Marcus Liang

Why DrumThat exists, and why a pseudonym

The drum-gear internet has a category problem — we’d rather solve it than star in it

Drummers searching for which cymbal to buy next, which throne won’t wreck their back, or which isolation headphones survive a club set are not short on opinions. They are short on methodologies. Reviews exist; rankings exist; what’s missing is a clear account of how the rankings got built, what was actually played versus synthesised from other writers, and where opinions diverge from consensus.

DrumThat is built around that gap. We read every magazine review and drum-forum thread we can find on a model before we write about it. We cross-reference manufacturer specs to catch where marketing copy is running ahead of the product. Where the editor has owned and gigged a piece of gear, the review says so; where it hasn’t, the review says that too. We do not lab-test in a calibrated room and we do not pretend we do.

The byline on every page reads “Marcus Liang.” That’s a stable editorial pseudonym, not the name on a passport. We chose a pseudonym because the drum-gear internet is full of fictional credentialed personas — the Berklee grad who isn’t, the touring pro who tours nowhere — and we didn’t want to add another one even by accident. A disclosed pseudonym is more honest than a fabricated CV. The trade-off is that we ask you to judge the work on its methodology, not on the celebrity of the writer. That’s the deal we’re comfortable with.

If you find a factual error, email [email protected]. Verified corrections go into the next 90-day refresh and you get credited in the page’s “last updated” line. If you disagree with a ranking, same address. We’ll either change our mind or argue ours harder. Either outcome makes the site better.

— The DrumThat editor, writing as Marcus Liang