What ultimately made you decide on the brand of drums you play?

In the past I bought purely on style/finish and drum sizes. My thinking is that heads and tuning matter much more than the drum itself when it comes to sound. That said I’ve always loved the idea of owning an American made kit. My current kit is a Sonor made in Taiwan. It’s a great sounding little kit but it’s not well made and I’m a “buy local” kind of guy I guess.

I don't have any experience with drums as I've only just started and I play cheap Mapex Tornadoes which I've tuned and changed the heads on.
No-one has said their no good and even tho I'm not a hard hitter I often get asked to keep the volume down....so in my book that makes them good I guess.
 
I don't have any experience with drums as I've only just started and I play cheap Mapex Tornadoes which I've tuned and changed the heads on.
No-one has said their no good and even tho I'm not a hard hitter I often get asked to keep the volume down....so in my book that makes them good I guess.
The Tornadoes are fine as starter kits, as you've discovered. They wouldn't stand up well to the rigors of gigging - the included hardware especially, but they're decent starter kits. They cymbals are worthless, however.

Enjoy them for a year or two but think about the future if you really enjoy drumming. There's no shortage of excellent intermediate kits on the market, the Stage Custom being one of the finest examples. It's a great time to be a drummer.
 
The Tornadoes are fine as starter kits, as you've discovered. They wouldn't stand up well to the rigors of gigging - the included hardware especially, but they're decent starter kits. They cymbals are worthless, however.

Enjoy them for a year or two but think about the future if you really enjoy drumming. There's no shortage of excellent intermediate kits on the market, the Stage Custom being one of the finest examples. It's a great time to be a drummer.

No doubt and I forgot to mention I got them as a weird shell pack deal so I have Yammie 600 hardware and good cymbals...I dont really play much and our rehearsal space has a lovely Pearl kit so they'll do for now I guess. The other poster was right I think about heads and tuning tho...
 
No doubt and I forgot to mention I got them as a weird shell pack deal so I have Yammie 600 hardware and good cymbals...I dont really play much and our rehearsal space has a lovely Pearl kit so they'll do for now I guess. The other poster was right I think about heads and tuning tho...
You're all set then.

I bought a second-hand set of Tornadoes last year to leave at rehearsal spaces instead of one of my more expensive kits. They sounded good with upgraded heads and proper cymbals. You can definitely do a lot with them.
 
I decided on DW about 20 years ago. I had been aware of them for a long time, but I always thought they were too expensive, and in the 90's I liked working with the smaller, boutique guys. I had my old 70's Sligerlands and a new little custom kit, but there was just something missing from those drums. I had a gig at La Bar Bat, in NYC and they had a DW house kit. It was a little beat up, but they sounded amazing. They were really easy to tune up, even with the old heads. I did some looking around on 48th St, and realized that if you don't go for the lacquer finish, the prices were the same as my boutique drums. So I sold the custom kit and have always stuck with DW.

After a couple of years owning DWs, I got to know Billy Ward while we worked on some of his videos, and ultimately got to know John Good. There are a lot of great drum companies out there, but I'm happy to stick with DW. They've made things really easy for me, live and in the studio.
 
My dream since starting to play was to own a high end Ludwig kit. So after years of owning kits from pearl, Tama, PDP and DW, I pulled the trigger a few months ago.

I built my dream kit. I’m over pearl, Tama, DW etc.

It’s either Ludwig or a beautiful Sonor kit.
 
Branding seems more important than drumming and could hold more passion

What does that say?
 
An important recognition, one often overlooked by today's up-and-coming drummers. They don't realize that a lot of the midrange gear on today's market is just as good as, and sometimes better than, the elite equipment of yesteryear. Major strides in production have had a transformational impact on manufacturers' capacities to offer first-rate products at reasonable prices. There's really no need to drop five grand on a drum set these days. You can get a great kit at a fraction of that sum.

Its interesting that cymbals haven’t had the same downward trajectory in price. Why is that?
 
Its interesting that cymbals haven’t had the same downward trajectory in price. Why is that?
I‘m assuming because they still involve a large degree of manufacture by hand. Also metal prices stay high. Thus no downward trajectory for manufacturing costs. I’m just guessing though.

Also I think in the budget to intermediate lines there’s been a huge improvement in bang for your buck even since I started playing. Not to mention brands like Istanbul, Zultan, Wuhan and Dream offering lower price points.
 
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Most important to me is sound, feel and ease of hardware mounting. So for me after trying almost every major brand at some point over the last 40+years - and even some boutique stuff - I know what feels like 'home' to me.

What's not important to me mostly popularity. High priced boutique stuff doesn't suit / interest me either.

Ultimately it's a long, long learning process and over time your ideas and opinions may change as you do.
 
Safe? Maybe..........exciting? naw
I like it when things work correctly and do so for a long time. That excites me more than the next "thing".

I prefer safe. It's usually bundled with longevity.
 
Its interesting that cymbals haven’t had the same downward trajectory in price. Why is that?

As @Griffin mentions, the manufacturing of cymbals remains quite labor intensive. Though some lines, owing to technological advances, are produced with greater efficiency in our era, traditional casting and so forth takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. Inflation keeps prices high in turn.
 
Yamaha is well known for making quality, professional-grade products and great sounding instruments and they are my favorite drums for many reasons. My first set was a Yamaha Power Road in '87. Entry-level, but still could be made to sound good. I marched in H.S. and a couple of years in college and both schools used Yamaha equipment. Back then, we watched the Weckl, Gadd and Vinnie Buddy Rich Scholarship trio so many times that the sound of those Recording Customs is seared into my brain. Since then, I've had Stage Customs, Tour Customs, Rock Tour Customs and Maple Custom Absolute drum sets and many Recording Custom and Signature model snares. I like the fact that Yamaha does so much R&D and they can pull knowledge from their other instrument lines and they enlisted their motorcycle division to make their awesome hardware. It is also one of the few companies in the world that could supply literally every instrument to a full orchestra and the musical output would sound as good or better than it did in the composer's mind. I have many friends who play in orchestras, concert bands and ensembles who simply will not play a brand of instrument other than Yamaha. I even have an old Yamaha Spirit piano from the 70's. Keys are so smooth and it sounds like a baby grand even though it's just a spinet! I have other kits because drums are beautiful and fun, but if I had to choose only one brand to keep and sell all of the rest, I would keep the Yamaha drums and hardware.
 
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