Drums

Ludwig Evolution Evo 6 Piece (Poplar, black wraps) is my stays-at-home practice room kit. Remo pinstripe clear tops, ambassador clear resos. Evans EMAD on the kick.

Yamaha Stage Custom 7 piece (sans snare) from the ‘90s (Birch, black wraps) is my stays-in-the-bags gigging kit. I love this kit. Kick is 20x16 so lighter and smaller for stage. Evans EC2 coated on top, no idea what’s on bottom. Evans on the kick. I didn’t put these heads on, they came fresh with the kit when I bought it this year. Still looking and sounding great so no need to change yet.

Pearl Export Series 5 piece from the ‘90s (hardwood of some kind, stainless steel wraps). I never play this kit. I got it for $50 and I chopped the kick drum for an e-kit conversion. Yes, I am aware I committed a sin. I was unaware of how good these shells might’ve sounded because they all had mesh heads when I bought it. I plan to re-edge the chop and put this kit to use at some point.

Snare is almost always a Pearl Piccolo 13x3, Remo Emperor X, coated, w/ black dot on top, don’t remember what reso is on that one. Medium tuning, snappy with relatively short decay. Rings nicely on rimshots. I get heaps of compliments on the snare tone, but it only works because the styles I play are pretty loud and upbeat. This snare would be garbage for styles that need softer dynamics.

I have matching snares for the Ludwig and Pearl kits, but they don’t get much use.

I run my practice and stage kits 1-up/1-down the majority of the time, 12x9 and 16x16 toms respectively (tuned low). Occasionally busting out the larger array of toms for recording. Rarely for gigging.

Cymbals are all Meinl, most are Classics Custom Dual: 20” ride, 18” crash, 16” crash, 16” china trash crash (Classics Custom Dark), 15” hats, 12” trash splash, 10” splash.

Two cymbal stands on the ground. On the right is a tree that holds four cymbals. The left one just holds the 16” crash. Boom arm off the hi hat to hold the 10” splash. Working on getting duplicates of my stands for gigging. Most of my hardware is Gibraltar, but I have one super beefy PDP cymbal stand that I use as the base for the cymbal tree. I love the design, and have considered switching all my hardware to PDP, but I’m practical and don’t want to throw more money at my setup than I have to.

Tamborine hi hat topper. Secondary tamb mounted to the hat stand that I can hit when I want lots more tamb sound.

Kick pedals and hat stand are DW 3000. I throw the secondary kick pedal to the left of my hat pedal so that I can position the hat stand closer to the snare. Weird at first, but ergonomically so much better. DW clearly designed this to be possible, so I can’t be the only one who rocks this pedal setup.

TNR TrueVibes on the floor tom legs. These are super great. My practice room floor is concrete and it sucks the sustain out of my floor toms. Isolating the floor toms makes them resonate for DAYS.

I also have an e-kit that stays at band rehearsal spot. Alesis Strike brain with some mish-mash of Alesis Surge mesh pads and Lemon cymbals. Drum-Tec mesh heads. Chopped bass drum is on this kit to make it look the part a little better. Have gigged with it, but I strongly prefer an acoustic kit. This kit now only exists to keep the practice volume down.

Dang I have a lot of shite.