Show us your tiny kits

Here's my tiny tits...er...kit. I've shown it before but...

Numa you're worse than Larry! Any more than a carful is wasted, isn't that what they say? :)

There are some seriously sexy cymbals on this page! The Instanbuls look great. What do they sound like?

I was getting a new snare head today and I was chatting with one of the customers who recommended the Zildjian Beautiful Baby as an awesome crash ride. I came across a thread here today and everyone who has them seems to like it. I love cymbals (in moderation, of course :)

I'm tossing up replacing my Profile with one and maybe *ouch!* replacing the stomp box with a kick. Not 100% sure the experiment worked at the moment. It's great for low volume but when we're in a bigger space ...
 
I'm tossing up replacing my Profile with one and maybe *ouch!* replacing the stomp box with a kick. Not 100% sure the experiment worked at the moment. It's great for low volume but when we're in a bigger space ...

you're probably better off with a real kick i would imagine, just get like a 16" floor tom off ebay they're pretty easy to convert.
 
Yes, I guess so. The stomp box seems better suited to use with hand drums than with a kit. It was a bit of an impulsive buy in hindsight.

A dark red Rhythm Traveler in the shop today caught my eye. Maybe just use one tom so the djembe is still close ... I might have to post in the Show Me Your Massive Kit!!! thread at this rate :)
 
Hi Polyanna
I used have been using a set of Pearl Rhythm Travelers on small club gigs for several years. I use a high end snare and cymbals....Placed Evans Hydraulic on the toms....I'll mike the bass drum and one overhead mike. I have tuned them to sound great.
Easy to load in and out..very small foot print. Works for small rooms short pay gigs.
Use Gretchen or DW's for larger rooms and better paying gigs.
 
I don't know about "tiny," but this one's pretty small. 14 SD x 15 FT x 20 BD.
 

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Gretsch catalina maple.

14" Snare, 14" Floor Tom, 16" Floor Tom as bass drum. Sounds NICE.

Cymbals are
14" 1972 Zildjian A New Beat
20" ZBT Ride with aftermarket hammering, sounds like a K Custom.

Vater 5b Gospel, ProMark hot rods. Just thought I'd throw it out there.
 

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Witchcraftery, I have only ever heard the Catalinas talked about in glowing terms. It looks like you've focused on quality rather than quantity.

I played just one gig with my stomp box kit. I really did miss using a pedal and DI'ing through the PA, slaved through a small amp, is a bit of a pain - leads all over the place and we all know how flaky leads can be.

Here is the mini kit in action at a restaurant - possibly never to be seen in action again in its current form (and hopefully my goofy look in the shot won't be seen again either): http://www.sangrea.net/rijidij/pix/BlueMabels18Jul09.jpg

Now the confession ... I have become a traitor to the small kit ranks and bought a monster Terry Bozzio set: http://www.sangrea.net/rijidij/pix/New-RTplusStuffJul08.jpg

Ok, it's a red wine Rhythm Traveller Gig Kit but I'm just using the 12" tom, along with the djembe. After some testing I took away the inverted 6" splash because its overtones were making the Stagg splash sound even trashier than it already did. The great thing about Stagg spl/crash cymbals is you only crash 'em when you have no choice - helps with discipline :) Still, two of them together can make a reasonable and cheap hi hat setup for the light of touch.

One thing about the RT Gig kit. Call me crazy but it makes no sense to me for Pearl to attach a snare drum to a stand from the bass drum. At first I was too excited to engage brain and wanted to try the kit out fully set up. Naturally every beat on the kick created a serious rattle in the snare. Well, duh! However, the snare's too small for my standard snare stand so, even though I like its look and sound, I'm sticking with my vintage Premier. Very tight squeeze on a 10" snare with brushes too.

The RT toms aren't flash and have to be tuned carefully - not much margin for error to find the sweet spot between *boing!* and *blugh*. I haven't quite found it yet but I'm sure it exists :)
 
Hey guys, sorry about the lag in reply. My wife just gave birth to our first baby boy. The Istanbuls are amazing. They are dark and a little trashy with a semi-short sustain but just enough brightness to explode and last to make the point. Hope that description helps. They are a hybrid lathed/unlathed top with a lathed bottom.

I now have the 16" bass drum set up with my full kit as a remotely operated secondary kick on a "Frankenstein" pedal I rigged up. I guess I'll have to post it on the Monster Kits thread.
 
how do you mount your pedal when you use a 16" floor as a bass??
I use right now a 22 x 18 bass with a 14" snare and a 10" piccolo tom
14" hats and a 8" splash
 
Yeah, that sounded good. But he sounds like the kind of guy who could make a couple of garbage bins kick, um, donkey.
.

That and there's a lot of aux percussion

FWIW - the wife has a RT kit - she was using is like Norge..as an E-kit (It's still got the homebrew transducers)
that we put back to an acoustic kit that is just sort of the extra basher kit now

The toms, being concert style, are what they are - so you just have to approach them on their terms (nice thing is you can nest em for transport, which is i suppose one of the big reasons) - they have a somewhat flat, dry sound (not necessarilly bad, but it's that style).and I think erring to a ringier head kind of works out better (a more controlled head can just get REALLY dry)

The kick - well it seems sensitive to the tuning (and I'm not sure we ever really got it dialed - but haven't revisited it in a while, might be nice to pull to back out)
Technique wise, burying the beater didn't seem to work that well...just not enough resonance to carry it - an open "tympani" hit seemed to let the sound stay reasonably open

One thing about the tom mounts on the kick - they are a decent bit closer that on a more common depth kick - so if you are mounting off those you have to sort of work through that
(the spurs are kind of close and shallow too, so mounting a bunch of aux percussion off em can be destabilising)


dunno - I'm certainly no expert on em. I mention the experience b/c I think it kind of points to the challenge of approaching them
if you are used to setting up "deeper" drums (where maybe you have to work subtractively, controlling resonances, etc) these little guys can kind of throw ya as I think you have to look to preserve/promote more of those resonances - so you have to go off "autopilot" in terms of your set-up strategy
 
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Here are my kits:

Pearl Export EX, 16" bd and 14" snare
and my favorite
Sonor Force 3007 Jungle kit, 16x16", 10x8", 14x12" and 12x5"
 

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Here is a pic of my Rhythm Traveler. It was taken at a gig by my guitar player. The String Band always puts that backdrop behind the drums at every show that we play. I thought that the pic came out really good.
 

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Here are my kits:

Pearl Export EX, 16" bd and 14" snare
and my favorite
Sonor Force 3007 Jungle kit, 16x16", 10x8", 14x12" and 12x5"

Hey Boberto, I have been thinking about converting a floor tom or buying the Jungle kit. Which one do you like better as far as playing them goes? Is the jungle kit worth it or should I just convert a floor tom?
 
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