The Brick is a 20-ply, 15mm thick, 14"x7" heavyweight with a Chinese birch shell. It slots into Ludwig's mid-range Epic series with 2.5mm triple-flanged hoops, 20 single-ended Keystone bridge lugs.
 
Even after a lifetime playing metal shell snares, The Brick may tempt you over to wood. It's as lively as most metal drums but with a woody tone, the result of having such a thick shell and it being birch.
 
Where metal shells have high-pitched rim-shots, wood ones have a reverberant woody clonk. And The Brick has a clonk to die for. There's no choking; it just continues to open up the harder you play.
 
This is a fantastic drum - it has warmth because the shell is deep and brilliance because it is thick. The ring on rim-shots had some overtones that turned nasty with the batter turned down. This is where it's tempting to resort to a spot of damping or, better, pay extra care to even tensioning. But tightened right up again, it simply sang.