Ktaxon 13″x3.5″ Piccolo Snare Drum Review

Bright, papery crack with minimal body and uneven articulation from the shallow shell. It cuts in a small room but chokes when loud. An effects or layered side voice, not a main snare.

Once the new heads were on and it was tuned up, it started to sound, surprisingly, decent. Not great, not terrible. At a medium to high tuning it pulls off a passable piccolo sound, and the HD Dry head masks a lot of the drum's tonal flaws.

It is a bright, papery crack with minimal body, and the stick response is okay up high, though the articulation feels uneven because the shallow shell does not resonate much. It cuts through in a small room but chokes quickly at louder volumes. I would not gig it as a main snare, but as a side snare for short-form content or a layered recording part, the tone is good enough, and different enough, to earn its own place in a mix.

As cheap as it gets: a poplar shell in plastic finish (not the listing's cold rolled steel), uneven bearing edges, easily stripped lug threads, a Phillips-screw throw-off, and mine missing a tension rod.

This drum is as cheap as it gets. The Amazon listing promises excellent craftsmanship and cold rolled steel; the reality is a poplar shell wrapped in a basic black plastic finish. The bearing edges are uneven. The lug threading is poorly machined, so some lugs tighten fine while others feel like you are stripping them with every turn.

The strainer uses Phillips screws instead of accepting a drum key, and I nearly stripped one trying to adjust it. Combined with the missing tension rod mine shipped with, the build is exactly what the price suggests: functional, barely. Get the new heads on and tuned, though, and it cleans up better than the hardware would lead you to expect.

Narrow range: acceptable only cranked medium to high, where it reaches tight, cracky nu-metal territory. A one-trick high, tight crack, nothing more.

The usable range is narrow. It only sounds acceptable cranked medium to high, and if you push the tuning high enough with a high-tension key you can get into tight, cracky nu-metal territory, which is genuinely fun. Tuned low or medium it drops off fast.

This is a one-trick snare: a high, tight crack, and not much else. Treat it as an effects or side voice rather than a do-everything drum and it makes a lot more sense.

For under $40, under $30 on sale, a usable secondary or practice snare and a fun, low-risk experiment. Few snares cost this little.

For under $50, and now under $30, it delivers more than I expected but less than I hoped. You are not getting pro materials or clean machining; you are getting a dirt-cheap snare with a surprising amount of potential once you upgrade the heads and accept its limits. As a beginner's lightweight practice snare (it is 13 inches and about 4.6 pounds), a cheap way to start a side-snare collection, or a content-creation tool, it earns its few dollars.

Verdict

Is it a good drum? Not really. Is it a fun drum? Absolutely. For the price of a couple of pizzas you get a usable, characterful little piccolo once you re-head it and stop expecting it to be something it is not.

If you are curious, go for it. Just keep your expectations low and your spare parts handy.