NEWPORT, Maine -- Vic Firth seems like a happy-go-lucky guy as he taps away with a pair of drumsticks on stair railings, tables or any other surface that presents itself during a stroll through his factory.
If he seems happy, the tympanist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra has good reason. He started making drumsticks for his students 35 years ago; now he has a factory that churns out 80,000 pairs a week."I made them for myself, then people started asking for them," he said. "I never envisioned anything of this magnitude."
These are the salad days for manufacturers of musical instruments as a booming economy coincides with growth in the school music market due in part to the "echo" of the baby boom generation.
Despite market pressures that lowered prices, musical instrument revenues have nearly doubled since 1990, from $3.8 billion to $6.4 billion, according to Music Trades, an industry publication.
Gains have been almost across the board, from clarinets to guitars to professional sound reinforcement equipment, said Paul Majeski, publisher of the New Jersey-based trade journal. Consumers have benefited as competition and economic turmoil in Asia, where many instruments are made, have combined to drive prices down, Majeski said.
Despite the trend toward offshore production, Vic Firth continues to make his drumsticks in the United States. For starters, the wood for his sticks come from maple trees in Maine and hickory trees from Tennessee.
Also, Firth's roots are firmly planted in New England.
The Sanford native has been the tympanist for the Boston Symphony since 1952. Back then, he was dissatisfied with the warped utensils that passed for drumsticks, so he started making his own.
His first order for tympani mallets came from a musician with the Harvard-Radcliffe orchestra. "I think I got $5, and it took me three weeks to make them," he said.
His students at the New England Conservatory learned of the sticks and started asking for them.
Firth hired a Canadian woodworker to handcraft the sticks he had designed in lots of 25 at a time. He took the finished product and burned his name on them by hand.
These days, production takes place at a 65,000-square-foot plant in Newport that he rescued from bankruptcy and now employs 97 people. Here, wood is dried in kilns to reduce moisture and reduce warping before being ground down into sticks, and nonmusical items like pepper mills.
Quality control standards are high for 200 models of sticks, brushes and mallets. Firth, 68, jokes that any stick with imperfections ends up in his fireplace.
Sticks that pass muster are sorted by weight and then tested for pitch, density, flex and moisture content using a computer that ensures they're matched perfectly.
"I bet no drummer out there knows how much that stick goes through to make it to them," said Carole Norton, who is part of a team that stamps Firth's name on 13,500 sticks a shift.
Most workers, like Norton, don't know a paradiddle from a ratamacue. But the 26 rudiments of drumming are not a prerequisite for making sticks.
They leave the drumming to Firth, whose reputation is the foundation for his company's success. It's something unique in the music industry along the lines of having slow hand Eric Clapton own a guitar factory, Majeski said.
Firth's sticks have captured 40 percent of a market in which there are a dozen competitors, including Pro-Mark, Zildjian and Regal Tip. Annual sales are about $10.5 million.
Firth is in an enviable position because his product, like guitar strings, is not affected by the ups and downs of the economy. A drummer can delay buying a new drum kit and a guitarist can delay buying a new guitar, but they must replace broken sticks and strings. Firth's sticks carry a list price of about $10.50 a pair.
"Drumsticks are much like razor blades. You got to constantly replace them," said Majeski. "So for a company like Vic Firth, it's a wonderful business. If you convince them about your product, you have a customer for life."
Firth, who shuttles back and forth between his company's headquarters in Dedham, Mass., his plant in Newport and rehearsals at Symphony Hall in Boston, doesn't take his company's success for granted.
Growth depends on getting youngsters hooked on drumming. So Firth started a program that targets instructors with free books, teaching materials and, of course, drumsticks. He also makes starter kits for youngsters.
Firth admits that musicians don't make the best business people. But if the product is well made, customer service is strong and consumers get a solid guarantee, then success can come "even if you can't read an audit sheet," he said.
Through it all, Firth's most important tenet is to have fun, whether it's making sticks, playing with the symphony, checking out drummers at jazz joints or saying hello to stars like the Rolling Stones' Charlie Watts who endorse his product.
Firth traded some Boston Symphony compact discs for a Rolling Stones necktie from Watts, who was in Boston for a gig two weeks ago.
"Anything I've ever done, if it wasn't fun, I didn't do it," Firth said.