The kit
Custom Dioramaics shows off the skills of sculptor Ben Jakobsen with kit CD 6120 “Musical Instruments”. This kit is exactly what it says; it’s a kit that includes drums, trumpets/bugles, and flutes.
The kit will come to you in the standard blister pack, 5x10x3.5cm in size. The contents are in a ziplock bag keeping everything from bumping around.
Inside the bag are ten pieces. You get:
- 2 – marching snare drums w/ snare
- 2 – marching tenor drums
- 2 - marching base drums
- 2 - trumpet
- 2 – flutes
There is the typical resin block on the parts. There are going to pose a challenge to remove. On the drums you have detail to watch out for. On the wind instruments you have to be careful not to break the piece. There is a bit of flash and a bit of excess resin at mold seams. Neither is much to worry about. Standard hobby tools will take care of both the flash and excess.
One bad thing to note; one of the trumpets had its bell broken off. It looks like it was because of a weak spot due to an air bubble. This is easy enough to repair with some CA. The trumpet should still be functional.
General Impressions
The molding is great. There is a ton of detail on these pieces. The snare is molded into the bottom of the snare drum. The tension rods and lugs are molded into all the drums. The mouth piece on the trumpet is expertly detailed. The flute has great valve work.
Rivet Counter Impressions
There are faults with this kit. The flute is huge in scale. If you put this next to a Tamiya 1/35th scale figure it’s more like an Alto Sax than a flute. The valves are ‘monsters’ and if I were playing this my big fingers couldn’t cover the holes. You can see from the photo that these are much better for resin based manufactures like Warrior or Verlinden. These manufacturers are known for large size figures. I was unable to find a 1:1 version with the same fingering configuration.
The trumpet is better. It’s more in scale. Technically I would call this instrument a hybrid trumpet/bugle. All the trumpets I found had valves that went the entire height of the instrument. I did find a few bugles with shorter valves, however there were only three.
The drums are nice and the only rivet nit pick I found here was the ‘hanger’ for the larger base drum. If it is to be carried as a vertical base drum the hanger is molded 90 degrees off. If it’s to be carried ‘flat’ the scale of the drum is to big for a base or tenor marching drum.
Overall Impression
If you are going to reproduce a full scale marching band or even a small band scene this set will leave you ‘flat’. There aren’t enough of the correct instruments to be accurate.
If you are going to use these pieces as supporting detail in a diorama to provide a musical ‘back-story’ then these will work for you. These pieces would be great to put in parlor scene, or in the back of a deuce and half as a souvenir. The drums and trumpets are the stars of this set.
I’d like to thank VLS for providing this set to Armorama.com for a review
