I think it would be cool to see more people using 26” bass drums though - and not in your typical “Bonham” situations. I think the last guy using a 26” in a 5-piece configuration for studio dates was JR Robinson.
24 was his main one for most of the times, at least with Yamaha.
A lot of studio cats used the 24”
in those days.
Kenny Aronoff, Tony Thompson, Dominique Messier, etc.
Some of them did have a 26” too.
And they were right. In a studio setting a 24” just works with 12/13/16/18 toms.
Big sound, that can be contained when needed.
Like a bigger paper sheet to work with. You don’t have to use it all but you don’t have to use an extra sheet when you want to draw something larger.
As a kid I started on a 4 piece (12/13/16/22), that quickly became a 6 piece.
I switched from deeper to shallower toms over the years (with the 7” deep rack toms being the most undeep), and went back and forth between 6 and 3 piece setups and everything in between.
The bass drum size went from 18”, through 17”, to 16” deep.
The floor tom sizes fluctuated between 14”’s, 15”’s, 16”’s, and 18”’s. Alone and in combinations, with the 14” being the least used over the last years.
For local gigs on smaller stages, equally smaller drums were much more usefull to me.
Now I’ve decided to pursue my prog rock dreams more I got a 9-piece double bass kit with five 8”/9”/10” deep rack toms, 16” and 22x18” bass drums.
Not meant to take out, and I sit higher and play different music althogether, so I think I can overcome the depth of the rack toms and thus height of the set.
So with this, I go against the new trend of smaller kits by basement/dive bar drummers (which is def there, and for a reason).
