Are you still playing the same brand drums as your first real set?

No. My first kit was a beat up Pearl, black. That's all I can remember - it was the late 70's.

Next was a TAMA kit that I played for years. Then I got into collecting. Owned numerous kits - Yamaha, TAMA, DW, Ludwig, Slingerland, Gretsch, and Arbiter. I played the Yamaha kits most of the time.

A few years back I did a major cull, and sold off everything but the Yamaha kits. Love those drums!
 
Forget the same brand. I'm still playing the first set of drums I ever got. Make that the ONLY set of drums I've ever had. I have added a couple drums to it over time but it includes the original 4 piece set I got when I was 13. I'm now 58. I just put a new set of heads on them for the first time in 40 years. And I took the time to polish the lugs, rims and mounting hardware and wipe down the wrap. They look like new again. Now I want to get a beater kit to use for lugging to gigs, if there are any future gigs. Working on that...
 
In c.1995, I shelled out $1800 for Sonor & Paiste but the Sonor hardware failed: A broken hi hat clutch that took $180 and 6 months to replace, resonance-dampening mounting system, a tom tree that actually cracked and failed.

This led me to research which brands had well-designed, well-made hardware. It came down to the three Japanese Kings: Pearl, Yamaha, Tama. I chose Tama cuz they had/have excellent parts availability. Niche things like brass hoops, pedal springs, clutches, washers, etc. are easily found in stores and online. I also much prefer their starcast mounting system over any other design.

Oh…and Scorched Copper Burst. Prettiest finish I’ve ever laid eyes on.

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:cautious: Yammyfan- My first two kits were either unbranded or cheap kids/starter kits when I was aged 6-12 and couldn’t even guess at the brand name. The Ludwig guess could be right, although Slingerland has been around since before most of us ‘Senior’ citizens. :sleep:
My first kit was a set of blue sparkle Ludwigs from the 60's. Those were traded in for a set of Slingerland's. But my first pro kit was the Cherry Wine stained Granstar Custom Tamas I got from Gary Asher at Nuncie's in Birmingham in the late 80's. 8,10,12,13,16,22 with matching birch 14x6.5 snare with the freedom lugs. I played that kit for 15 yrs before getting my Pearl Reference kit. I eventually sold it for some quick cash and have spent the last 5 yrs trying to get it back.

But there was a set of yellow stained birdseye maple drums stacked up next to the Tamas that Gary offered as well. I always wished I had chosen those instead, although I forget the brand. So with three Tama project kits to play with, I plan to veneer a set in birdseye maple, stain in yellow, and put a lacquer high gloss finish on them. Yes, I would cut them down to fusion sizes first.

EDIT: The blue sparkle Ludwigs were supposedly from a Buddy Rich drum clinic my brother went to in Phoenix Arizona. I don't have anything to back up that claim. It could be just as easy that my brother saw Buddy playing on TV and then got mom to buy him the kit, which would have been some time between 1973 and 1975. And because Buddy would not have given a clinic on a used set, that would make the blue sparkles a 70's Ludwig kit (I think the tom mounts were slotted). Small clarification just to be honest :)
 
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Just wondering how many people on here have stuck to the same brand of drums, hardware and cymbals. Many well known drummers have switched brands at some point for various reasons, but also may have had virtually unlimited access to literally anything they wanted. For the rest of us mere mortals it’s not exactly an inexpensive thing to do depending on the size and quality requirements.
My first “real” branded set back in the 80’s was used Tama. I bought used Zildjians to replace the trash cymbals. Different pieces, but I still play Tama and Zildjian.
What about you?

I played Yamaha drums faithfully for a long time - my first kit ever was a Yamaha and the old maple customs with the gold lugs are still my favorite looking production drums - that was my first big endorsement deal too. I also played Zildjians for a long time.

Then I played a Renown...and I was so floored with the sound coming from those drums that it made me question all kinds of stuff.

Then I left Yamaha and actually decided to support artisan type drum products: So I worked with Bernie Stone from Stone Custom drums on a beautiful little cherry jazz kit and fell in love with Bosphorus cymbals. That was about 7/8 years ago.

Shoot to today and I'm now playing Gretsch and Bosphorus: I also played Evans on all those kits. Sticks are a whole different story....I played the Joe Porcaro made Diamond Tips...then VF bought the IP and they just weren't quite the same. So now I'm playing ProMark and I've been really happy.

Everyone makes great stuff these days though.
 
I went down to a bop kit. Sold my 5 piece kit when I moved.

Brand, not number of pieces or size. ;)

I haven't had that many brands. The majority were Yamaha, but the ones I feel best about are Ludwig.
Probably the least favorite were Sunlite and Mapex.
I'm another one that's not positive what brand I started with. Too young and too long ago.
 
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In c.1995, I shelled out $1800 for Sonor & Paiste but the Sonor hardware failed: A broken hi hat clutch that took $180 and 6 months to replace, resonance-dampening mounting system, a tom tree that actually cracked and failed.

This led me to research which brands had well-designed, well-made hardware. It came down to the three Japanese Kings: Pearl, Yamaha, Tama. I chose Tama cuz they had/have excellent parts availability. Niche things like brass hoops, pedal springs, clutches, washers, etc. are easily found in stores and online. I also much prefer their starcast mounting system over any other design.

Oh…and Scorched Copper Burst. Prettiest finish I’ve ever laid eyes on.

View attachment 96531

beauty

ah yes the typical German engineering and construction. They over design things and are meticulous about 99% of the stuff, but something small but extremely important gets overlooked and the whole system crashes down.
 
beauty

ah yes the typical German engineering and construction. They over design things and are meticulous about 99% of the stuff, but something small but extremely important gets overlooked and the whole system crashes down.
So true. Sonor drums are the bees knees but their mounting hardware gives me fits. Even the dual glide snare strainer which people fawn-over is unnecessarily overdesigned when compared to something simple and perfectly functional as Noble and Cooley's throw-off.

Rant over. Please continue...
 
So true. Sonor drums are the bees knees. Their mounting hardware gives me fits. Even that dual glide snare strainer which people fawn-over is unnecessarily overdesigned when compared to something as simple and functional as Noble and Cooley's throw-off.

Rant over. Please continue...
Tama mounting system is the absolute best, had the designers with the massive catapult system, but the gd round knobs to tighten the mount to the L arm would come loose!! lol
 
I get too quickly "bored" with just one brand, even though that brand might be all I would really "need". I have no clue what brand my first kit was, can't remember any badges on it, only the snare, a Tama Swingstar. So no, count me out of the topic question.... I am the same way with cars, I usually go for a completely different brand every time I change cars. Life is too short to not have owned/experienced different variations on the things you like, if you have the opportunity at least :). That's my viewpoint...As far as cymbals go though, I prefer to stick with the same brand, or else my OCD is going crazy after a while. I played Paiste cymbals pretty early on, so that might be the closest I've been to have sticked with my first gear, but I have owned several brands in between, so... No to that as well :p
 
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I got a new Slingerland drum set in 1963. I still play this same drum set for low volume gigs.
But starting 10 years ago I purchased four other drum sets. Two Yamahas, a Slingerland and a Tama.

.
 
So true. Sonor drums are the bees knees but their mounting hardware gives me fits. Even the dual glide snare strainer which people fawn-over is unnecessarily overdesigned when compared to something simple and perfectly functional as Noble and Cooley's throw-off.

Rant over. Please continue...
I got to check out the SQ2 3-pc at Rhythm Traders last year. I think it took 20 minutes trying to figure out the tom mount before I could sit down on the throne and tap around a little. Of course the finish is so exquisite, there were several store people hovering around trying to prevent the accidental ding or scrape.

How many drummers does it take to adjust a tom on a drumset?
Depends on if it's a Sonor or not.
 
Forget the same brand. I'm still playing the first set of drums I ever got. Make that the ONLY set of drums I've ever had. I have added a couple drums to it over time but it includes the original 4 piece set I got when I was 13. I'm now 58. I just put a new set of heads on them for the first time in 40 years. And I took the time to polish the lugs, rims and mounting hardware and wipe down the wrap. They look like new again. Now I want to get a beater kit to use for lugging to gigs, if there are any future gigs. Working on that...
(y):giggle: This gives me the warm fuzzies. I am envious of you for having your original kit, a major life regret is selling my original Tamas and Zildjians. That and my vinyl collection back in the mid 90’s including every AC/DC, Ted Nugent and Led Zeppelin album ever made and an original Woodstock collection I wish I had back. Fortunately there’s Spotify so I can still listen to the albums...but the drums are irreplaceable.
 
LOL... a concise answer.

If only the OP's post was worded differently. A full chronology of all the kits Bo has owned, with dates and short reviews, would be a fun read!
That will not be forthcoming as I admit there will be some I don’t remember. But, and it must be a bucket list thing, I will have owned and tried mostly all of the big manufacturers pro offerings. I was started off on Slingerland/Ludwig stuff, but loved those Camco sets I saw in the early 70s around SoCal. And being a Los Angeles kid, I gravitated to DW. And even that took me five tries to figure out what I wasn’t liking from DW.
 
Started on what I now realized was almost certainly a Ludwig Acrolite. My first kit was a red sparkle MIJ stencil kit with cymbals which might as well have been pie pans except those might have been sturdier and sounded better.

Got a new Gretsch kit for my 17th birthday and by then I'd started spending my paper route and lawnmowing money on new Zildjian cymbals.

That Gretsch is still in storage on the other side of the continent, along with the Acrolite. But when I got back into drumming a few years back, after more than a decade off, I had my brother send me the hardware and the cymbals. I picked up some crazy cheap kits off CL, but resold most of them. So while I still have the Yamaha Power V Special, I'm now I'm back to playing a Gretsch Catalina Birch with my old Zildjian As, and a few additional Zildjian As I picked up along the way.
 
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