We are delighted to launch another new beater as part of the BOD exclusive collection: the BODGrass.

Made of crisp cylindrical blades of seagrass, the BODGrass is absolutely unique in our experience of bodhrán beaters, we cannot recall anything made of this material or creating this sound. If you think of the classic wire brush sound on snare drums and high hats, playing the sort of swinging rhythms that might accompany Marilyn Monroe down the street, the BODGrass makes just that kind of swishy, whisk like sound.

Made to our design by Stevie Moises, the BODGrass is a bundle of seagrass strands in classic hot rod beater design. It’s 24 cm long, comparable to our BODBeater or most of the MOGrip or HED series of tippers, and weighs around 38 grams. This makes it one of the heavier beaters in our lineup, which was a real surprise, as it is very lively and comfortable in the hand, and delightfully easy to play with. (Yes, we did double check our scale was accurate!)

Let’s compare it with other brush beaters in our shop, so you can understand where the BODGrass might sit in your beater line up.

As Stevie says, the “big thing” about his brush tippers (the NEF 3 through 8 Series and the BrushMo) is that you can combine the swishing sound of the bristles with the attack of a traditional wooden tipper, so you can create a basic smooth swishy groove rhythm with strong accents produced by the solid wooden head of the tipper.

With the MellMo or our own BODBass, the bundle of distressed bamboo rods creates quite a velvety attack followed by a soft mellow brush sound, wonderful under vocals or for a generally softer mood.

By contrast, the BODGrass sounds like a brush from the first attack and throughout your playing, with a generally light, clean, articulate swishiness, with more presence and a jazzier feel than the BODBass or other brush beaters, but without the crisp clicking that wooden rods create.

As with all our BOD beaters, it comes with an O ring so you can open or close down the grass bundle to control the swishiness.  In our sound bites, we were playing with the O ring about 3/4 of the length back from the tipper end.

Listen to the BODGrass on three different drums: the BODdrum 14 inch with centre spot and edge control head, a 15 inch diameter Renegade Rhythms wooden bodhrán with traditional goatskin tacked onto the frame, and finally on a Rolf Wegels Edition 40 cm x 15.3 cm deep (15.75 inch x 6 inch) bodhrán with taped lambeg skin (made for Rolf by Christian Hedwitschak).