Bo Eder
Platinum Member
....and why I can probably not play a small kit.
So, as most of you here know, I walked into my local music store and saw that cute little Burgundy Sparkle Tama Silverstar bop kit, and just decided to drop the money on it and brought it home.
My close personal internet friends here are thinking Heresy! He had a Sonor Safari! What the heck is he doing now! And all this negative talk about Drum Workshop and going retro with his pedals!
I posted here that the bass drum lift on the Silverstar was in the wrong place, and fixing it shouldn't mean I add $30 to the tab for another piece of hardware to mount the pedal, or spend $30 on a special beater. So there's strike one for Tama. Strike two happened the next day when I discovered the wrap beginning to bubble up from the heat in my patio room - heaven forbid I actually take the drums out in to the sun! It was strange that Tama let this one out of the factory. Could it be possible to purchase a lemon drumset?
I tried new heads on the bass drum and couldn't get it to sound just right - after a while I wondered if I knew what I was doing. Then I concluded at the end of it that maybe little kits with little bass drums just aren't my thing or maybe 18" bass drums are bad, 16" bass drum are good. I normally play a 20" and you'd think I'd be able to get the 18" to sound at least close to my 20", but no.
So I felt a little guilty bringing the kit back to the store and saying "I'd like my money back, please". They were happy to do it - it's not like I kept it for 28 days and then brought it back on the 30th day obviously having used it on a few gigs. I would've worked with the bubbling, and made some kind of compromise about the bass drum sound with or without using the lift. But then again, I thought, this kit is a Tama - I shouldn't have to work with anything for the money spent. If I had bought some second-hand kit for $100 that's seen better days, then yes I'll work with it. But on a new kit?
After telling the store clerk of all these problems, and that yes, I even bought heads that I can no longer use because I don't own another 18" bass drum, they asked me if I wanted to them get me another one. I said no. This whole experience just turned me off of the whole cheap, little kit syndrome. And then I thought about when I go out to play, do I want to play drums that everybody else has? It's an ego thing, right? Like Andy with his Gurus, or Larry with his prized DW's - we as drummers don't want to look like the next guy anyway. Pol's got that woman thing going on so it doesn't matter what she plays - nobody's looking at the drums anyway
So, this week's work-around for traveling easier takes a different slant: I just keep two complete sets of hardware ready to go! When I think about it, the setting up and striking of the hardware is what takes all the life out of me. Why not just keep another set cased up and ready to go, and when it's time to go, just pack up the drums and leave the house hardware in place in the house? That should do the trick! I like the drums, those are easy to move, and I know they sound great. This is like an epiphany - in fact, what if I added a 12" generic tom to that hardware in waiting and then I only had to pack up the snare, floor tom, bass drum, and cymbals to go out and play?
I'm going to try exactly that. Does that sound crazy? I like the sound of my high-end drums. That should be what my audience sees and hears too, don't you think?
And there - I can slam Tama too
So, as most of you here know, I walked into my local music store and saw that cute little Burgundy Sparkle Tama Silverstar bop kit, and just decided to drop the money on it and brought it home.
My close personal internet friends here are thinking Heresy! He had a Sonor Safari! What the heck is he doing now! And all this negative talk about Drum Workshop and going retro with his pedals!
I posted here that the bass drum lift on the Silverstar was in the wrong place, and fixing it shouldn't mean I add $30 to the tab for another piece of hardware to mount the pedal, or spend $30 on a special beater. So there's strike one for Tama. Strike two happened the next day when I discovered the wrap beginning to bubble up from the heat in my patio room - heaven forbid I actually take the drums out in to the sun! It was strange that Tama let this one out of the factory. Could it be possible to purchase a lemon drumset?
I tried new heads on the bass drum and couldn't get it to sound just right - after a while I wondered if I knew what I was doing. Then I concluded at the end of it that maybe little kits with little bass drums just aren't my thing or maybe 18" bass drums are bad, 16" bass drum are good. I normally play a 20" and you'd think I'd be able to get the 18" to sound at least close to my 20", but no.
So I felt a little guilty bringing the kit back to the store and saying "I'd like my money back, please". They were happy to do it - it's not like I kept it for 28 days and then brought it back on the 30th day obviously having used it on a few gigs. I would've worked with the bubbling, and made some kind of compromise about the bass drum sound with or without using the lift. But then again, I thought, this kit is a Tama - I shouldn't have to work with anything for the money spent. If I had bought some second-hand kit for $100 that's seen better days, then yes I'll work with it. But on a new kit?
After telling the store clerk of all these problems, and that yes, I even bought heads that I can no longer use because I don't own another 18" bass drum, they asked me if I wanted to them get me another one. I said no. This whole experience just turned me off of the whole cheap, little kit syndrome. And then I thought about when I go out to play, do I want to play drums that everybody else has? It's an ego thing, right? Like Andy with his Gurus, or Larry with his prized DW's - we as drummers don't want to look like the next guy anyway. Pol's got that woman thing going on so it doesn't matter what she plays - nobody's looking at the drums anyway
So, this week's work-around for traveling easier takes a different slant: I just keep two complete sets of hardware ready to go! When I think about it, the setting up and striking of the hardware is what takes all the life out of me. Why not just keep another set cased up and ready to go, and when it's time to go, just pack up the drums and leave the house hardware in place in the house? That should do the trick! I like the drums, those are easy to move, and I know they sound great. This is like an epiphany - in fact, what if I added a 12" generic tom to that hardware in waiting and then I only had to pack up the snare, floor tom, bass drum, and cymbals to go out and play?
I'm going to try exactly that. Does that sound crazy? I like the sound of my high-end drums. That should be what my audience sees and hears too, don't you think?
And there - I can slam Tama too