3 piece kits

I like having two toms, but ditching the rack tom has crossed my mind more than once. I used to play kick/snare/hi-hats with an Americana trio - no toms at all - talk about easy setup/teardown.

Did you play with two (or more) toms before stripping down to a 3-piece?
 
yeah i played with a rack and a floor but this setup feels better. i have my rack sitting around to use for rock sessions and stuff, but i really like my setup. another sort of unorthodox thing i do is use a ride hats and a china. no crashes. awhile ago i decided to sort of form my own sound with my gear and this is what came of it.
 
I use a 14" rack in the FT position and a 20" A Custom Ride that crashes well... Those plus kick, hats, and snare help to keep me focused on the groove! I love playing this way, but I'll occasionally add a rack and crash...
 
I do...

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I do...[/IMG]

Uuum... That's actually a 4 piece. Kick, snare, rack, floor.

I've given it a try a few times by ditching the floor tom but I think that a 4 piece is about as small as I can go for a full kit.

I did record my last demo with a 2 piece but it was really our less complicated songs.
 
I do, have been for a long time. I don't even know where the mount for my rack tom is anymore. I've got the standard floor/bass/snare along with two rides, one crash and hats.

We have a thread sort of dedicated to these setups in the "Your Gear" section of the forum. The thread is called "Show us your Rackless tom Set Ups" posted by Rick H.
 
I never quite understood why to use a 3 piece kit, I mean, there were times when I was gigging that I thought: "oh, maybe I'll just go with the FT to carry less stuff", but then a minute later I realised that I was going to take a huge bass drum, a fairly big floor tom, a snare, throne and cymbals.. and I was going to leave the smallest drum home? No way. After all, it's the smallest drum to carry around, so I took it.

I play a 4 piece. If I really need to save time and space, I'll gig with a 2 piece (SD and BD). To take 3 pieces, I just take 4 and feel more comfortable.

Cheers. :)
 
The smallest kit I can conceive is a 4pc with hats and a particularly good crash/ride. Anything less and I absolutely don't believe enough variety of sound can be achieved outside of a VERY narrow band of musical applications.
 
I have tried playing with just the kick, snare and floor but it didn't really feel too comfortable to me.

Like much others have said it's either a 2 piece or a four, 2 pieces are cool because it really does keep you more focused on the beat, i tend to overuse my toms now and again so the 2's are actually probably better for me, but i like having them around thats why i now play a one up two down set
 
I played with a power-pop band where I used a kick, snare, hats, and a ride. I showed up with a crash and the singer yelled: "Get that the f*** outa here!" It was fun and challenging.
 
I played a mini-gig on New Years, just to entertain friends and party goers. The challenge was that we were playing in a hotel room, a huge hotel room but a hotel room none the less. For that gig I ended up playing a kit composed of my party drum, basically a snare/tambourine hybrid (http://www.drummerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67753) a suitcase kick two 10" splashes used as hats and a 14" crash. It really worked but I would have loved a ride and a rack tom. I think that I really could make this work if I had to and I suppose one of these days I want to try a gig with a full on 3 piece kit.
 
I played with a power-pop band where I used a kick, snare, hats, and a ride. I showed up with a crash and the singer yelled: "Get that the f*** outa here!" It was fun and challenging.

Power pop with just hats, ride, kick, and snare? Sounds odd. That setup is usually ideal for jazz or some blues. Most power pop I'm aware of has crash cymbals audibly used--or at least a crash/ride, if we're talking about all these corporate punk-rock garage type bands abounding everywhere these days.
 
I play snare-BD-FT with hihat, 2xcrash, 2xride and sometimes one or more splash.

For me it was not really driven by set up/break down issues but having enough ride options on my kit. I found that I was hardly using the rack tom but felt restricted by having only 1 ride. If I used my Giant Beat 20" I missed the ping of my Sabian Raw Bell Dry Ride and if I had the RBDR I missed the sizzle of the Giant Beat. So I ditched the rack tom and put a second ride on the kit instead.
 
Last time I recorded drums in November I used a Kumu five piece, but threw half of it out of the live room when I realised that there was no point. I kept the three piece, but didn't use the floor tom at all. It let me get my cymbals into easier positions to record and play.

I find that is often the case when you're recording. Work out what you actually need, then throw the rest out. The more you have, the more likely you're going to have loose screws and dodgy resonances that you can't edit out.
 
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