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.