What's the worst kit you've had to play on?

AtomicFlapjack

Senior Member
Hi Drummerworld, long time no speak.

I suspect most of us have had to learn the hard way about using other people's kits. In the UK at least, it's fairly common practice to share a kit at a gig and for drummers to just bring their breakables.

My personal worst was probably when I turned up to a gig and the drummer whose kit we were sharing had forgotten his throne... Doh! We ended up using a chair from the pub... couple that with the bass drum (and attached tom) sliding forward horrendously due to a cheap kit, no mat and wood flooring, and it was a pretty interesting gig.

I'm sure Drummerworld has some worse stories that though?
 
Sounds eerily familiar haha.

Once played a gig where we, well me went through two thrones. First my throne snapped in half just under the seat, luckily I only fell off it just after the last crash of a song. Second and now borrowed throne the three drummers in attendance conspired to break trying to adjust its height. The winner was a very wobbly bar stool about 4 inches lower than any of us wanted to sit!
 
It was at a jam. A house kit, but set up how the "drummer" in the regular house band liked it.

DW 900o pedals for some reason, but everything else was crap. drum throne was justa restaurant chair, everything mounted in the weirdest of places and the floor was coverd in what must have been 50 paird of various pairs of seriously worn or broken sticks.

The broken sticks became apparent when I saw the house drummer play. I felt pain just watching him play the ride cymbal.
 
I played the kit in this guy's home studio a couple weeks ago. The toms sounded surprisingly pretty good - brand new pinstripes over ambassadors - everything else was a complete disaster.

8 lug snare, 3 lugs on one side were tightened down so much that the top of the rim was BELOW the bearing edge. The other side wasn't tuned at all.... I laughed out loud at this.

The bass drum was stuffed so full of stuff, its hard to the touch... seriously like a table top.

Cymbals were B8's all around, all cracked.

The hi hat stand simply did not operate. It felt like the shaft was filled with goop that prevented any action of lifting the hi-hat back up. I tried to adjust the ride cymbal position.. the gears that secured the boom angle were completely stripped so the ride fell, nearly cracking the bass drum shell. It took 30 minutes for the owner to jerry-rig it back into place where it would stay.
 
So my mom and stepdad had gone on about my drum playing down in Florida where they've retired to, and the band at their local lounge-watering-hole invited me to sit in for a couple of songs if I ever came down to visit. I'm like, sure.

Then I walk in and see this thing.

Aside from the glaring obvious things wrong with this refugee from the Tom Angles thread, there's no floor tom, the cymbals are jacked up to uncomfortable heights, and (I don't know if you can tell from the picture) the snare drum is up beside the kick. Like, underneath the left rack tom. It's canted at about 45 degrees towards me, it has a slackly tuned Pinstripe batter (not coated) with a washcloth duct-taped to it.

And the throne is broken.

As the band's drummer gets up to make a beeline to the bar, he snarls, "Don't touch anything!"

I limp through a song, I move to get up, the keyboard player looks at me and goes, "No, no, stay right there," and we go through two or three more songs. I guess they were happy to have someone sober playing the drums for a change. At one point the keyboard player points back at me and yells, "DRUM SOLO!" I swear, it's like a bad dream induced by eating bad Thai food or something.

The set ends and I slide out from behind this torture machine. The regular drummer comes up to me with a bottle of bubbly and says I did a <bleeping> awesome <bleeping> job, man (in front of my wife and mom). So we open it, have a drink or two, chilling. The band starts to reconvene on the stage... except for the drummer. He's passed out in a booth,

Guess who got to finish the set? (At least I moved the snare while he was passed out...)
 

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ha that is a good tom angles one.
I once auditioned for a band, on their old kit. A Yamaha stage custom greatly vandalized by stupidity:
a floor tom heads all covered with bumper stickers
a hihat whose 2 cymbals would not open, unadjustable
ALL cymbals, and I mean all 7 OF THEM, off of one single stand, ordered to great heights like branches of a tree.
All I could do was keep time on a closed hat (playing their 'originals' that they never told me to rehearse beforehand).
Didn't get the audition...thankfully.
 
I've played quite a few kits where a rack tom fell off or floor tom collapsed while I was playing.
Once I had to hold a snare between my knees, which was painful.
Several kits where nobody's brought a mat and it's set up on a wooden floor so the left bass pedal creeps further and further away until I can't reach it any more.
Ride cymbal mounted on a round rack with a mounting arm that just doesn't stay put and rotates round until the cymbal is resting on the floor tom.

This doesn't look as bad as I remember it being but it was pretty awkward at the time:

428322_110581399067105_1347737839_n.jpg
 
Lately it's been mine! (I really need a new kit.)
 
I attended a jam night on Wednesday with Henri & Madge. Someone saw fit to risk their equipment & take a photo of me :( Anyhow, this is the kit that Madge played in the video clip of her band's first gig. I'm 6ft tall, but Madge is (ahem) not quite so tall ;)

Throne was super low, & snare very high (+ a weird angle). I managed to adjust those before I played, but the cymbal & hihat heights were measured in barometric pressure & weirdly positioned far away! Serious tom angles & cardboard tuning completed the picture. I struggled with it, so lord knows how Madge managed to play it. Henri had the same mountaineering challenge too :(

The whole point is this, I came away thinking it was a pretty bad kit, but compared to the stories here thus far, it wasn't that bad at all. I conclude that I'm utterly spoilt, but it hasn't always been like that.
 

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You look very at ease while maintaining good posture Andy.
 
A funk band was playing locally that had a "deep in the pocket" bass player, and fabulous
guitarist....the drummer was very wanting to say the least. There were several drummers in the house and we took turns sitting in for several tunes each (for which the rest of the band
was very grateful...and the drummer didn't mind at all because he mostly wanted to get drunk). There was one stipulation...that we didn't change anything. 4 piece kit with ride, crash and hats. The kick, snare, and hats were within reach so we bothered to sit in. The crash was accessable only by standing completely up and reaching for it. The ride was so
far away and to the right that you couldn't reach it at all while sitting. Still, the hats, snare
and bass made things happen. All in all, it was fun because it was so weird...and it sounded
very good within the limitations.
 
The worst kit I've ever played was my first drum kit! A POS used St. George MIJ that my parents bought for me when I was fourteen.
 
I was living in Virginia outside D.C. at the time going to college. Was eating breakfast at an IHOP restaurant and the waiter noticed my Zildjian t shirt. Long story short, his band needed a drummer so I went to their basement practice space to audition. They were Incubus, Sevendust rap metal style, but more 311 funky if you know what I mean. Chilli Peppers vibe. And all my age exactly.
When I called to confirm, he told me they had drums and not to bring mine, use theirs it would be easier. That is never good. I did bring my cymbals and bass pedal I think. I get down there and its a beat to living heck CB kit. Ugh.. pressed brass cymbals they decide to have me leave on. With flowers drawn all over them in colored marker. hmm.. Christmas tree metallic tinsel around the bass drum front hoop. Thin wobbly stands that won't adjust. Dented heads. They did welcome me tuning them and were happy with the result. And I did get to use my pedal as theirs was kind of broken a bit. I didn't get the gig as I was to replace the other drummer who was moving away, and he moved right back and resumed playing with them. Oh, well. Funny enough they all had super high end nice guitars and amps with huge fancy pedalboards and a nice P.A. system. Hmmm again?
 
So my mom and stepdad had gone on about my drum playing down in Florida where they've retired to, and the band at their local lounge-watering-hole invited me to sit in for a couple of songs if I ever came down to visit. I'm like, sure.

Then I walk in and see this thing.

Aside from the glaring obvious things wrong with this refugee from the Tom Angles thread, there's no floor tom, the cymbals are jacked up to uncomfortable heights, and (I don't know if you can tell from the picture) the snare drum is up beside the kick. Like, underneath the left rack tom. It's canted at about 45 degrees towards me, it has a slackly tuned Pinstripe batter (not coated) with a washcloth duct-taped to it.

And the throne is broken.

As the band's drummer gets up to make a beeline to the bar, he snarls, "Don't touch anything!"

I limp through a song, I move to get up, the keyboard player looks at me and goes, "No, no, stay right there," and we go through two or three more songs. I guess they were happy to have someone sober playing the drums for a change. At one point the keyboard player points back at me and yells, "DRUM SOLO!" I swear, it's like a bad dream induced by eating bad Thai food or something.

The set ends and I slide out from behind this torture machine. The regular drummer comes up to me with a bottle of bubbly and says I did a <bleeping> awesome <bleeping> job, man (in front of my wife and mom). So we open it, have a drink or two, chilling. The band starts to reconvene on the stage... except for the drummer. He's passed out in a booth,

Guess who got to finish the set? (At least I moved the snare while he was passed out...)

The empty TIPS jar says it all :) Funny story. Before I got my beautiful Gretsch Catalina Maples I played on an electronic cheapie - Simmons SD7PK. The crosstalk between the snare and hi-hat on most of the kits was so bad that I had to play either behind or ahead of the beat in order to hear the snare drum. No amount of adjustments would work. The end result was that I learned to play behind the beat though :)


MM
 
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The shared kit on the main stage at the Milwaukee Metalfest in 1999. Kicks and toms were shared, we had to supply our own snare and stand, cymbals and stands, pedals, and throne.

The kit was 2 kicks, 2 rack toms, and 1 floor tom. The kicks were at least 24's and set about a mile apart from each other, the toms were power sizes and set up flat. I sit fairly low. There was at least a foot between the snare head and the tom heads. I also used a rack at the time, so I had to cobble together some stands for my cymbals, which I could not reach because of the size and setup of the kit. It was awful.
 
Bought a Tama Swingstar online few years back as a band practice kit For 150.00 .. They are long gone.Worst.............
 
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Was at a jam session a few weeks back. It was in this local dive. The people were rugged, and so was the kit. The toms were tuned dead. I mean ultra dead, no sound could be gotten from these taped up monstrosities. The kick was dead as well, with a week's worth of laundry inside. The cymbals, accept for a nice zildjian crash, were all duds. Worst of all, the snare was tuned as dead as the toms, the head tension was lower than the medium tom. I had zero sound.

My guess is that the place had to many hard hitting drummers come by, so they resorted to creating an ultra muffled kit. I tried my best though, and got compliments afterwards.
 
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