I had been using Vic Firth sticks for the longest time before I stumbled across the brand “Vater”. Out of curiosity, I purchased a pair; later to find out that they were the Stuart Copeland model. Like every other piece of equipment I’ve ever used, this has some good qualities, and also bad ones.

Right off the bat, the thing that first attracted me to these sticks was the look of them. Vater chooses only the best pieces of wood for their sticks, so you’re not going to have any weird blotches of discoloration in the stick, which is good for the visual aspect of them. But on to the playing. Right after pulling them directly out of the sleeve, I tapped them on a pad in the store, and noticed that they were pitch matched; which is good when it comes to playing anything on the same drum or anything rudimental, because you’re going to get the same exact sound out of each stick. After I purchased these sticks, I got home and took them directly to the pads. I noticed that I got very good response and tonality out of the sticks. Also, my double strokes were very even. After I took them to the set, I fell in love. Haven’t used any other sticks ever since.

One little bad thing about these pair of sticks was not only the wear and tear of the heads and shafts, but the fact that if you play hard, and sweat, the wood will absorb this and turn the end of the stick into a softer, more prone to cracking type wood. But don’t let this turn you away from these sticks; it’s going to be very VERY hard to find sticks that don’t do this.

Overall I would recommend these sticks to anybody. They’re great sounding, have great response, are great looking, and come from one of the best drummers around, Stuart Copeland.