Features > Shells > ​Plied Maple

Plied Maple Shells

The standard for decades, nothing beats North American Plied Maple for crispy highs, boomy lows, great looks and affordability.  These versatile shells are at the core of most TreeHouse drums, from drumsets to world percussion, tom sets to snares.

Here are some ideas to help you when selecting the thickness of your shells: 

• Thin shells make lower-pitched, lighter drums with more sustain.
• Medium shells are the most versatile with sufficient strength for bass drums to support toms, punch and clarity in toms, and great weight-to-strength ratio for tupans.    
• Thick shells are higher-pitched, offer more projection and are the strongest. 
• Super-Thick snare shells offer the most projection and scoff at the idea of anything that smacks of breakage.

There are only a few exceptions you want to keep in mind—don’t plan to have your 6-ply bass drum support your mounted tom and TreeHouse Concert Toms, Concert Bass Toms, Practice Tenors, & Tube Toms are available only in 8-ply shells.  Other than that, what thicknesses do you want?

• 6-ply (approximately 0.16" or 4mm thick)
• 8-ply (approximately 0.21" or 5mm thick)
• 10-ply (approximately 0.27" or 7mm thick)
• 15-ply (approximately 0.4" or 10mm thick--available only in 14" diameter) 
• Not enough?  13" and 14" snare shells are available "stacked" in configurations of 16-, 18-, 20-, and 30-plies of thickness.

TreeHouse Drums are priced by diameter.  Here are the plied maple shell diameter options for your TreeHouse set-up.

​Diameters	Toms	Basses	Snares	Tupans
6"	✔️*	-	-	-
8"	✔️*	-	-	-
10"	✔️	-	✔️	-
11"	✔️*	-	-	-
12"	✔️	-	✔️	-
13"	✔️	-	✔️	-
14"	✔️	-	✔️	-
15"	✔️*	-​	✔️*	-
16"	✔️	✔️	✔️	-
18"	✔️	✔️	-	✔️*
20"	✔️	✔️	-	✔️*
22"	-	✔️	-	✔️*
24"	-	✔️	-	✔️*
26"	-	✔️	-	✔️*
28"	-	✔️	-	✔️*

*Only available as 8-ply.