Vic Firth
Hickory drumsticks turned, weight-matched and pitch-paired in Newport, Maine.
🇺🇸 Made in USA
Our assessment
Company details
Where Vic Firth products are made
The whole line is made here. Vic Firth controls wood drying to guarantee straightness, grinds sticks on centerless grinders, then weight-matches and pitch-pairs every pair before it is sleeved. The company says its factory combines machine consistency with “the discerning eyes and ears of drummers, percussionists and wood experts.”
Hickory makes up 90% of Vic Firth sticks. The company sources it sustainably and reclaims 90% of the water used in centerless grinding.
Sawdust and waste wood are burned as a carbon-neutral heat source that warms the plant through the Maine winter and keeps the kilns running year-round.
The factory location and the Made in USA claim above are published by Vic Firth on vicfirth.com. The 1963 founding date and the 2010 Zildjian merger are the company’s own.
The story
Everett Firth was the principal timpanist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and he could not buy a drumstick he liked. So in the late 1950s he started making his own in his garage — whittling some by hand, farming others out to a wood turner, adjusting length and taper and tip until the stick did what he wanted it to do.
His students asked for pairs. Then other percussionists did. Then music stores started phoning in orders, and in 1963 Vic Firth turned a personal frustration into a company. The founding idea has not changed: no two pairs of hands are the same, so a drummer should be able to find a stick built for theirs rather than settle for whatever is on the wall.
The company eventually bought a 65,000-square-foot plant out of bankruptcy in Newport, Maine, and that is where the sticks have been made ever since. Firth kept playing with the BSO until 2002 and died in 2015 at 85. The factory he rescued is still running, and still employs most of the company’s people.
Why they matter
Drumsticks are a consumable. They break, they get replaced, and the economics of a consumable are exactly the economics that push production offshore. Vic Firth went the other way and built its entire competitive argument on process control — wood drying, centerless grinding, weight-matching, pitch-pairing — none of which travels well.
That decision anchored real manufacturing in a small Maine town. Newport is not a place with a deep bench of employers; the Vic Firth plant is one of them, and it has stayed one through a merger, an acquisition and the addition of a third brand’s production.
The company was also first to package paired sticks in 100% recyclable paper sleeves instead of plastic bags — now the industry standard, and by its own count millions of bags a year kept out of landfill. It is a small thing that a company only bothers to do when it controls its own line.
Shop Vic Firth products
Browse Vic Firth drumsticks and mallets stocked on the Buy American Campaign store.
Frequently asked questions
Are Vic Firth drumsticks made in the USA?
Yes. Vic Firth states on its own website that its sticks, mallets and implements are made in its factories in Newport, Maine and Norwell, Massachusetts.
Where is the Vic Firth factory?
In Newport, Maine — a 65,000 square foot plant that the company bought out of bankruptcy and has run since. Most of the company’s roughly 150 employees work there.
Who owns Vic Firth?
Vic Firth merged with the Avedis Zildjian Company in 2010 and is now one of Zildjian’s family of brands, alongside Zildjian cymbals and Balter Mallets. Manufacturing stayed in Maine.
What wood are Vic Firth sticks made from?
Hickory accounts for about 90% of the line, sustainably sourced; the company also makes sticks and mallets in other hardwoods and synthetic materials.