Concert Toms

Concert Toms for Sale on Reverb

If you're in the market for a concert tom, Reverb has you covered with a wide variety of new and used concert toms available in all kinds of shell types and sizes. Check out the above highlighted products, and explore what you can find here on Reverb.

What Are Concert Toms?

Most regular tom-tom drums feature two heads: a batter head (sometimes called a top head) and a resonant head, sometimes known as the bottom head, which resonates with the sound created when the batter head is struck. A concert tom is different in that it's single-headed, only featuring a batter head on top and an empty cutout where the resonant head would be.

Concert toms had traditionally been used in band and orchestra music for some time before gaining mainstream popularity in the 1970s and '80s, when bands like Ludwig began combining them with more classic kick/snare rock setups. These concert tom-featuring setups, like the 1979 Ludwig Vistalite Octa-Plus Outfit, were geared toward mainstream pop drummers of the time and were ultimately popularized by players like Phil Collins and Neil Peart, to name a few.

Concert Toms Tuning and Sound

One of the upsides of the concert tom is that it's easy to tune. Without a resonant head, you don't have to concern yourself with the relationship between it and the batter head, and it's easy to tune concert toms to notes because the fundamental pitch is half the lug pitch (in Hz). Sound-wise, concert toms have a lot of attack and, unsurprisingly, less resonance. They can be popular in the studio because players can likewise accomplish a deadened sound or a sharp punchy one and because they can be mic'd from the bottom.

As mentioned, however, concert toms are less resonant, and that should be a consideration. And because they don't have a resonant head, players can't control the resonance by just adjusting the pitch of the bottom head.

Concert Toms Near Me

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