Newport’s Vic Firth Company Worldwide drumstick manufacturing began in 1963

by Brian Swartz T he world’s top timpanist saw something special in Newport, where the company that he incorporated in 1963 now manufactures 70 percent of all drumsticks purchased worldwide.

Vic Firth “was the Larry Byrd of that instrument, the timpani, and he was a great person to work for,” said Neil Larrivee, vice president of drumstick and mallet innovation for Zildjian|Vic Firth|Balter. A drummer himself, Larrivee “started working for Vic in 1986” in Boston “and thought I was going to be there for three months.”

He has worked for the company ever since.

Although born in 1930 in Winchester, Massachusetts, Firth moved with his parents to Sanford while young. His father, a trumpet player, “was a band director and taught in the Sanford schools,” and Firth “grew up in

a musical home,” Larrivee said.

Exposed to the clarinet, drum, piano, and trombone, Firth was “mostly interested in playing drum sets and the vibraphone,” according to Larrivee.

While attending Sanford High School at age 15, Firth adopted the nickname “Vic” and booked his 12-piece big band into venues across New England. He studied percussion in Maine with Salvy Cavicchio and then in Boston with George Lawrence Stone and Larry White.

Firth studied at the New England Conservatory after graduating from Sanford. Winning an audition to join the Boston Pops Orchestra at age 20,

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he successfully auditioned for Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Charles Munch and joined that organization in 1952. Four years later the BSO named Firth its principal timpanist.

“Renowned as the greatest timpanist of his time,” Firth provided “rhythmic precision” and “consistency in sound … different ways to make the music sparkle,” Larrivee said. “He had this imagination for sound. He developed sticks and mallets to improve his own sound, to explore different colors of sound.”

Fellow NEC students and “orchestra colleagues are hearing him play” and “are wanting similar sticks and mallets,” Larrivee said. “The first real order from a retailer came from Frank’s Drum Shop in Chicago. Vic tells him, ‘I’m not in business,’” but the owner of Frank’s “ordered the first dozen pairs” of sticks. The Vic Firth Company “started that simply,” Larrivee said.

Firth “realized the real business is in drum sets,” so he started manufacturing drumsticks “for the drummer playing in his own garage,” Larrivee noted. “Leveraging his fame,” Firth connected “with drum-set artists to play his products.

“A true Mainer” who “hunted and fished in Maine when he was growing up,” Firth lived in Boston, but “knew the experienced wood-turners were up here,” Larrivee said. Seeking to “provide an opportunity for people to work in Maine,” Firth acquired the former Banton Brothers property on High Street in Newport in 1994.

“There were wood-consumer products being made here” in the seven-building complex along the Sebasticook Lake shore, according to Larrivee. “We had experience in how good they made our sticks for us.” Firth expanded manufacturing in Newport, and today the company averages around 150 employees there, “depending on the time of the year,” Larrivee said.

The company purchases wood in 1-by-1-by-17-inches “squares” and kiln dries the wood on site “so we can control the moisture content to what we want,” Larrivee said. “How we control the drying process” is vital to manufacturing sticks and mallets.

The wood is about 70-percent hickory, with “a very straight grain and very durable” and grown in the Southeast, he noted. The Vic Firth Company also uses hard rock maple, persimmon, and “some laminated product.”

As a tour through the plant revealed, the company produces an incredible array of drumsticks and mallets in many styles and colors, in diameters ranging from 5/16th’s of an inch to 1¼ inches. (cont. on page 32)

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“Considered the premium drumsticks in the world,” Newport-made products “are sold to the end of the earth,” Larrivee said.

The Newport plant also makes the Zildjian Company line of drumsticks and some custom products. “Seventy percent of the world’s drumsticks are coming out of Newport,” Larrivee said. “By far we have the largest market share for drumsticks in the world.”

He worked many years for Firth, who retired from the Boston Symphony in 2002. “He treated people who worked for him so very, very well,” said Larrivee. “‘You don’t work for me; you work with me’ is what Vic would say.”

Earlier this century, Firth sold his company to Zildjian, a 395-year-old, family-owned company that makes cymbals and saw its brand made famous by Beatles’ drummer Ringo

Starr. Zildjian is investing heavily in Newport; the company transferred the manufacture of Balter Mallets there after acquiring that brand in 2018.

Today, the Newport facility also produces Vic Firth and Balter keyboard mallets, plus such percussion accessories as drum pads and drum mutes.

Zildjian will “completely refurbish” a newer building located in Progress Park off Main Street in Newport, Larrivee said. Some operations have already moved to the new facility, and “we expect to move everything there in two or three years.”

The move “allows us to upgrade our products, and own our workplace,” he said.

“People really love making great product here. There’s a great pride” among the employees, Larrivee said.

Vic Firth died in Massachusetts in late July 2015.

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