Recycling Old
By Chris Hagen
Chuck Lematta refinishing a bowl
Bob Hagen fine tuning the action
Chris Hagen- looking for old timps on EBay
ed. - Chris Hagen emailed me in 2008 about some used timpani
bowls and parts I had listed on Ebay. He was calling from Fullerton
North Dakota, where he runs his Custom Timpani shop with his
brother Bob Hagen and Justin Lematta. I asked him what in the
heck a timpani shop was doing in the boonies of North Dakota and
how he went about reconditioning used kettle drums. I found out
that he is very passionate about his work:
95% of our sales are out of state and we have even sold nu-
merous sets of timpani to South America and Europe. Even
had two sales to Australia, which is very rare due to shipping
cost. We started by working together in a local music shop
reconditioning timpani and other types of percussion. It was
timpani that we enjoyed the most, and from that point on we
knew that was what we wanted to focus on. The start-up of
Custom Timpani was a Hagen family affair. I purchased the
business and my older brother Pat Hagen rigged together a
filtration system in the shop using old fans and ductwork that
he recycled using old parts from his job as a heating and cool-
ing tech. He also helped with putting in the paint booth and
powder coating area. Our oldest brother Tim Hagen got our
website up and running. When we started, we were working
in a 600 square foot shop with three rooms and a kitchen that
doubled as a workstation. The first shop in Leola, SD was so
small that we found ourselves working outside on nice days
just to have space enough so that we could do two things at
once. So when the opportunity arose for a larger building we
