A J
Silver Member
I'm a nobody; a bar-band drummer with mediocre skills. Take my advice with a grain of salt. I have owned a number of professional-level kits.
Gretsch Renown
Yamaha Recording Custom
Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute
Tama Artstar Custom
Pearl Masters
Tama B/B
You're not gonna like what I have to say.
They are all great drums, but they don't really sound THAT great. No drum series completely blows away the others. They're all just OK; that is they all sound exactly as they're supposed to. In the end, I sold off everything except the Pearls. Why the Pearls? Because I liked the Pearl hardware, rims and mounting systems better than the others.
Yeah... It's kind of a dumb reason to select one series of drums over the others, but to me it made a difference. For example... The Gretsch Renown looked and sounded great but... I really struggled to get the floor tom into the case given the design of the leg mounts. Also, the floor tom leg mounts were always just a little too short for me. Annoying.
Gretsch Renown
Yamaha Recording Custom
Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute
Tama Artstar Custom
Pearl Masters
Tama B/B
You're not gonna like what I have to say.
They are all great drums, but they don't really sound THAT great. No drum series completely blows away the others. They're all just OK; that is they all sound exactly as they're supposed to. In the end, I sold off everything except the Pearls. Why the Pearls? Because I liked the Pearl hardware, rims and mounting systems better than the others.
Yeah... It's kind of a dumb reason to select one series of drums over the others, but to me it made a difference. For example... The Gretsch Renown looked and sounded great but... I really struggled to get the floor tom into the case given the design of the leg mounts. Also, the floor tom leg mounts were always just a little too short for me. Annoying.