Tama signature snares | Erskine and Nilles

Tama has announced two new signature snare drums, and they could hardly be less alike.

One is a 10” spruce drum built for a jazz legend who has just walked away from the company he spent years with. The other is a deep aluminium drum with a mute dial built into the shell, made for the woman currently playing Neil Peart’s parts to sold-out arenas.

Two drums, two completely different problems. Let’s look at what is actually in them.

Peter Erskine’s “Jazz 10” — a 10-inch snare with a ring in it

The PE1045M is 10” x 4.5”. That is small enough that plenty of drummers will file it under “auxiliary snare” and move on, which would be a mistake — this is built as a proper jazz voice, not a novelty.

The shell is where it gets interesting. It is 6mm and four plies, but the plies are not all the same wood: spruce on the outside with two maple plies inside.

Spruce is a soundboard wood. It is what the top of an acoustic guitar is made of, and it is light and stiff, which makes it quick and open rather than fat. The maple inside puts some body back underneath it. Tama’s claim is rich mids with articulate highs, and on paper that is exactly what those two woods together should do.

Then there is the Sound Focus Ring — but only on the batter side.

That single-sided choice is the clever part. A focus ring adds mass at the bearing edge, which tightens the attack and takes the wobble out of the top head. Fit them to both sides and you stiffen the whole drum, which kills a lot of the ring you actually want on a jazz snare. Batter side only gives you the crisp front end without choking the bottom half.

The rest is proper spec: die-cast zinc hoops on six lugs, the Star-Cast mounting system so the shell is not clamped, 20-strand Starclassic hi-carbon wires, a coated Ambassador on top and a clear Ambassador underneath. Natural finish, and each drum gets an interior sticker signed by hand.

It is around $659.99 in the States. Tama had not published UK or European list pricing on the pages we checked, so treat the sterling figure as unknown for now rather than converting and hoping.

The story behind it: Erskine left DW

This is the part that makes it news rather than a product listing.

Peter Erskine — Weather Report, Steps Ahead, roughly every serious jazz record you own — spent years with DW, where he helped develop the Frequent Flyer travel kit. He is now on Tama’s STAR line.

He has been unusually blunt about why. Speaking to MusicRadar, he said that immediately he noticed the STAR drums sounded better and were more fun to play, praising the handmade Japanese bubinga shells as the thinnest in Tama’s range.

He was also explicit that it was not a money move. Playing these drums, he said, makes him feel like a kid again.

The less romantic reason is arguably the more interesting one: backline. Erskine cited Tama’s international support network as a genuine factor, having found DW’s handling of it inconsistent. If you are a touring jazz drummer flying between festivals and playing whatever kit is waiting for you at the other end, the quality of a company’s backline programme is not a footnote. It is the job.

Worth saying too — the Jazz 10 does not replace anything. His existing PE1445 stays in the catalogue. This is a second, more specialised drum alongside it.

Anika Nilles’ AN1465 — aluminium, deep, with a mute dial

Different drummer, different century of drum design.

Anika Nilles gets a 14” x 6.5” snare with a 1.2mm seamless aluminium shell. Aluminium snares are usually shallower — 5” or 5.5” is the default — so the 6.5” depth is a deliberate departure, and Nilles has said the low end is exactly what she was after.

Aluminium is a strange, brilliant metal for a snare. It is light, so it does not fight the drummer, and it is warm and slightly dry compared with steel or brass. It is also very sensitive, which is why it turns up under players who live in the ghost notes.

The shell carries four grooves and extended edges for rigidity, 2.3mm Sound Arc hoops on eight lugs, Superstar lugs, a Linear-Drive strainer and 20-strand hi-carbon wires on cord.

The Mod-Tone Muffler is the actual feature

Everything above is nice. This is the bit worth talking about.

Built into the shell is an internal muffler with an on/off switch and a pressure dial. Flick it on and the drum is muted. Turn the dial and you choose how much. Nothing comes off, no heads are removed, no gaffer tape is applied and then peeled off halfway through a set leaving glue on your Ambassador.

Internal mufflers are not new — vintage drums are full of them, and most were awful, because they pressed a felt pad against the head from a fixed pin and slowly deadened the drum whether you asked them to or not. A switched, dialled version is a different proposition: it is a sound you can choose mid-gig and then leave behind.

If you play sessions, or anything where “can we get that a bit drier?” is a sentence you hear regularly, that dial earns its money quickly.

The drum also carries a hand-signed interior sticker and a badge Nilles designed herself. It is around $849.99 in the US.

Why now: the Rush tour

Nilles has been a Tama artist for years, so this is not a new endorsement being announced. The timing is the story.

She was named as Rush’s drummer for the “Fifty Something” reunion tour in October 2025, and the tour opened in Los Angeles in June. A signature drum landing mid-cycle, while she is playing the highest-profile gig in drumming, is Tama doing what any sensible company would do.

If you missed how that gig has actually been going, the Toronto reviews are worth reading — they are not the polite kind. And Meinl got there first on the cymbal side with her Lunar ride and hats, built specifically to survive an arena.

Are either of these worth it?

Here is the test we keep coming back to on signature gear: take the name off, and is it still an interesting drum?

Both pass, which is not always the case.

The Erskine has a shell combination — spruce over maple — that you cannot casually go and buy elsewhere, plus a one-sided focus ring that is a real design decision rather than a decal. The Nilles has an internal muffler system that genuinely does not exist on most snares at any price, on a deeper aluminium shell than the market normally offers.

The caveats, because there are always caveats.

The Erskine is $660 for a 10” drum. That is a lot of money for something most players will use as a second snare on the left of the hi-hat, and if you only ever gig loud rock, it will sit in a bag. It is a specialist tool sold at specialist prices.

The Nilles is $850 for aluminium, and aluminium is not an expensive metal. You are paying for the muffler system, the hardware and the design work, not the raw material — which is fine, as long as you go in knowing it. If the mute dial does not excite you, a plain aluminium snare will get you most of the sound for a lot less.

Neither company has published a firm ship date, but both drums are appearing on dealer listings, so they are effectively available now.

Where can I buy one?

The right shop depends on where you are: Guitar Center in the Americas, Gear4music in the UK, or Thomann for Europe and the rest of the world.

Signature snares also turn up used surprisingly quickly, once the first wave of buyers discovers they own a very specific drum. It is always worth a look at used snares on Reverb before paying list.

Final thoughts

Two good drums, and one genuinely surprising bit of news buried underneath them.

The Nilles snare is the one most people will buy, and the mute dial is the reason. The Erskine is the one we would rather play, and a 10” spruce jazz snare is a lovely, useless-to-most-people object in the best possible way.

But the headline is Erskine changing companies at this stage of his career, and saying out loud that backline support was part of it. That is a company being beaten on service, not on shells, and it is rarely discussed this openly.

If you are working out what snare you actually need, our snare drum buying guide covers shell materials properly, and the Tama S.L.P. range is where Tama does this kind of experimenting at a much friendlier price.

And for the rest of what Tama has just dropped, we have covered the new finishes and limited editions and the finished Spartan hardware line separately.