My Allegra Kit v2!

My personal opinion is that you are being a tad snobbish. I mean if you think about it a hot rod builder might start off with the shell of a ford or a chevy. Does that mean the end result is not a custom car? I don't think so.

As for the kit, man that's ridiculous dude! My only slight reservation would be about the fact that your rack tom does seem to be on a slightly different scale to the kick and floor. Of course i can see that you were probably going for a bit closer in terms of tuning between your rack and the floor and that's the good thing about custom drums- they're made for what you want.

Snobbish....come on man are you serious?
Like I said I have assembled many, many, drums with wraps and stains....any company that buys off the shelf hardware, shells...etc. isn't custom. If you can buy shells pre-drilled with the same hardware that is being used by some "custom" builders and put it together why on earth would you say that the company is custom...just doesn't make sense. The only thing your paying for in that instance is the finish...period. Is a nice finish worth the money being dropped on some of these kits? No way in hell it is. We mainly play drums for the sound do we not? With finish being second.

It's funny....feathers sure get ruffled when someone doesn't agree with the masses around here.
 
Snobbish....come on man are you serious?
Like I said I have assembled many, many, drums with wraps and stains....any company that buys off the shelf hardware, shells...etc. isn't custom. If you can buy shells pre-drilled with the same hardware that is being used by some "custom" builders and put it together why on earth would you say that the company is custom...just doesn't make sense. The only thing your paying for in that instance is the finish...period. Is a nice finish worth the money being dropped on some of these kits? No way in hell it is. We mainly play drums for the sound do we not? With finish being second.

It's funny....feathers sure get ruffled when someone doesn't agree with the masses around here.

While I totally understand what you're saying, there's a difference between you and a guy such as Dave Peterson who has been building drums as a profession for over 30 years. If you get to make drums for Ddrum's USA Custom Shop line, and for people such as Mike Marsh and Vinnie Paul and Mel Brown, you're more than just an everyday hobbyist assembler, and you're obviously doing something pretty well.

That said, if you can build your own kits and get the sound and finish you want for a price way less than Allegra charges, that's awesome, and I'm envious.
 
Snobbish....come on man are you serious?
Like I said I have assembled many, many, drums with wraps and stains....any company that buys off the shelf hardware, shells...etc. isn't custom. If you can buy shells pre-drilled with the same hardware that is being used by some "custom" builders and put it together why on earth would you say that the company is custom...just doesn't make sense. The only thing your paying for in that instance is the finish...period. Is a nice finish worth the money being dropped on some of these kits? No way in hell it is. We mainly play drums for the sound do we not? With finish being second.

It's funny....feathers sure get ruffled when someone doesn't agree with the masses around here.

Yes i AM being serious i mean what is it with some people on this website who seem to think that their stave shells or steambent or whatever are somehow superior to everyone elses? Great you can assemble your own drums but as i said it's just the shells i mean everything else is all custom and therefore they must be custom drums. I'm sure this guy could build his own shells if he wanted but he doesn't because he knows that keller shells are very experienced at what they do.
 
Yes i AM being serious i mean what is it with some people on this website who seem to think that their stave shells or steambent or whatever are somehow superior to everyone elses? Great you can assemble your own drums but as i said it's just the shells i mean everything else is all custom and therefore they must be custom drums. I'm sure this guy could build his own shells if he wanted but he doesn't because he knows that keller shells are very experienced at what they do.

Please, Please tell me your not trying to put keller builders in the same catagory as true custom builders such as Unix, and Rythmn King or even Highwood that makes their own conventional shells.

....you have your opinion and I have mine.
 
Please, Please tell me your not trying to put keller builders in the same catagory as true custom builders such as Unix, and Rythmn King or even Highwood that makes their own conventional shells.

....you have your opinion and I have mine.

Maybe not but they're still custom drums nonetheless i think. Funny you should mention highwood actually because they're based right up here in yorkshire where i live and i'm gonna build myself some drums using their parts and some of the stuff they make is pretty astounding.
 
Very cool looking drums. I think it's awesome to have a kit built to your own specs. Like Stasz said, I dig the matching lug inlays.

I hope you're cool with the custom v. keller debate, because we just witnessed a clinic in thread-jacking.
 
Please, Please tell me your not trying to put keller builders in the same catagory as true custom builders such as Unix, and Rythmn King or even Highwood that makes their own conventional shells.

....you have your opinion and I have mine.

for a little extra dough you can pay keller to make exotic shells, they are a ply drum shell company, but that doesn't really make them any lesser any other. Some people do not like the sound of stave/segmented shells. Ply shells are the industry standard, I don't see any big name companies using ply or segmented shells. If they are so much better why hasn't tama, pearl, gretsch, mapex, or any other big name brand jumped on the bandwagon yet...
 
They're actually doing great... they're making 100 Vinnie Paul kits for Ddrum right now, as well as finishing up an awesome kit for NAMM... plus their normal orders and all of Ddrums USA Custom line.

As far as the custom drum things go... most custom drum kits, keller or not, are going to sound, with equal tuning and sizes and heads, etc., pretty much the same mic'd up front of a big crowd. So for me I wanted to look for kits that sounded amazing unmic'd and acoustic, and Allegra was really the top sounding that I found. Perhaps their Keller shells aren't as exotic as some stave shells or shells made in-house, but whatever combination of bearing edges and lacquer they use makes them sound pretty dang good unmic'd. And since (from MY experience) almost all high-quality kits sound amazing if you have a good sound guy and mics and system, and since I always play mic'd up, I wanted to go with people who were knowledgeable, local, and who love and take pride in their drums... and who could accommodate exactly what I wanted.

The aluminum snare, however, IS one of the best snares I have ever heard, both mic'd and not. It's crazy... if you're in Portland, you owe it to yourself to go check them out.

I forgot that they stated to work with Ddrum, I remember reading about that now. I always loved the look of the lugs those guys use. That is one hell of a set you got. Congrats for supporting your local builder!
 
Oh man, now that kit there looks classy in every sense of the word, like a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow with a thick coat of carnuba wax! Those lugs are awesome, somehow they pull off the high mass look without looking too bulky (I'm not a fan of DW lugs). I like the 8 lugs on the 13 rack, it makes it look so HUGE!!!!!
 
Oh man, now that kit there looks classy in every sense of the word, like a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow with a thick coat of carnuba wax! Those lugs are awesome, somehow they pull off the high mass look without looking too bulky (I'm not a fan of DW lugs). I like the 8 lugs on the 13 rack, it makes it look so HUGE!!!!!

it's a 14" rack. For some reason some people seem to put the depth before the diamiter of the drum.
 
Yeah, some people, like half of the planet. You know, there's some country out there that still hasn't adopted the metric system as their primary means of measurement? I don't get them...

Hey we're more metric then you guys! Personally i find it really annoying. The only reason we don't use it is because everyone thinks we invented it when in actual fact we didn't, it came from all the invading armies of our country and sort of came together here in England.

But seriously i mean it just makes a lot more sense to me that you'd put the diamiter before the depth, i mean it's a drum, you hit the circle shaped bit, not the side so why does everyone seem to put more emphasis on that?
 
it's a 14" rack. For some reason some people seem to put the depth before the diamiter of the drum.


Oh sorry man, i was talking about the DEPTH not the diameter. Sheesh why would you think i was talking about that??
 
Oh sorry man, i was talking about the DEPTH not the diameter. Sheesh why would you think i was talking about that??

Well erm, maybe because about 98% of all 14" toms in the world have 8 lugs? If your being sarcastic though it doesn't really come up very well on the internet. That's what smilies are for :)
 
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