Our Vibedrum Story

We have been selling VibeDrums in Europe since 2008 and in 2015 we began manufacturing the drums in Arizona and offering them in North America.

 

We are a small home based family business that pays a lot of attention to personal customer care. Part of the family is in Arizona and the other part is in Vienna, Austria. Our Austrian company is known as "PentArrow" and we have 3 European websites. VibeDrums.at is in German and English and is for the German Speaking Countries including Switzerland. VibeDrums.co.uk is in English and is for the UK. VibeDrums.eu is in English and is for the rest of Europe.

 

How It All Came About

 

I have a friend in Austria that told me about a Hang (drum) from Panart. She said it was a beautiful instrument but expensive and very hard to come by. A few months later my wife and I were camping by the Adriatic Sea in Croatia when we heard a really nice sound wafting through the air. It just so happened that the the person camping next to us with his wife was none other than Beat Follmi, one of the most well known professional percussionists in Switzerland and he was playing a Hang from Panart. As we became friends I found out that he has 7 Hang drums and gives lessons in how to play them.

 

Beat is an amazing percussionists and has lived in and studied various percussion all over the world but primarily in Africa. I would highly recommend that you visit his website at www.percussionatelier.com  Anyway I was able to confirm that hang drums are indeed expensive and hard to come by…a bit of an elitists instrument in my opinion.

 

So I thought there must be some way that the rest of us normal folk, that are struggling to make ends meet, can own and play a similar instrument. So with Beat's help and guidance we both ended up with an early version of the Vibedrum….big, heavy  but affordable.

 

Over the years we have continually improved upon the VibeDrums sound, playability, portability and durability without increasing the price. As I reflect back on my path to the Vibedrum I can clearly see that the energies of the universe were leading me down this path as it was a series of one coincidence after another.

 

The VibeDrums and PentArrow Team