Jojo Mayer & Nerve played the Wonder Bar in Allston, MA last week and of course I was there. I couldn't help notice his 2nd snare had some crazy looking rings on it. Jojo's Sonor kit was setup to the far side of stage-left allowing me to stand close enough to almost look down it. Upon closer inspection, the rings looked like 14" cymbals that had about 12" of their center cut out. Top ring had holes drilled evenly spaced about 1 - 2" apart. The outside edge of the rings rested on the snare head and inside the hoop while the inner edge of the rings came up off the snare head and just slightly higher than the rim. This meant the stick would contact the head, inner edge of the ring and the hoop on a rim shot.
The small black box on top of the snare was Jojo's montior pack (he uses ear buds) and the object pictured at 9:00 on the snare is a basic clamp style muffler.
I asked Jojo personally what the rings were and he told me they are a protoype he is working on with Sabian and that they are very expensive to make. That said, I hope this goes to market because it sounded very cool. Jojo took the stage and played the snare with the protoype rings about 80% of the entire 2 sets. The best way to describe the sound would be a 1980's drum machine. It had a very short metallic thwack with just the right combination of acoustic and mechanical sound.
As cool as this stacker ring (so to speak) was, it bounced completely off the snare several times throughout the performance. Jojo had to keep playing while fumbling for the bouncing rings which makes me think he'll be going back to Sabian to figure out a way to keep the rings stationary on top of the drum.
See the actual performance here (the date is a typo - it should read "2012").
