This has been great for us! We've gained hundreds if not thousands of customers from these advertisers. But the financial cost has become increasingly harder and harder to justify. My father Ed and I have been sacrificing our own share of the profits year after year to these advertisements, because we believe the CajonTab® can really change how people enjoy percussion in the world. We also believe that if we could gain a customer base, we would finally have enough exposure in the market to gain enough word of mouth sales to not need the expensive online advertisements.
I think in 2022, after several thousand CajonTabs have found new homes out in the world, we may finally be reaching that point. Our customers contact us all the time and tell us they want to help us promote our instruments. We love and appreciate all of you!
Louson Drums would love your help, if you are offering!
We've launched an affiliate program (more details here) that allows our customers, social media influencers, music professionals, or anyone else who loves our drums to earn 10-15% when they send someone to us and they buy an instrument.
To sign up, visit this link: https://official-louson-drums.affiliatery.staqlab.com/partner/signIn
We are so grateful for your support. If you would like more info on the affiliate program, please contact me at carson@lousondrums.com
p.s. You're welcome to use the 10% discount for yourself. Just sign up for the affiliate program and follow your own affiliate link and the discount should be automatically applied.
There are several ways to promote via the affiliate program:
2020 and 2021 were tough. No matter what side of the political spectrum you fall on, it seems like no one has been happy with 2020 or 2021. We were so depressed about the whole situation that we didn't even put up a single blog post in 2021!
Louson Drums has had some ups and downs since our last post in 2019! Lemme tell you about it...
Our last big news was the retail store we had in Pittsburgh in 2019. That store has since closed. We just couldn't handle the rent without any foot traffic to support it and have since moved back into our home workshop. Which is just fine! In fact, it feels better than ever to be in business!
Despite the setbacks and challenges faced by the COVID economy, Louson Drums managed to sell more drums in December 2021 than in month in our history. Thank you so much! We are very grateful to all of you and look forward to continuing to innovate in the percussion world. Heres to 2022 and beyond!
-Carson
]]>Buy one CajonTab® (10 inch or 12 inch), get one 50% off*
* Offer applies to original 10" and 12" with natural snare only. Use coupon code "bogo10" for 10 inch and "bogo12" for 12 inch size.
We have decided to join hundreds of other advertisers in a temporary halt of advertising campaigns on Facebook. The boycott is an effort to pressure Facebook into adopting changes to their advertising and editorial policies to prevent the use of their platform for racial hatred, voter suppression and misinformation, and other indefensible activities.
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Although most finished productions are still created in a studio, music makers today are more mobile than ever. I have spoken to countless musicians while promoting Louson Drums. A theme I see over and over is the singer/songwriter using voice memo or Garageband to record melodies or beats when the inspiration strikes.
One unique feature of the CajonTab® is its small size. This allows the instrument to accompany you in ways that would be inconvenient for larger drums such as a traditional sit-down cajon drum or large djembe. Our original 10 inch CajonTab® weighs about 4 pounds and can easily fit in a backpack.
The beat is the heart of music. Playing music around a campfire should involve more than just a guitar. We invented the CajonTab® to give musicians a more convenient percussion option for your adventures.
This is our original size and is still the most popular drum we make. We love how easy this drum is to play and transport and we think you will too!
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The size of cajon you purchase should depend on your need for portability, your need for bass tone, and perhaps your hand size.
If you are primarily concerned with a big booming bass tone, the traditional sit down cajon may be best for you. The bigger the drum, the lower the bass tone. If you want to fill the room with your bass tone, we suggest a sit down cajon drum.
The next step down from full size is our 14 inch Bass Edition CajonTab®. This drum is essentially a 3/4 size cajon with a carry strap! It is our bulkiest "portable" CajonTab®. The bass edition is great as a lap cajon as well.
For more portability, we have both 12" and 10" CajonTabs®. These are the most popular sizes for travel, as they weigh around 4 pounds and can more easily fit into luggage or a backpack for travel.
Check out the 10" CajonTab here and the 12" CajonTab here.
]]>The size of cajon you purchase should depend on your need for portability, your need for bass tone, and perhaps your hand size.
If you are primarily concerned with a big booming bass tone, the traditional sit down cajon may be best for you. The bigger the drum, the lower the bass tone. If you want to fill the room with your bass tone, we suggest a sit down cajon drum.
The next step down from full size is our 14 inch Bass Edition CajonTab®. This drum is essentially a 3/4 size cajon with a carry strap! It is our bulkiest "portable" CajonTab®. The bass edition is great as a lap cajon as well.
For more portability, we have both 12" and 10" CajonTabs®. These are the most popular sizes for travel, as they weigh around 4 pounds and can more easily fit into luggage or a backpack for travel.
Check out the 10" CajonTab here and the 12" CajonTab here.
]]>We started with an idea for a portable cajon drum which became the CajonTab®. At first, in 2015 and 2016, we were primarily selling our instruments locally at craft shows and pop up events. We quickly realized that our design was very well received and we moved to the next stage; reaching a national market online. Thanks to social networks and rapid sharing of information, we were able to successfully implement some video ad campaigns that fueled our company growth throughout 2017-2019.
The Louson Drums story is an example of a successful start up venture with a very small initial investment. We really did build this company up from the ground floor. I'm very proud of how far we've come, but success also requires a bit of good fortune. We were lucky to receive a Best in Show award at Summer NAMM 2018 as well as some great dealers and vendors who have been helping us reach a broader audience. I'm very excited to keep growing Louson Drums, one CajonTab® at a time!
For 2020, we have reduced our everyday price on the 10" CajonTab® to $159. The 12" CajonTab® is now $189.
Thanks for your interest in our drums!
Carson Cashman
CEO, Louson Drums
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Our instruments will be in great company at their store, besides countless other beautiful instruments!
If you are in the DC area, go check them out for an entertaining visit to a cool store and get your hands on our drums too!
They are at 7010 Westmoreland Ave in Takoma Park, MD 20912.
]]>We were founded in 2015 in Pittsburgh, PA. Originally, our intention was to make custom drum kits as well as refurbish old ones. We quickly shifted gears when our early craft shows and markets started going so well with first our cajon drums and then the CajonTab®.
Things have been great and we're so grateful our drums have taken off the way they have. We've thought about going to NAMM in the past, but we didn't feel we were ready to make the financial investment to attend. Booths are quite expensive, not to mention the cost of transporting our products, ourselves, etc. This year we're feeling ready and eager to expand into more music stores.
So I took the plunge and signed Louson Drums up as an exhibitor at the Summer NAMM in Nashville, June 28-30. We will be exhibiting in a "small booth" which is 8 feet by 6 feet with a 6 foot table. I ordered a cool custom Louson Drums logo tablecloth, and after I finish this blog post I will be ordering some tabletop furnishings as well as a mannequin. We will use the mannequin (maybe just the top half for table top) to display our CajonTab® and show the visitor that its a wearable instrument.
My booth will include several CajonTab® demo drums, an email signup, brochures, and of course order forms! I don't yet know what to expect in terms of volume of purchase orders. I'm also just interested to raise awareness about our drums in general, since we're such a new company.
Its an exciting time for the company! If you happen to be attending the convention, come find us and say hi! And if you've ever been an exhibitor and want to give me any advice, I'll happily take it. Send me a message through our contact form. I'd really appreciate it!
]]>We have some great new products for you to take out with you on your spring adventures!
We added over a dozen Poured Series CajonTabs® to our online store. These drums always fun for us to make, as you never really know what you're going to get with a poured acrylic paint technique.
Shop the Poured Series collection
We're also very excited to show off our new hard maple click snare attachments. These are designed to attach either to the snare bar face or the side of the drum to act as a sort of clicker castanet. The hard maple wood creates a crisp and pleasing clap, and rebounds instantly. Its like a miniature hard maple diving board!
These attachments can be purchased on their own for use on your own cajon or CajonTab®, or preinstalled on on of our drums. The click snares can even be used on a guitar body or any other flat wooden surface.
Although its just a piece of wood, we do put some love into it. The hard maple is hand sanded and finished on the top side. We leave the bottom unfinished for a natural wood tone.
These drums are available now!
View the 10" CajonTab® with hard maple snare
View the 12" CajonTab® with hard maple snare
View the hard maple click snares individually
We are also hard at work building up our inventory of Pro Series drums, but it takes us some time. Each drum is given quite a bit of individual attention. We're so very happy about the need to build up our inventory, though! We've been accepted into some great arts and crafts festivals this year, and we want to make sure we have a variety of instruments to show everyone!
We will be updating our Pro Series inventory periodically throughout the spring and summer. If you check back in from time to time, you'll see the new drums we've been working on. Here's one of our recent favorites that sold quickly. Its an ambrosia maple (the light wood) and walnut (dark center strip) frame with an included shaker snare. As the name implies, the snare can be removed and used as a shaker or given to someone else to play! Its a fun drum and we were happy to see it found a new home so quickly!
View more of the Pro Series collection.
Oh, and if you're reading this...
Our Spring promo is a 15% off coupon code. Use code "springsavings" at checkout for your discount!
-Carson
Louson Drums
]]>Many of our visitors have already seen our pre-order advertisements on Facebook or from one of our emails. We're really excited to bring you a CajonTab® that is large enough to accommodate a CajonPort. which is a third party product designed to enhance the low end frequencies and resonance of a cajon. This product is usually too large for a small and portable cajon... so we made the small and portable cajon as big as we thought we could get away with!
Of course, we could have just kept going with the size but at some point you're just walking around with a traditional cajon on your chest!
We swapped the snare attachment out for the port, allowing this drum to resonate to the maximum. Any snare system naturally dampens the vibration. We wanted to focus on clean, smooth bass tones for this model.
That doesn't mean this drum has no pop! Slapping along the edges produces a distinctly higher pitch with a greatly enhanced internal reverb effect due to the larger inner chamber.
We're offering this drum for sale now at https://lousondrums.com/products/cajontab-14-bass-edition
Louson Drums is also working on a few new designs to feed your creative side. In the next few weeks, we will be rolling out new designs for our CajonTab snare system, including ways to add new sounds to your CajonTab such as castanet and tambourine option!
The CajonTab® is will be a platform for percussive creativity! Stay tuned!
-Carson
]]>The shaker snare fits either the 10 inch CajonTab or 12 inch CajonTab, and also works on full size cajon drums! (We sell them as a stand-alone shaker/snare addition for a $59)
The shaker snare provides the same snare sound as our standard external snare. However, if you hit the snare bar itself the drum makes a separate shaker sound from the peas inside the shaker snare. This gives the player another tone to work with.
The shaker snare can also be removed and used as a wooden shaker with several different shaker sounds, depending on how the shaker is held.
We are also working on building up an inventory of our mini cajon shakers.
These little guys are perfect stocking suffers! We can make these with your business or organization's logo on them as well! Just contact us for a quote!
These aren't your typical plastic, mass produced shakers. These are made from solid poplar, as well as the same high quality mahogany/poplar plywood we use for our tapa material on all our drums.
Using different thicknesses of wood throughout the construction allows for different tones to be made depending on how the shakers are held. The shakers can also be held with one hand and clapped into the other like a tambourine. When played as a pair, the player may use paradiddles or other patterns for unique accompany percussion. They may also be tapped against each other for a wood-knock tone.
This shaker packs a ton of versatility into a small space and is a great addition to your traveling percussion quiver!
Buy one handmade mini cajon shaker for $25, or buy the pair for $39.
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We attribute this partially to easy of navigation and design. Shopify allows the store owner to group products into "collections", which can greatly help navigation and makes the customers experience much easier, leading to more sales.
We've also seen a large boost to our email list signups, due to some very useful (and free) apps that we integrated, prompting our visitors to join our mailing list in exchange for a coupon code or special offer. Various apps exist, allowing the store owner to find the right service to boost email collection and engagement. Its the huge library of possible apps and services that can be added to your store which makes Shopify such a good platform.
As noted in the intro, this post does contain affiliate links to Shopify. This means that if you enjoy the platform as a business owner like we do, you can share with others via your blog post our social media channels. If they decide to try Shopify (they offer a free trial period) and later become subscribers, you can earn a commission. As a small business, we view this as an easy way to gain passive income to help with the companies expenses. By no means am I suggesting you can substantially move your companies bottom line via Shopify links, but you may help another business owner make a smart decision for their company while earning a few dollars for your own! That sounds like a win-win situation to me.
We settled on this design for a few reasons. To begin with, a cut snare design (which are most of the affordable cajon drums on the market) is very often a very buzzy and rattly affair. The loose snare ends tend to bend away from the tapa every so slightly and a simple bass tone can often set your entire snare mechanism to rattling. This phenomena is less pronounced on full size cajon drums than our CajonTab, but its still there. Go check out the floor models of cajon drums at your local music store. Tap around on them and I guarantee you'll find a few with some heinous buzzing going on.
There seems to almost be an acceptance among cajon manufacturers that buzzing snare wires are simply going to happen. While that may be true to some extant, we believed we could do better and I think we have.
Our snare is designed to be held gently in place, flush with the tapa and making good contact the length of the snare wires. Whats more, our mechanism includes some light dampening, both inside snare frame as well as because of the frame itself. The gentle pressure on the tapa reduces vibrations, which reduces buzzing. You can actually test this yourself by opening the sound hole on one of our CajonTab w snare models while you play. You will reach a point opening the port where the snare will be overly vibrated by the resonating tapa. For this reason, we recommend a fully closed or mostly closed sound port when playing in snare configuration.
Check out this short demo of the CajonTab w external snare:
These external snares were designed to fit our CajonTabs, but they are amazing on full size cajon drums as well. Check out this video of converting a non-snare cajon to a snare cajon using our external snare.
We're very excited about the external snare, both for our CajonTabs as well as for use with full size cajon drums. Check out the CajonTab with snare or the external cajon snare as a stand alone item.
]]>We decided to follow up by attending additional conventions this year in Milwaukee and Denver. And yet again, the MT-BCs were loving our instruments!
After the convention in Denver, we spent some time visiting local music stores and introducing our product. And since we were in the area, we decided to shoot some promotional footage of our CajonTab portable hand drum at Keystone Resort. We wanted to show you how portable and lightweight our drums really are, so we took the CajonTab up the mountain and took a few turns.
It was a great time and the footage speaks for itself. Our drums are meant to go with you!
(That said, I should inform you that we do not recommend skiing or snowboarding with our products!)
Take a look!
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We recommend going directly to his feed at https://www.patreon.com/Kalani/posts to check out his videos. While the two videos featured above are both listed, there is a third video featuring some advanced finger roll techniques for the CajonTab which is only available to patrons. If you're unfamiliar with Patreon, they provide a platform for creators to publish videos directly to their patrons. In Kalani's case, his videos as part of the World Drum Club series, provide excellent tips and reviews of countless percussion instruments from around the world. You can support him simply by pledging a dollar amount per video he publishes, to a maximum monthly amount. We signed up for $1 per video, for a max of $5 per month. Its a small price to pay to encourage him to continue producing this content. Go check him out! Again, that address is https://www.patreon.com/Kalani/posts
Thanks, Kalani!
The guy who runs this podcast is super cool and engaged. When Louson Drums was first starting out, this guy posted about being bored during a car ride and suggested someone call him to keep him company. I thought "what the heck! I need to talk to someone who knows the drum industry!" so I called him up out of the blue (after a DM, of course!) and we chatted for a few minutes. I'm a pretty introverted person so there were many moments of awkward silence, but it was a cool experience anyways! This guy has a huge library of podcasts about drums and drumming.
2. @drumlads
This is another solid Instagram account for drummers. They frequently post some really stunning setups from around the world, as well as some other unique percussion. Expect mostly traditional set up shots (overheads) as well as some up close product shots and videos.
3. @drumsupply
These guys are very friendly and approachable. They even run a small drum store themselves! Check out their product shots and some quality reposts from around the industry.
If you're looking for an instagram account with a related YouTube channel, look no further. This account has terrific video, including many reposts from drummers around the world.
5. @drumsdaily
This account has a lot of followers, a lot of videos, and a lot of set ups. The quality of the drumming they post is remarkable. Worth a follow, for sure.
6. @drumset.up
I love this account! Before I wrote this blog post, I posted a shoutout to the nine accounts listed in this list to thank them for their curating and for their previous shoutouts. Before I could even finish this post, @drumset.up had already reposted one of our images. On the ball! Thanks for keeping a great account!
7. @drumsoutlet
This is an incredibly prolific account with an extremely large following. Expect lots and lots of terrific overhead drum set up photos. If you're looking to share your setup with lots and lots of people, I'd suggest trying to get their attention.
8. @drumsview
As the name and logo imply, this account is exclusively "birds eye view" drum set up photos. Keeping the core theme intact makes this page pretty great. If you just want to stare at gorgeous drum set ups, follow this account!
This is an excellent community sharing account. Almost all of their posts are user submissions of drummers. Its terrific to browse all their clips to see all these great drummers of instagram! Drummers need encouragement and feedback, just like all musicians! Posting to a drum-related account is a great way to get feedback from other drummers.
There are of course many, many other excellent drum accounts on Instagram (including ours! Check us out: @LousonDrums). I'll be posting another edition of "The Best Drum Accounts on Instagram" shortly! Stay tuned!
-Carson Cashman
CEO, Louson Drums