Received the NEF3 as a Christmas gift, and I can echo all the comments made by Dain. I love this tipper! It is very well balanced and plays seemingly effortlessly -- the degree of wrist movement needed to change from straight swish to click/swish combo to straight click is very slight, and far from being difficult to control, these nuances become second nature almost immediately. The great range of effects makes this tipper extremely expressive. Highly recommended! (Posted on 1/19/12)

I purchased this tipper 9 months past, and so have had time to discover it's qualities and full potential for my style of play. The bristles are on the softer end of the spectrum within the range of different bristled tippers offered at Whistle and Drum. I play on an Albert Alfonso Red drum with a "raw" goat skin and on a Hedi Dragon Skin. This tipper rendered different results from the two very different drums and their different surface types, but the below descriptions can be applied to both skins with the knowledge that the Hedi rendered more deep lows and a little less sustain as the pitch increased.

The weight and length of this tipper are fairly midrange which immediately offered a sense of control and plenty of punch. The bristles offer a range of effects depending on the angle at which they come in contact with the drum skin combined with the amount of energy one puts behind the strike and the variety of pitch one uses. I can achieve a barely audible staccato swish, to a sweeping swish, and increase the volume of both with an increase in energy of the bristle strike against the skin surface. With a change in angle and a slight increase in strike pressure I can achieve a combined swish with a clear dampened or muted thump - two sounds in one strike! Again with a change in angle I can decrease the amount of the swish while increasing the amount of the thump and at a point in the spectrum of angle change the thump turns to a clearer 'tup' and then to a 'tap.' Combine these effects with pitch variations and you have an insanely diverse palette of sounds and effects to draw from when using this tipper.

I believe this is an ideal tipper for those who wish to increase their skills in controlling tipper angle and amount of energy in their strikes. It's far more than two tippers in one, it's a myriad of tippers in one package. If you need a quick switch to "normalcy" then simply flip it over to the non-bristled end and avoid using both sides of the tipper. ;-) (Posted on 11/26/10)