on a bright, high-tension steel shell. Go too tight and you lose everything that makes this class of drum worth using.

Slingerland is promising more episodes and artist features in the Timekeepers series. The conversation-led format sets it apart from the brand campaign norm, and Goldsmith is not a drummer who overstates a kit's virtues. If Slingerland keeps pairing that format with players who can speak to both history and practical application, Timekeepers could become the most substantive vintage drum content the brand has ever produced.