Hi there - just joined the forum, having found good advice here for ages - now I have a specific question that I would love to get some advice / opinions on.
I have an old Pacific birch kit, F-Series, probably about 13 years old now. It's always sounded really nice - I've used it for recording many times (most of the time it sits in my project studio) and also gigged with it; got some incredulous compliments about the quality of the sound from such a low-end kit, from a sound engineer at a BIG club who knew his stuff. So in short, a cheap but really decent kit.
It's starting to show its age though; I have some stripped tension rods, missing screws and/or bolts from the suspension tom mounts, rubber grommets perished or wearing out on the mounts, that kind of thing. All minor stuff, plus the shells are just all scuffed up from years of (mis-)use. Definitely fixable - but I was thinking it might be a good time to get a new kit - or rather, a nice quality used replacement kit - something that would be a bit of an upgrade. I was thinking that for $500 or so I could get an intermediate to semi-pro birch kit like a Premier XPK set, or possibly Mapex M series, or something else - but a drummer friend who is more knowledgeable than me, and who has played my kit many times, has advised me just to fix up the Pacific kit that I have - he says it's a great kit and that I am very unlikely to find anything that sounds better without spending a lot more.
So that's my question - is my Pacific kit likely to be pretty much as good as it gets in that price range, or are there really any stand-out sounding birch kits that I should be considering?
I have an old Pacific birch kit, F-Series, probably about 13 years old now. It's always sounded really nice - I've used it for recording many times (most of the time it sits in my project studio) and also gigged with it; got some incredulous compliments about the quality of the sound from such a low-end kit, from a sound engineer at a BIG club who knew his stuff. So in short, a cheap but really decent kit.
It's starting to show its age though; I have some stripped tension rods, missing screws and/or bolts from the suspension tom mounts, rubber grommets perished or wearing out on the mounts, that kind of thing. All minor stuff, plus the shells are just all scuffed up from years of (mis-)use. Definitely fixable - but I was thinking it might be a good time to get a new kit - or rather, a nice quality used replacement kit - something that would be a bit of an upgrade. I was thinking that for $500 or so I could get an intermediate to semi-pro birch kit like a Premier XPK set, or possibly Mapex M series, or something else - but a drummer friend who is more knowledgeable than me, and who has played my kit many times, has advised me just to fix up the Pacific kit that I have - he says it's a great kit and that I am very unlikely to find anything that sounds better without spending a lot more.
So that's my question - is my Pacific kit likely to be pretty much as good as it gets in that price range, or are there really any stand-out sounding birch kits that I should be considering?