the advantage of playing many kits

[NUTHA JASON]

in my teaching practice i get to mess around on a lot of different kits ... most of them aweful. however, at one of my schools they have a kit and, when a student is absent, i jam on it and find i can play better bass drum stuff than on my own gig kit. its a pearl pedal (P120P) so, the other day, i brought my eliminator in and put the two pedals side by side and my settings were very different. my beater was longer, my spring tension higher and my pedal was about 10 degrees closer to the head at rest. i then matched the cheaper pedals settings and tried my pedal out and it is sweet. i can't wait for tonight's gig. eliminators have so many setting options one can get kind of lost. it was nice to have a tried and tested basic pedal to adjust it to.

j

[Ian Williams]

Thanks for sharing the knowledge. Interesting, sometimes we tend to move so forward and by-passing or forgetting basics. Life is a learning curve...

Best Regards,

[caddywumpus]

Awesome experience, Nutha. Thanks for sharing. It makes me think of my bandmate's bass drum pedal, which is set close to mine, but just feels a little better. I'm going to try the same thing at our next rehearsal.

[NUTHA JASON]

lol. it was most likely a total fluke. the pedal was probably set up by a non drummer when the school bought the kit. maybe one or two pupils tweaked it or perhaps its been shaken down to these settings (the spring memory locks were disenguaged) but what ever the case it is the setting that m ost suits my style.

j

[Paradiddle my snizzle]

Nice story - have you also thought about the tension of the BD head? I assume yours is loose and you usually bury the beater, but on a jazzkit where the head is usually more tight you get alot of rebound and sometimes you cant even bury the beater without it sounding like a pressroll (read, bad sound).

[Trip McNealy]

Totally true! This one particular studio we practice at for my one band, the house kit's kick drum is PERFECTLY tuned for the music we play.. how ironic. I would have never thought in a million years to tension my own kick that way and put the type of pillow they have in it.

And it's also amazing sometimes you go to a venue and use a crappy house kit and it sounds way better than your own $2000 kit sitting at home LOL.

[Naigewron]

I've had a very similar experience, and I found through playing the "cheap" Sonor pedal on my practice kit that my feet are much more comfortable with lightweight beaters than the fairly dense, heavy ones that comes stock on my Eliminators.

[mrchattr]

Great story, man. I had a similar experience. I grew up playing a kit with all very deep toms. I had to reach for everything. At school, the kit was the same way. It honestly wasn't until I started teaching that I got to experiment with some of the shorter toms, and discovered how much more comfortable they are for me. From that point on, every kit I have gotten has had fusion sizes, shallower toms, and a 20" bass drum. It totally changed my playing.

[GRUNTERSDAD]

So you are saying shorter beater, looser spring, and further away from the head to begin with??

[drummerchick435]

Another good thing about trying different kits is you get to play different cymbals and drums. So if you're a Sabian player and you play a kit with Zildjian cymbals and you like a crash or hi-hat then you don't need to go to a drum shop to try them out!

[805Drummer]

Yeah, at Guitar Center, I've played Sound Percussion kits that sounded better than my kit. It's kind of depressing--but fun at the same time, because it makes you want to get home and retune everything.

[gunar]

I play on many different setups regularly. I don't believe a setup dictates my playing. It's a good exersize to switch it up. Make sure you're thinking while you're playing.

Now about finding equipment settings, waiting to stumble on new settings is a poor way to do it. I've always researched the players that I have liked, researched their style and technique, and tried to apply both into my playing and setup. Some times it works, some times it doesn't. It's always rewarding.

[Paradiddle my snizzle]

Now about finding equipment settings, waiting to stumble on new settings is a poor way to do it.

I agree, and that's why i was quite surprised to read that it's the way Jason did it, because he's an experienced drummer. I mean he thinks about such things as preparation strokes, and he has a serious warm up schedule but hasn't thought much about pedal settings.

Jason?