In the summer of last year, we took a trip to the headquarters of the MW-Vintage company, which is known to quite a number of drummers in Poland and Europe not only from beatit.tv publications and can boast an increasingly growing range of drum kits of a slightly older date. On a beautiful and sunny day, company owner, Mateusz Wysocki, opened his show room for us to set up several vintage sets “tap” on. Once again, Max Psuja, agreed to be the ’lab tester’. Max is an utter vintage drum maniac, a former employee of a drum shop, and a great drummer, who has collaborated with a host of popular acts in Poland, such as Kumka Olik, Holak, Lilly Hates Roses or Yoachim.
We’re testing a Sonor Phonic Acrylic drum kit
1. Product
Sonor Phonic is a line of drum sets which were popular in their day and are now saught-after amongst vintage drum connoisseurs. The shells were mostly made of beech with outer plies also made of rosewood, oak, mahogany etc., while snare drum catalogue also offered metal (see: HERE) and acrylic shells. Since we have mentioned acrylic, it must be said that the Sonor Phonic family also included acrylic kits which came in Clear, Blue, Red and Smoky finishes. Today, we take a closer look at the latter.
2. Basic specs:
- Producer: Sonor
- Model: Phonic
- Configuration: 13” x 9”, 16″ x 16″, 22″ x 14″
- Material: Acrylic
- Heads: Remo Emperor Clear (batter heads on the toms), PDP Single Ply (batter head on the bass drum), Evans G3 (resonant head on the bass drum), Remo Encore (on the snare)
- Finish: Smoky
- Estimated year of production: 1980
- Hardware: snare stand + floor tom legs
- Bass drum hoops: Gibraltar, maple
3. Test and sound
When testing the Sonor Phonic Acrylic drum kit, we also used a 14″ x 5″ Premier 2000 Aluminium snare drum as well as Impression Cymbals:15″ Leon Collection hats, a 17″ Hollister Crash and a 22″ Leon Collection Ride.
Max kicked off by presenting the sound of the bass drum, then, played each of the toms at different levels of dynamics, only to finish of with a few rhythmic patterns using the entire kit.
The Sonor Sonor Phonic Acrylic set tested here is a perfect instrument for all those who love the Sonor sound and acrylic. The shells resonate beautifully when tuned low, generating a full spectrum of fat low end, although they do not bring the manufacturer any shame when tuned high. The bass drum produces lots of beautiful, juicy low tones combined with a great deal of punch and definition. All the drums respond wonderfully at all levels of dynamics. A dream kit not only for Sonor fans, but for everyone who is into that vintage sound straight from the 70s.
This is what Max Psuja had to say about this kit: “A wonderful drum kit that sounds as if it was equipped with a LOUDNESS button. Very strong low end combined with clear-sounding high frequencies. An ideal combination of attack and low tones. It’s a great kit for rock, pop, maybe even metal!“.
The drum set is available for purchase at MW-Vinage Internet store under the following link: https://mw-vintage.pl/sonor-perkusja-phonic-smoke-acrylic-22-13-16-vintage/
Drummers and Drummerettes! It’s time to put the 23″, 13″, 16″ Sonor Phonic Acrylic drum kit in Smoky finish to the most important test of all, i. e. the en.beatit.tv viewers’ test! Exclusively for you, we give you Max Psuja!
