taking an 8 piece doublebass kit to gig

maggie897

Junior Member
a question for all the drummers that have an 8 piece do u take your full set, or do u downsize it for gigs. if u do take your 8 piece how long does it take u to set it up? any tips to save time setting up your 8 piece? by the way i have a tama rockstar double bass kit and two cymbals and hi hat. any other advice u could give me for setting up?
 
I had (well, I still have) a double bass kit with 3 rack toms and a floor.

Once I started gigging regularly, I quickly learned that while a big kit is fun, it's not practical for every venue, and it a pain to carry around.
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I scaled back to a 5pc, and stuck with that every since.
 
a question for all the drummers that have an 8 piece do u take your full set, or do u downsize it for gigs. if u do take your 8 piece how long does it take u to set it up? any tips to save time setting up your 8 piece? by the way i have a tama rockstar double bass kit and two cymbals and hi hat. any other advice u could give me for setting up?

I used to take a big kit out back in the day. The one thing to watch out for if your playing clubs is that sometimes the drum riser won't fit your kit.
 
8 pieces? Oh, wow. My set is a five piece and even that's too much for me to gig with, so I scale it down to a four piece with hats and a ride usually.

If you'll be playing venues that are going to mic your kit (and, if you are playing rock/metal, that probably describes ALL of the venues you'll be playing), I would strongly, STRONGLY urge you to scale it down as far as you can manage. The main reason being that most places won't have enough kit mics to cover all 8 drums. Even if you only use a couple of overheads for the toms/snare/cymbals, chances are they won't have two bass drum mics. If you have a double pedal, use that and get rid of the second bass drum for gigs. I'd suggest ditching a tom or two as well.

There's no way around the time issue; setting up an 8 piece drum kit will take a lot (polly) of it. The plus is that if you do downsize your kit a bit, setup time will be reduced aswell! BAM, two birds with one stone.
 
I agree with scaling down the kit. I play primarily Metal gigs and use a 6pc. I could use a 5pc but since one of my cymbal stands doubles as a 8" tom stand; I use that extra tom. The ride stand doubles as a floor tom stand. I can set up on stage in about 15min max. 3 up 1 down gives me plenty of toms to work with and is still very manageable.

Try playing your set on a 5 or 6pc for just a week. You will create ways to make it happen and sound good. I had to do this recently in preporation for a gig out of state using a backline 5pc kit. It was a good learning experience to be forced out of my comfort zone and worked out just fine.
 
Although, maybe I'm a little biased, I do have a bit of an obsession with making my gear as simple as possible. I can take my kit from sitting in it's cases to being completely set up in 6 minutes flat :). I'm sure if you knock off a kick and a tom you'll be able to setup in plenty of time for the gig. If you're in one of a series of bands, set your kit up backstage whilst the other bands are playing, then when it's your turn simply move each stand up onto the stage and you're done.
 
a question for all the drummers that have an 8 piece do u take your full set, or do u downsize it for gigs. if u do take your 8 piece how long does it take u to set it up? any tips to save time setting up your 8 piece? by the way i have a tama rockstar double bass kit and two cymbals and hi hat. any other advice u could give me for setting up?


I used to play the exact same kit, I loved it. It's all covered in cheese label stickers I collected from my work.

I had it ready to go within 5 minutes after getting onto the stage.

I am super OCD about my angles when I set up, and this is what I did to keep it from eating time.

I have a rug with duct tape outlines of where all my pedals/stands/floor tom legs/bassdrums are angled. That rug saves me SO much time, it made me do all my fiddly adjusting in the practice room once, and then never on stage. Make sure your memory locks are done really tight so nothing slips in the car ride.

For floor tom memory angling, duct tape above the leg fastener at the height you want it to be on the actual leg. I chose to always mount my floor tom legs so the foot was aligned to the lug pointing straight out, because its an easy reference point to set up to. If you have your floor toms really high up you may have troubles with this though, my highest leg has a band of tape it around it this thick: | |

Also visual checks help too. All of my rims are at the same height as the one next to them (following a natural curve) so its easy for me to see if something is misplaced. I had my kicks angled the same way.

This kit breaks up into chunks very nicely, mount your toms to your kicks off stage and you can move the meat of it in 2 trips.



For micing/hauling reasons, I started only using the right kick and got a double pedal and a rack to keep all 5 of the toms in place. It made recording much easier to just have one kick too. I downsized to a 6pc after this kit, though I mostly used this one as a 7pc.
 
Wait a minute - all you guys with really big kits are scaling down? Huh?

The drumset is the extension of your personality - it's your tool to make your art. I can't imagine taking less tools for your art if your art requires more.

I think you should use whatever you need to be comfortable on the gig. If they don't have room - make room! Buy yourself a big open bed pickup truck and bring along a roadie. Can you imagine if Tommy Aldridge scaled back? No, I can't. He's always behind two bass drums. Terry Bozzio doing his solo thing? I'm not payin' money if he doesn't have at least 20 drums up on stage! Even Danny Gottlieb, went BIGGER after leaving Pat Metheny - he started playing two bass drums too.

I'm partly joking, because I can't handle more than 5 drums at a time. But I'm serious about using what you need to make your art. So, if you've invested in the time to play double bass and an array of toms and cymbals, and that's what you rehearse with all the time, then don't compromise and bring LESS to the gig just because you don't want to carry it around. Sacrifice and make it happen, otherwise you just wasted all that money buying all those drums.
 
You guys who can set up in 15 minutes...I would love to see that. I need at least an hour, and 90 minutes when I'm micing myself. That's load in, uncase, set up, mic up, put cases away, and then adjust 5 cymbals, get my sticks together, tune up.
I envy youse guys
 
You guys who can set up in 15 minutes...I would love to see that. I need at least an hour, and 90 minutes when I'm micing myself. That's load in, uncase, set up, mic up, put cases away, and then adjust 5 cymbals, get my sticks together, tune up.
I envy youse guys

same here i takes me quite a while to set up, if my set isn't perfect it drives me nuts. plus it doesnt help when your drunk singer offers to help, its like hes never even seen a drum set before.
 
8 pieces? Oh, wow. My set is a five piece and even that's too much for me to gig with, so I scale it down to a four piece with hats and a ride usually.
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same here (except I'll add a crash to that). If I know the stage is going to be really tiny, I'll use two multi-clamps off the tom mount to carry the ride and crash cymbals. That way I've got no stands other than the snare and hats. Everything's mounted on the bass drum - which I know just makes all you virgin bass drum purists crazy, but... what can I say, it works.

scaling back from 5 pc to 4 pc is no big deal, but I miss cymbals more than drums on the scaled back gig setup. My preference is to have 4 cymbals (ride, crash, splash, china) in addition to the hats. Just a ride and crash is OK, but I miss those extra voices.

that said - it's mostly just laziness that I don't want to set up, tear down and carry any more than I absolutely have to.
 
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I use a 7 pc every gig.....no biggie once you get used to it.

F
 
I play a 7 piece (10, if you count 3 roto toms) kit with 9 cymbals each and every gig. I hated hauling that many stands and spending what seemed like forever setting them up, but I just couldn't part with any of my kit. So finally I bought a Pearl Icon rack and attached everything to it minus kick, snare, and hihats. What took probably 30-45mins to setup now only takes roughly 15-20. I don't use two kicks, so not sure how that will go over. What I would recommend if you are going to gig with two kicks is probably go out and buy your own kick mics. As mentioned before, not every venue will have enough mics, so that'll keep you covered there.
 
I used to tote around an 8-piece. Two kicks alone is more cumbersome than the rack and an Axis double pedal nowadays.

If you are showing up at venues where you don't fit, someone isn't not doing their homework when booking into gigs...one should know their needs ahead of time. It should never be a surprise.

I'd have to say that even though I don't scale my kit back when I gig, I can see it if your "home" kit which is beyond big is all you have and all the extras that you either never play or are just things you have broken out, just don't need to make it wherever your playing. Makes sense.

I can also see just breaking the kit down to a smaller, less cumbersome movable object(s)...so long as you aren't compromising the music, whether you wrote it or not. In the end, it's purely up to you. Big kits take time and the more you chose to bring means the more you have to pack, travel, setup, secure, and tear down.
 
I used to gig in clubs with a band where part of the "gimmick" was the divergent backgrounds/genres of each musician. I was the "prog rock" drummer. As such, I brought as much of my 7-tom, 13-cymbal set as I could to every gig. However, I did my homework and brought what made sense for the venue. Some places we played, the entire band and our equipment had to fit in an 8x8 space. Not much room for my huge behemoth kit there.

As the last poster said, it's a choice, and a lot of it would have to do with your band's image, the size of clubs you play, and where you fit in the schedule every night. If you don't start the night off, you may only be given 10 minutes or so to get onstage, set up, soundcheck, and go. The larger and more unwiedly your set is, the more your bandmates might see you as a liability if you continually go over time.

If you do decide to go large, try to minimize the number of large pieces of kit you have to move. Consolidate as much as possible onto each stand, on the bass drums, etc. I used two side racks with no center connecting bar, allowing me to move the whole kit in five pieces (kick, 2 racks, hi-hat, snare). Also make sure the kit uses the smallest possible footprint. And finally, have a fallback scaledown plan for those postage stamp stages.
 
another thing to consider if you're in an original band is that you'll typically be playing just one set with other bands coming on before you as well as after you. in my experience, usually the club managers only allow about 15-20 minutes between bands. in that very brief time, the band before you has to get all their stuff off the stage. you have to get your stuff onto the stage, miced up and ready to sound check in whatever time is left. you have to seriously hustle! for that reason alone i would suggest some downsizing or at least try to set up as much as you can offstage before it's your turn to play.
 
You guys who can set up in 15 minutes...I would love to see that. I need at least an hour, and 90 minutes when I'm micing myself. That's load in, uncase, set up, mic up, put cases away, and then adjust 5 cymbals, get my sticks together, tune up.
I envy youse guys

I know!! The quickest I've set up my 4 piece and put everything away ready to gig is around 30-40 minutes.
 
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