Seán Hooper timpani sticks

Professional Percussionist, Dave Griffiths, tries out the Student/BP range of Seán Hooper timpani sticks with pleasing results

Seán has been making timpani sticks for professionals and students alike for well over 25 years. It was his dissatisfaction with the sticks available to him as a student at the Royal College of Music that led to him making his own sticks.

Commercially made sticks available to the UK market at that time were not particularly well designed, nor well constructed. Seán conducted some research and eventually supplied sticks to fellow students and professional musicians, based around the design of sticks available around the rest of Europe. Kurt-Hans Goedicke, former timpanist of the London Symphony Orchestra for over 30 years, championed his professional range of sticks and, consequently, many other players began to take stock from him. In the early ‘90s my teacher, Kurt, also suggested that I also purchased around a dozen pairs or so of Seán’s professional range of sticks to add to my ever-growing arsenal of timpani sticks!

All Seán Hooper’s sticks are made with quality tonkin bamboo cane, as opposed to Maple wood, which gives a more balanced, refined and sensitive touch to one’s playing. Seán carefully matches each pair of bamboo shafts for weight and diameter before straightening and polishing them by hand. They are then finished with top quality hard wax oil and pairs are also ‘notch- matched’ to ensure balance and strength throughout the stick. Finally, the finest quality German felt is applied in different grades to either a beach wood or cork beaded head (a choice is available when ordering from Seán directly). Whether the student range or the professional model, the fine German felt is also fluffed up with a small pin head, which cuts down the contact noise made by the sticks on the timpani head, right from first using them.

I was given out a selection of five of the seven pairs in the student range to try out. The hard staccato BP2 hard baize felt pair is ideal for any intricate, precise and defined playing, whilst the slightly harder BP3 with a single layer of German felt is again suitable for precise playing, even though it is quite lightweight. The two ‘middle’ or ‘medium’ pairs of sticks, the BP4 and BP5, give a fair amount of attack with a warm tone due to the different degrees and layers of felt, whilst the softer MP6s are great for those long big rolls and big timpani sounds at louder dynamics.

Seán’s well-constructed sticks are perfect for young learners and intermediate players, as well as for many a brass band timpani player. Although lacking some of the finer detail in the construction of sticks more ‘pro’ ranges (including Seán’s own), at just £18 a pair, when sticks can cost anything from £40 - £120 a pair, they represent a great introduction to individually handcrafted bamboo timpani mallets.

All sticks are usually made to order from a number of reputable dealers (Bell Percussion in London - www.bellperc.com - being the main supplier) or direct from Seán Hooper Timpani Sticks:

www.timpani-sticks.com

Allow a couple of weeks for completion of an order.