Does Smoking Bad for Drum Kits?

Max Crespo

Max Crespo

Member
So I was just reading a Criegslist add and the seller said
"They were stored in my smoke-free, environmentally controlled home recording studio and are in great shape"

So this brought up the question...

Does smoking near or even while on a drum kit cause any damage to the kit?
If so how... and why

this could also go for smoke machines, like at big shows and stuff
 
I'm yet to own a drum kit that has contracted emphysema as a result of inhaling my second hand smoke. :)

Seriously, I've been a smoker for years, I've never noticed any adverse affects. Ditto for smoke machines.

Give 'em a once over clean with a damp cloth regulary and they'll see you right for years.
 
Smoking isn't as bad for the drums as it is for you!
Smoke machines don't generate the same kind of smoke.
 
I smoked for a long time and only quit a few months ago (for the 3rd time). In the 70s and early 80s people would be smoking at rehearsals and gigs and I've played in some thick atmospheres in my time filled with various fragrances, both fair and foul.

I doubt that my old Rogers kit was harmed notably by it. After a fair period of regular exposure everything gets yellowed by the tar - keyboards can get badly yellowed. I think a kit with a white wrap would be yellowed somewhat if it spent a lot of time in smoky environs. Everything, especially cymbals would need more cleaning.

Soundwise, my guess is that any effect would be negligible. I doubt that smoke machines would have the same effect because it's not as dirty.
 
nhzoso said:
Congrats Pollyanna, I quit on Oct.21st 5th time : )..I know how tough it is..

I have seen people put that on ads before and always wondered who would really care..It's the same thing whenyou see ads for used motorcycles and it says owned/ridden by a woman?? I always thought how sexist that sounds. Like what women do not ride hard or bad like men??
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Congrats back at you, nhzoso :) We quit at about the same time ... I was still smoking at a gig played on 24 Oct and I think(?) I quit the next day.

Yeah, the ad sounds like it's just playing on the smoke hate that's been fostered over the years. It means little. Actually, the guy who sold me my car recently said it had a one owner woman and I have to admit she kept it in good nick :) I think the real issue is whether the driver was a revhead or not and fewer women are revheads.

The "environmentally controlled" bit suggests that it wasn't exposed to extreme heat or humidity, which would probably be more important. To be fair, a decade or so of almost daily being in a small room filled with smokers would make anything grotty.
 
Cymbals get small brown spots from cigar, and cigarette smoke.

My K 12" Splash has about 5 of them on top and one of them about 1 inch big on the bottom. They aren't noticeable until you start examining it, but it is a dark spot.

The man I bought it from told me it was because of smoking and he took of 20$ due to it. I got it for 30$!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I'm not a smoker, so the thing I notice is definitely the smell. All my equipment reeks from playing in smoky bars. I can shower my body and wash my clothes, but the drums and cases take a LONG time to lose that funk.

I can see why it might be a good idea to put that in an ad.
 
Yeah - that's gotta be a reference to the smell. Some things take a Long time to shed
the smell.

There's a whole Seinfeld episode on this. :)
 
I will say between bars and in my dad smoking heavily in my parents basement when I lived at home the rubber feet on my cymbal stands have permanent nicotine stains that left marks on the carpet I used to take out and I noticed in my house I live in now when I built a room my basement for them and put new carpet in. After I had them setup for about 6 months had to take them out for a gig with my church and there were yellow stains in every spot the rubber feet touched the carpet (grrrrrr)
 
The scent from the tobacco could linger in the wood of the drums. And also, if you can smell tobacco smoke, it can damage your lungs. But it obviously doesn't matter if you're already a smoker...
 
Wick said:
The scent from the tobacco could linger in the wood of the drums. And also, if you can smell tobacco smoke, it can damage your lungs. But it obviously doesn't matter if you're already a smoker...
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Im actually not a smoker... I was just curious as to why the criegslist poster felt it was necessary to mentioned that
 
I have never smoked, so I can smell smoke from a hugh distance either if a person is smoking, or equipment that has been in a smoking environment. If I sell something I always put in the add that the item was never in or around smoke. This is a great selling point to someone that is interested in what you have to sell and they don't smoke. I'm also into HAM radio and this comes up frequently when someone is selling a piece of radio equipment, especially microphones.

Dennis
 
Max Crespo said:
Im actually not a smoker... I was just curious as to why the criegslist poster felt it was necessary to mentioned that
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I used to play in smokey bars/venues all the time, until they banned smoking in bars in Oregon. When I'd get home, my kit would smell like smoke for days, particularly because every time you hit a drum, it "breathes out" and "breathes in" through the vent hole. When I would play at home, it would breathe out whatever it breathed in the week before.

I can understand somebody not wanting to buy a drumset used in a smokey environment. Or a couch. Or a microphone.
 
IDDrummer said:
I'm not a smoker, so the thing I notice is definitely the smell. All my equipment reeks from playing in smoky bars. I can shower my body and wash my clothes, but the drums and cases take a LONG time to lose that funk.

I can see why it might be a good idea to put that in an ad.
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caddywumpus said:
I used to play in smokey bars/venues all the time, until they banned smoking in bars in Oregon. When I'd get home, my kit would smell like smoke for days, particularly because every time you hit a drum, it "breathes out" and "breathes in" through the vent hole. When I would play at home, it would breathe out whatever it breathed in the week before.

I can understand somebody not wanting to buy a drumset used in a smokey environment. Or a couch. Or a microphone.
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Agreed.

As a non-smoker, I can smell faint smoke way, way more than my smoker friends do.
 
Live and learn. Okay, it's about the smell. I never noticed the smell in the old days since I smoked pretty heavily.

Can people still smoke in venues and studios in the US? Smoking is banned indoors almost everywhere in Oz.
 
Pollyanna said:
Can people still smoke in venues and studios in the US? Smoking is banned indoors almost everywhere in Oz.
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It's slowly spreading across the country but for the most part it's banned here. In AZ for example it's illegal to smoke in a bar now. Now one can tell how busy a place is by glancing at the number of smokers in front of a bar.
 
audiotech said:
I'm also into HAM radio Dennis
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Sorry, brief off topic. Wow Dennis, I had no idea. Here's a picture of my late father's collection of receivers. He passed away a few months ago. They're mostly vintage Eddystone, plus a couple of Lowe models. All kept in a sealed cabinet and never taken out of the box from new! All were 100% mint. Most of these went to the Eddystone museum, & were described as "the best examples in existence". The Lowe units went to a collector in Texas.
 

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Max Crespo said:
So I was just reading a Criegslist add and the seller said
"They were stored in my smoke-free, environmentally controlled home recording studio and are in great shape"
Click to expand...

All used drums were stored in a smoke free, environmentally controlled room just as all used cars were driven by little old ladies only on Sundays to church and back on the highway.
 
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