Karl Heinz Weimer founded Trixon in 1947. A decade later, Ivor Arbiter introduced Trixon drums to British drummers, who snapped them up. Trixon also sold well in mainland Europe, including Scandinavia. The Speed fire known as the Vox Telstar was probably the most unusual kit. The bass drum had an egg shape. Two bass pedals could be mounted along the flattened bottom side of the batter hoop, although how you were supposed to play them is a mystery. The kit included five single headed toms running the wrong way on a special console like rack. Finally, the Telstar had all conical shells. Both the bass drum and floor torn originally had the same shells, 20 inch one end and 16 inch the other. The kick had a wooden hoop on the 20 inch batter side, while the floor torn had metal hoops on both ends. The mounted torn had a 13 inch batter and 12 inch bottom, and even the snare had a 14 inch batter and 13 inch resonant.

The floor toms started out with the smaller diameter on top, but when the oblong lugs came along, the shell was flipped so that the larger diameter became the batter side. At the same time, the floor torn was sensibly downsized so that it had a 16 inch batter and 14 inch resonant side. The novelty value of the Telstar appealed to many, including Britain's Gerry The Pacemakers, who followed The Beatles down from Liverpool. Freddy Marsden, Gerry's brother who played drums in the band, was often seen with his red Croco finish Telstar. Trixon finishes were equally a mixture of the normal and the weird plain black blue, red, gold, green or silver glitter red, gray, white marine, blue stripe, red stripe, gray stripe, or white stripe pearls. Trixon also had many ingenious hardware ideas. The characteristic cast brackets of the Ship form had central holes through which passed the torn mount tubes, the bass drum spurs, and so on. As a measure of Trixon vision, the disappearing torn mount penetrating both bass drum and tom tom is the basis of the world beating Pearl type mount, ubiquitous throughout the 80.

And the Trixon disappearing cymbal mount, with the rod passing through a clamped ball, is an idea that was resurrected for Sonor Designer hardware in the mid 90. In 1965, a major campaign brought Trixon to the USA. Here the drums were badged as Vox through a link with the high profile Vox amplification and the Thomas Organ companies. In that year, the Luxus listed at 490 dollars, the Speed fire 525, and Telstar 515 dollars. Famously, the James Brown band was equipped with Vox electronic equipment and Vox drums. In 1967, Weimer adapted the Luxus to suit Buddy Rich and added a metal shell snare drum with parallel action, adjustable at both ends. Buddy played the kit from the beginning to the middle of 1967, after which he briefly tried Fibes and then went on to Slingerland for the next decade. Trixon was tied in with Rippon Pianos at Shannon, and they went bankrupt around 1971, taking Trixon with them. Trixon had its own problems the drums were expensive, and it may be that once the novelty of the conical and elliptical shapes had worn off, the appeal dropped swiftly. Karl Heinz Weimer died in 1997 and Arthur Oeschger took over the stocks and licensing rights to produce Trixon. The following year, a fire destroyed the factory containing the original Trixon parts and dies, and that was the end of that. If things had worked out differently, Trixon might have been up there alongside Sonor today.


When innovative design determines the sound, Alex Movila suggests trying Sonor Drum Pedals.