Availability: rare, endangered.

Weight/Hardness/Density: Ebony weighs in at a whopping 7.36 pounds per board foot, compared to maple at 3.4 pounds per board foot.

Cost: One of the most expensive hard woods. Often sold by the pound. Expect to pay around 12 times that of maple.

Comments: The tree grows up to 50 feet in height, with a trunk diameter of 16 inches. It begins life brown in color, but becomes darker (more black) as it ages. By the age of 100 years, it is almost totally black in color. The darker (more black) the wood, the denser (and older) it is. The wood is oily, difficult to work with, and causes eye, respiratory and skin irritation.

Timbre/Tonal Color: Rich, full, very throaty and deep. Ebony has “depth” as opposed to “cut”.

Dynamic Range: Consistent sound from a low tuning to a high tuning. The character sound of the drum did not change from pp (very quiet) to ff (very loud), the drum just got louder.

Tonal Range: A slightly bigger sweet spot than our maple comparison drum. Nice consistent sound from the center of the head to the outside of the head.

Tuning Range: The ebony took a lower head tension than the maple drum. It also went as high as the maple drum, but it sounded much better than the maple with a tight head tension. When the maple drum choked, the ebony just sounded like a smaller diameter “auxiliary” drum.

Resonance/Decay: Short, clean note that is very defined yet rich sounding.

Cross Stick: Very woody and clean. The ebony had a wider area for stick placement than the maple, and still gave a nice cross stick sound.

Volume: Slightly louder, but the drum also puts out a wider frequency range.

Sensitivity: Very defined. All the individual notes can be heard.

Comments: A very consistent drum overall. An excellent all purpose drum. Dave also pointed out the ebony records very well.