What is something you did on (or to) your drums that you cringe about now?

Cmdr. Ross

Cmdr. Ross

Platinum Member
For me it was having as many drums and cymbals as possible as a teenager in 1987. I went through my Neil Peart phase thinking that’s what drummers did to be good.
Luckily age and wisdom took over and I learned to do more with less.
 
When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I took the bottom heads off my Gretsch kit and muffled the heck out of the batter heads. I guess I was going for that "cardboard box" sound that was popular on many recordings back then. Today, I like my toms to sing openly.

I also used to mount my crash cymbals high above my kit because I thought it looked cool. Ergonomically, it was foolish.
 
why would I want to relive cringe ?!!
I sprayed a Remo snare head with red day glo orange paint when I was 14.
along with black contact paper here and there.. full disclosure I may have painted some basement light bulbs red for mood
 
Last edited:
My old pawn shop Slingerland bass & tom were painted red. They scratched very easily (I didn't have cases for them) so I decided to strip the paint off using liquid paint stripper. It was my first time using that technique (I was 14) and I wouldn't use liquid paint stripper for another 20+ years (on doors of an old house). It was a hideous process that left my drums with streaks of red stain and scrapes from the drywall broad knife I used to remove the stripper gel, so I resorted to sandpaper. I was completely clueless about the shape and form of the bearing edge. I regretted it.

For the first six or seven years owning this kit, I lived in a house on the beach and the salt air would turn my cymbals green from oxidation. My mother suggested Brasso to clean them (she used Brasso on her candlestick holders) and I probably removed a few dozen grams of metal while I scrubbed Brasso on my Zyn & Zildjian cymbals using steel wool (I was clueless; If I'd had an orbital sander I would've used it).

I also took Brasso and steel wool to my hardware. Let me point out that once the chrome plating is removed and the steel is bare, it will rust very quickly, and completely.

Nowadays, the only chemical that touches my shells is Dunlop Formula 65.
The only chemical that touches my hardware is Nevr-Dull.
The only thing touching my cymbals is a dry cloth.

Live & learn.
 
Last edited:
I used to play one of those black 13" Pearl piccolo snare drums as my primary while using 3 different splashes on my kit.

Doing this now would make the fillings in my teeth hurt.

As for stupid placement of gear and other things, I think I was open to trying anything. I put stuff in wacky places just to see if it would work. Whatever configuration was possible for a 3-up/1-down, I experimented with it and gave it a shot. After a few years of trying just about every kind of placement, my kit is the same configuration as Ringo et al. It. Just. Works.
 
I think the stupidest thing one of our bands did back in the 1990s was try to use those 500w halogen work lights you get from Lowes as our show lights. One of the guys ended up with some gels for stage lights, and we decided to put those on on the work lights. We get into our first song at a show, and we start smelling burning plastic. Yup, those lights only took about 30 seconds to absolutely fry through those gels.

We had so many other equipment failures it was pathetic. We were so poor as a band that we tried absolutely everything to make the best show possible. We had so much fun failing miserably.
 
I started as an adult, so I didn't really do all the classic immature mistakes...

That said, one of the guys that I thought was an experienced drummer back when I started insisted all the heads have a healthy dose of tape on them to muffle them. Looking back, that kit looked and sounded ridiculous...
 
brady said:
I started as an adult, so I didn't really do all the classic immature mistakes...

That said, one of the guys that I thought was an experienced drummer back when I started insisted all the heads have a healthy dose of tape on them to muffle them. Looking back, that kit looked and sounded ridiculous...
Click to expand...
I had that experience when I first learned about triggers. 1986, I went with a bud to help his older brother do some work in a club he did sound for. As the club wasn't open for business yet, I got to see the drum kit on stage & noticed his kit was all taped up & sounded dead. Then I saw these little pads on the edge with a wire.
He told me all about how they (and he) make the sound.
16 year old me didn't understand why any drummer would deaden their great sounding kit for someone else to make the sound for them.

Now I see that happen all the time.
 
My first set (1975 - 1976, I was a teenager then) was a Meazzi Hollywood with 20" bass drum, 13" tom and 16" floor tom. The singer of our group had also been a drummer and let me use his equipment as well, which as far as drums were concerned was of very poor quality (Wooding by Meazzi). Moreover, his kit was green in color, while mine was a kind of dark brown. Anyway, I wanted to take advantage of having more drums, so I was able to mount my 16" floor tom on an extremely weak Hollywood snare stand and position it as a second tom. I would then use the green floor tom from the other kit as a regular floor tom. Well, imagine the stability of a 16 "x16" floor tom mounted on a less-than-solid snare stand, the awkwardness of the height of the floor tom itself, and the aesthetics of a 9" deep tom next to a 16" deep floor tom, both over a 20" bass drum ...
 
I once put Evans Hydraulic heads on my Tama Rockstars.

The good news is that I'm no longer into masochism, so it's single-ply coated for me most of the time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top