Worst idea in Drumming

I would just like to quote this post so it can be read again ... "some 200kg double braced, titanium plated, nuclear pulsed reinforced thing with nine arms on it" ROFL

Some people dis Dixon stands. When I was assembling my kit I asked for the lightest stands in the shop. The guy kept showing me these big things I kept saying "is there anything lighter?". Finally he delved into the dark cobweb-laded recesses to pull out these little Dixons that cost next to nothing. For joy for joy! When I saw the brand I had a brief twinge because I remembered how inadequate they were in a rock setting, but they're perfect for laid back drummers who hate lugging heavy crap around.

heheee

That's exactly what happened to me! I went into a store and asked for the lightest simplest stand they had, and even though they had those crappy little Dixon's, they didn't show me those and actually tried to refuse to sell me them. He kept saying "No, these won't do. You need something cooler, and bigger and more retro if you're going for the little straight stand look" and I had to keep explaining that I wasn't going for a 'look' but he wouldn't believe me.

He took me over to these new DW stands that were all retro and hip and looked like the old stands from the 60's etc, and the guy says "Hey man, if you're looking for that hip retro look like Ringo, you can't go past these babies. All the chicks will dig you, and as long as you buy that retro drum kit with a 26" bass drum, you'll get all the gigs in town with these stands" after which I said "Hmm, I was actually just looking for the lightest, cheapest straight stand. I wasn't really after the chick magnet, retro Ringo, gig getting stands that cost $200 nor the 26" bass drum which defeats the purpose of my getting the lightest stuff I can find. What about that little stand over there hiding up the very back tucked away behind everything else?" at which the guy just shook his head and walked away obviously thinking "What's he even into music for if he doesn't want those chick magnet, retro Ringo, gig getting stands along with the 26" bass drum in cool swirly psychedelic patterns? That's not the look"
 
Jazzin, there's another way to look at mounted FT's. When I had my previous two kits the FT was hung off the right crash cymbal stand. The top "shell" tom was mounted off the left side cymbal stand. When I had lighter rides, I even had that on a boom off the right side stand. Since I don't typically fold up the tops of my stands, I was up and running in no time. And everything was in the exact same place. I only had to position two things on the floor and 4-5 things fell into place. I even had cowbell brackets and all set up so all I had to do was open up the stand base, set it on the floor and hang everything on it. Couldn't be quicker. In or out.
 
... 'drumming' shoes too.....because they are different from normal shoes you put on your feet. You put them on your feet and then press the foot pedals with them. Amazing isn't it? Revolutionary! They also are made by special drumming fiber that makes all your playing better. Just like those piano shoes that make your chords sound better.
Quite a few people spend a considerable amount of time searching for the perfect shoe. Drumming shoes are very affordable and suit the needs of most of those people as far as I have seen. They make sense as much as drumming gloves and stick tape - most drummers don't need them, but they make life easer for those who do.
 
heheee

That's exactly what happened to me! I went into a store and asked for the lightest simplest stand they had, and even though they had those crappy little Dixon's, they didn't show me those and actually tried to refuse to sell me them. He kept saying "No, these won't do. You need something cooler, and bigger and more retro if you're going for the little straight stand look" and I had to keep explaining that I wasn't going for a 'look' but he wouldn't believe me.

He took me over to these new DW stands that were all retro and hip and looked like the old stands from the 60's etc, and the guy says "Hey man, if you're looking for that hip retro look like Ringo, you can't go past these babies. All the chicks will dig you, and as long as you buy that retro drum kit with a 26" bass drum, you'll get all the gigs in town with these stands" after which I said "Hmm, I was actually just looking for the lightest, cheapest straight stand. I wasn't really after the chick magnet, retro Ringo, gig getting stands that cost $200 nor the 26" bass drum which defeats the purpose of my getting the lightest stuff I can find. What about that little stand over there hiding up the very back tucked away behind everything else?" at which the guy just shook his head and walked away obviously thinking "What's he even into music for if he doesn't want those chick magnet, retro Ringo, gig getting stands along with the 26" bass drum in cool swirly psychedelic patterns? That's not the look"

Fair dinks? They were trying to flog you pretend-retro stands? Ha! I wonder if they're on commission and our cheapo Dixons aren't too lucrative?

All power to Dixons, I say. Have to admit that the kick pedal is crap, though - but it was cheap and light and fortunately my kick playing is so fundamental and understated that it's only a minor inconvenience :)
 
BTW, why haven't there been any more championships?

Just saw this. Apparently Boo has been very successful marketing and selling his WFD video arcade game, and that shouldn't surprise. He can actually make money doing this. He never made any money off the competitions and was always getting crap from the NAMM people who thought he was a distraction, when all it did was make for a fun side activity and create an incredible amount of interest. Now I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that NAMM wishes they had him back. Some of the promotional stuff they came up with after Boo left just hasn't panned out like they thought it would.

Boo's longtime WFD co owner Craig Allen also pulled out when his new full time job truly became full time in every way. I think it was just too much work for 1 guy to do. Of course no one was surprised when the usual crowd tried to claim that world championships ended due to lack of interest when nothing was further from the truth. When I walked away exactly 2 years ago the whole thing was as popular as ever, and the videos have remained viral on Youtube.

I know I get a lot of junk from some people for saying this, but I've always thought that the biggest end of the criticism came from rival comps/ especially one from a large music chain/ and a lot of guys angry that their sell didn't sell as much as this sell. It was such a simple idea as to be maddening, alongside how those without this one singular skill felt left out and simply lashed out under the guise of unrelated musicianship principles that always seemed to want to divert attention over to what the critics themselves were doing at the time. During my very little time in the actual music profession, I've noticed almost every time that most of the big fights are over one group supposedly getting a marketing leg up over another group.

Although I'm finished with that experience I wish any future event the very best. I think it would also be cool to see Tom Grossett get to finally beat Mangini's overall world record on a big stage, and be able to use that to market whatever plans he has for the future. He's worked really hard and deserves it.
 
how many millions are spent trying to create a better tom mount, but the poor bass drum - clamp a pedal on the wood hoop and drop it on the floor - we got to the moon, cant we think of a better way to attach the pedal to a bass drum???
All of the crazy tom mounts always just seemed like a marketing gimmick to me anyway. I've heard it explained that the toms sound better because the shells have not had holes drilled in them for the mounting bracket.

That should make you laugh.

How many friggin' holes are drilled in the shell for the lugs? Drilling 24-32 holes in the shell is okay, but a couple more for the mounting bracket is going to make a big difference in the sound? And then I've seen toms with fancy thingamabob mounting systems included with kits that have good old three-leg floor toms. That's holes for three mounting brackets drilled into the floor tom, but that sounds okay whereas the rack toms would not? And then the bass drums have even more holes in them, plus holes for the spurs, plus often a big hole for the tom stand.

I don't know, maybe some folks can hear a difference in the sound of a tom on some fancy suspension system rather than an old-fashioned mounting bracket, but I sure can't.
 
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OOOH, cool thread. Off the top of my head- suspended floor toms. What the hell are those about!? I don't need 'em to ring that long, they bounce all over the place, I can't rest my sticks on them, and I need to attach them to a 70 pound cymbal stand so it doesn't tip over! Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em.
I always hated those, too, especially since I prefer 16" and 18" floor toms. I can't help thinking, "Look, that guy's pretending that a 14" rack tom is a floor tom!" . . . which is odd, because I'm usually the complete opposite of a purist, but, well, at least I'd never buy a kit that only had a small suspended "floor" tom. When those sets first started appearing in the 80s I was tempted to use 14", 16" and 18" floor toms, each set up on three legs, as rack toms, and find a 20" floor tom to complete the set. Heck, that still sounds like a fun idea to me.
 
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Pre-dating the Remo Muffle, there was a product called "dead rings" or something like that. Billy Cobham actually endorsed them for a brief moment. There foam rings that had a sticky surface and you glued them to the underside of your drum heads to get a very dead 70's sound.
At one point in the 70s, I'd say that at least 2/3, maybe 3/4 of the drummers I knew had those or something equivalent. I was too cheap to buy them for my kit--and that was more of a problem because I was playing a 11 piece kit at the time, excluding the snare. My dad had a friend who could get large sheets of foam cheaply, so I bought two sheets and cut them so that they wrapped around the entire inside surface of the toms and bass drums, lol.

I went into the studio like that a couple times, too, and the producer and engineers liked the sound.
 
Power toms, concert toms, dead bass drums, open bass drums, piccolo snares, 12" snares, etc - that stuff to me is a constant cycling of what's in and out of fashion. Concert toms were almost the most un-hip thing imaginable in the early-mid 90s but now I'm seeing them more frequently. I think this stuff is just a constant cycle of rediscovery every 20-30 years.
It's the same idea as fashion in general. It's pushed by the manufacturers. They need you to keep buying stuff, so they're hoping that if they can make your gear from 7-10 years ago unfashionable, you'll cave in to peer pressure and lay out some more dough to be in style.

Over time, It's also easier to recycle some old ideas rather than coming up with new ones--and nostalgia after awhile helps drive that, too, so in 25-30 years, say, the same ideas can come around again, because by the time, most folks have long since parted with that gear and will need to buy it again.
 
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Well things are only as limiting as you make them. I use double bass in a lot of music that isn't necessarily rock or metal.
Me, too. It seems like maybe some folks can only conceive of doing endless 16ths, 32nds, etc. on them. You can use two sticks on your snare drum in any kind of music--you can use two bass drums, or two beaters on one for any kind of music, too. Practicing rudiments on double bass is one good way to get ideas for other kinds of things you can do . . . heck, even just the ability to do flams on the bass drum is nice.
Stock no name cymbals that usually come with a budget kit are a travesty I think you'd be better off hitting a dust bin lid personally.
I like a kit with a very wide variety of sounds. I like having the dustbin lid sound available, and those cymbals have the advantage of having holes already drilled in them. ;-)
 
Yup. Good find, Kev. I thought those things were super cool when they first came out lol. I don't mind a bit of ugliness if it's interesting - like bulldogs, for example :) The problem was that you needed much bigger cases than usual for them.

Funny that people here are more offended by messed up inventions to be played in real time than the gadgets that are squeezing us out.
I almost picked up a used North set two weeks ago . . . the reason it was only "almost" was because I realized that I'd have to get custom cases made for them that would cost far more than the drums (although Staccato cases might work), and it would probably also be next to impossible for find parts if I would need to replace a lug or something.

I don't at all mind concert toms. I had a Ludwig vistalite kit with concert toms that I wish I would have never sold. It was probably my favorite sounding kit out of everything I've had so far. At some point in the future, I'm going to buy another vistalite kit.
 
To address the question directly. From my parents perspective it was the idea of letting me buy a drum kit when I was 14!
 
This has to rack right up there:

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I believe the product is called the Gibraltar Paperweight.
I want one of those with a Duallist triple kick pedal.
 
Why do you think this is a bad idea? It made learning how to play songs free and highly accessible. Who cares if it's not sheet? I can read both sheet and tab, and learn by ear, too. Learning tabs might not make you better at learning drumming by ear, or by sheet, but it doesn't make you worse.
I don't know if I've ever seen drum tablature. What the heck would the difference be? Just that there are no note stems, etc. to indicate the exact rhythms?
 
The worst idea in drumming is the idea of having no more new ideas. Every new idea in drumming has a place and I welcome and cherish all of them! Even the mystical air-inflated bearing edge, though quite frankly I would have no need for such a thing.

I sure am hoping my new ideas for drums that I am working on don't end up in this thread or one like it....
 
I'll tell ya the worst idea in drumming. Outdoor drum pr0n. I'm mean really. Who, besides a gigging drummer, sets up their drums outside? They're drums. Not a car. Not lawn furniture. They belong inside in their natural habitat.
 
OK, You're a drum company. You want your drums to sound good.
Why not put good heads on them!!! HELLO!!! . . .
Yeah, and what's particularly dumb about that is that beginners, especially younger kids, are not likely to know that the problem is the heads. So they get a $600 Tama kit, say, it comes with those stock heads, and it doesn't sound so great. Then maybe they hear someone playing, say, a Sonor kit with good heads on it, and figure the crucial difference must be the drums. So when it comes time to buy another kit, they avoid Tama. Of course the reverse could happen, too (Sonor first, then they hear a Tama kit with good heads) . . . so then they'd avoid Sonor. Either way, it's a bonehead move in terms of acquiring long-term, loyal customers when you're marketing entry-level kits.
 
Ultra-heavy hardware of any kind- If you aren't playing metal or some other heavy-hitting genre of music you just don't need it. Having big, beefy hardware if you are playing coffee shop gigs is teh stoopid.
 
Now I do like the idea of mounted floor toms as you can position them closer to you without the feet getting in the way
I've always used floor toms with legs, and if I had my floor tom and snare any closer to me, my leg couldn't possibly fit in between to play the bass drum. (I like all my drums really close together, so that the least amount of arm movement is required to hit stuff--I'd say it's because it's more efficient/you can get to everything with a lot more speed and precision, but it's probably just as much because I'm lazy.)
and they are usually a lot easier to pack as Polly stated.
But heck, maybe I'm not that lazy. How difficult is it to undo three knobs and move the legs up?
 
Yeah, I get that, and I was never a hater of deep toms (I actually like them except for their difficult placement), but I just had my 22x18 shortened by 4 inches a couple months ago and it's like a weight has been lifted. It's so much easier to hear it now.

If want a bigger sound, I'd rather go with a larger diameter than a longer tube. I think I might not like deep sounds on a kick.
Just mount a pedal on a 36" concert bass drum.
 
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