Sizes, measured

What does “5A” mean on drumsticks?

Last updated 2026-08-26 4 figures · 2 tables · about 7 min read

Walk into a music shop, ask for 5A drumsticks, and you will get something sensible. That makes 5A feel like a standard. It isn't one. No body defines the dimensions of a 5A. Each maker decides for itself, and they do not agree.

Of the 2,110 drumsticks in STICK FINDER, 353 sticks from 32 brands carry “5A” in the model number or the model name. Line up their diameters and the thinnest is 12.7 mm (.500″) while the thickest is 15.1 mm (.594″) — a spread of 2.4 mm inside one name. That is wider than the gap between the median 5A and the median 5B (0.9 mm).

But the distribution has more to say than that. Let's go through it.

1. Where the 353 sticks called 5A actually sit

1. 1Thinnest, ⌀12.7 mm — Kadence KAD-DSTKHN-5A HN5A Jamming Series Drumsticks
2. 2Median, ⌀14.3 mm — Wincent W-5A
3. 3Thickest, ⌀15.1 mm — Ahead 5ABC Hybrid Concert

Three things come out of this picture.

One: most of them really do cluster. The median is 14.3 mm, and 311 sticks (88%) fall inside a 0.6 mm window, 14.0–14.6 mm. The single most common value is 14.3 mm with 91 models, followed by 14.4 mm with 75. So the rough consensus among drummers and makers about what a 5A is — it exists, and the data shows it.

Two: there are very few distinct values. Across 353 sticks there are only 14 different diameters. Rounded to a tenth of a millimetre, most models land on the same handful of numbers.

Three: sticks still fall outside it. A ⌀12.7 mm stick and a ⌀15.1 mm stick are both sold as 5A. A consensus is a consensus, not a rule anyone is obliged to follow.

2. The thinnest and the thickest 5A, drawn to scale

The thin one needs a footnote. Kadence KAD-DSTKHN-5A (HN5A Jamming Series Drumsticks) publishes its diameter as the butt-end diameter, and it publishes the same 12.7 mm figure for its 7A, 5A and 5B alike. For that brand, the published diameter cannot tell the sizes apart. We record published figures as published and never quietly correct them, so it stays in.

This is the part worth holding on to. “There is no 5A standard” does not only mean the thickness varies. It also means that where the thickness is measured is up to the maker. A drumstick changes diameter from the grip through the shoulder, so measuring at a different point gives a different number.

Narrowing by material does not rescue it either. Wooden 5A sticks alone number 318, spanning 12.7–14.9 mm. Drop the brands that publish one diameter for every size — Kadence (⌀12.7 mm) — and you still get 314 sticks across 13.9–14.9 mm. However you slice it, about a millimetre of spread survives.

Length scatters as well: 5A sticks come in 18 different lengths from 400 mm to 433 mm, with a median of 406 mm.

3. 5A, 5B and 7A overlap

By median alone the order is exactly what you would expect: 7A, then 5A, then 5B, then 2B, each thicker than the last. The ranges, though, overlap. The thickest 5A at ⌀15.1 mm is thicker than 64 of the 5B sticks here.

A concrete pair: Ahead 5ABC (Hybrid Concert) measures ⌀15.1 mm, while Techra THBASBPU (VIRGIL DONATI - Pulse 5B) measures ⌀14.8 mm. The 5A is the thicker stick.

Now the honest version of that. Across the database there are 1,595 pairings where one brand's 5A is thicker than another brand's 5B — but 1,396 of them have one of those single-diameter-for-every-size brands on one side. Take those out and the remaining 199 pairings all differ by 0.3 mm or less. So “5B is the thicker stick” holds up in general; it just breaks by a hair.

What matters more is that the step from 5A to 5B is a different size at every brand. Across the 29 brands that publish 7A, 5A and 5B (leaving out the single-diameter brand above), the gap between the median 5A and the median 5B runs from 0.5 mm at PLAYTECH to 1.4 mm at Ahead. The same “one size up” buys you more than twice as much at one brand as at another.

So “5B was too heavy, I'll switch to 5A” does not reliably work once you change brand. Trading model numbers without looking at the millimetres misses more often than you would expect.

4. What the number and the letter actually track

One thing first. Plenty of explanations circulate about where names like 5A, 5B and 7A came from. We have not found a primary source — a maker explaining its own naming — so we do not repeat any of them here. What follows is only what the measurements show.

A smaller number does mean a thicker stick. By median: 7A 13.6 mm → 5A 14.3 mm → 5B 15.2 mm → 2B 16.0 mm. The letter tracks thickness too: at the same number, B runs 0.9 mm thicker than A at the median.

The catch is that this ordering is only guaranteed inside one brand. Of the 30 brands that offer 7A, 5A and 5B, 28 keep 7A < 5A < 5B. Each maker is internally consistent. The 2 that are not: Ahead (7A 13.7 mm, 5A 13.7 mm, 5B 15.1 mm) / Kadence (7A 12.7 mm, 5A 12.7 mm, 5B 12.7 mm).

The model numbers themselves share nothing either. The same “5A” is sold as Vater VH5AS, Zildjian Z5A, Balbex HI5A, Promark TX5AW, Rohema 61328, Techra THBASC12 and so on. You cannot read one brand's spec off another brand's part number.

5. So how should you choose?

The dull but reliable answer: choose by millimetres. Two steps.

1. Find the diameter and length of the pair you already play, or of the pair that felt right in the shop. It is on the maker's product page, and on the model pages here.
2. Search around those numbers across every brand. It goes wrong far less often than searching for “5A”.

That is what STICK FINDER is for.

Filter 2,110 sticks by diameter and length Find sticks like this one

“5A” is still a good word for asking a shop assistant for your first pair. From the second pair on, the numbers are quicker.

About these numbers

• What was counted: the 2,110 drumsticks in STICK FINDER, from 38 brands. All 2,110 of them are sourced from product spec pages on the makers' own sites.
• How “5A” was counted: the model number (SKU) or model name contains 5A with no digit immediately before or after it. A plain substring match would drag in 15A and RBH625AW (.625″, a different size), so the rule is stricter. 7A, 5B and 2B are counted the same way.
• Diameter and length are the makers' published figures. Sticks specified in inches are converted to millimetres (diameter to one decimal, length to a whole number). Models with no published diameter are excluded from the statistics.
• Median is the middle value by count. In the per-brand table it is the median within that brand.
• Every figure in this article is recomputed each time the database is rebuilt. Last updated: 2026-08-26

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