Boom
Silver Member
I’m having some problems with a top of the line/high end/big name kit and I was hoping this forum could help me decide if I’m being too nitpicking or are all of my gripes real ones. Ie. Could you tell me which ones not to worry about and which ones need addressed by the manufacture? I hope no one minds, but I’m going to leave the name of the company out of this till I hear some answers so that I could remove some of the potential biased answers
I ordered what I thought would be my dream drum set in April. Three months later, as it was custom ordered, it arrived. I headed to the drum shop beaming. When I got there, two of the boxes holding the 14 and 16 floor toms were severely damaged and the leg holders were jutting out of the boxes. This bothered me as it appeared to have been packaged very poorly. The 14 was inside a box that it was no longer square around the drum. Ie, you could not place that 14 in it without pushing out the sides of the box which compromises the strength/integrity of the box. And this drum was busted through both the inside box AND the outside box that housed it. To ship it this way seemed completely unacceptable to me.
The drum shop had already looked at those two drums to see if there were any obvious flaws and even with my review, none could be found. I took the drums home and, due to some more recovery time needed from back surgery, I didn’t set them up for a month (yeah, unbearable).
Upon setting up the bass drum I noticed it had a flaw in the paint job. A scuff mark. But, coincidently was located where I would have some rack toms and felt the manufacture would think I had to have damaged it and therefore, I didn’t do anything about it. But, obviously, it bothered me a lot.
14 in floor tom had not been tuned at the manufacture. I knew this because 3 of the lugs were just hanging loose. Another massive disappointment. This manufacture promotes being able to play these drums upon receiving them without anything being done. I later learned why that drum wasn’t tuned. It was because it couldn’t be. It was out of round severely and was returned to manufacturer for replacement. I, for reasons I can’t fathom, didn’t check the rest of the kit immediately upon that discovery.
16 in floor tom has been hard to control in tuning. I got negative feedback about it at my last show. So, I checked for out of round and it is off by a little over 1/8in. So I’m confident that this drum will be replaced under warranty. But that could take 3 months, so I’m obviously not happy about it. Remember, like the 14 this drum was shipped in a box with its hardware sticking out of it.
After realizing that I now have 2 drums out of round, I decided to go over the rest of the kit very carefully. Here is what I found:
22 in bass drum is off by 1/8 inch (out of round?) Is it considered out of round on a drum that big to be off by 1/8? I don’t think this drum sounds that good, so I’m not sure if its because of a personal tuning issue or if that can be the problem. Is this a substantial enough of a problem to have this drum returned?
8 in tom is off by 1/16. I think the drum sounds good, but maybe it should sound better? Is 1/16in out of round substantial enough to care for an 8 in drum? Since the drum is so small, I was thinking it might matter. 8 in tom’s batter bearing edge has over 1” of a rough spot on it. That shouldn’t be considered acceptable should it?
10 inch tom is perfectly round. Easy to tune. It has a small nick on the batter bearing edge. How big of a deal is this? Drum sounds good though.
12 inch tom = somewhat difficult to tune but is not really out of round (not perfect like the 10) and has a nick in the reso and batter bearing edges. The reso one is larger, fwiw. Should I care about that?
I had some corrosion on a couple of hoops and the company was really cool about that and insisted on replacing the whole set of tom hoops (8 hoops).
Cliffs: I have lots of issues with my high end/expensive kit. How many of them are worthy of complaint. I hate to be a complainer, but it is where I am now. Thanks for reading/answering my questions. I've had these drums for 4 months and this is the first time I've removed the heads (except the bass drum).
I ordered what I thought would be my dream drum set in April. Three months later, as it was custom ordered, it arrived. I headed to the drum shop beaming. When I got there, two of the boxes holding the 14 and 16 floor toms were severely damaged and the leg holders were jutting out of the boxes. This bothered me as it appeared to have been packaged very poorly. The 14 was inside a box that it was no longer square around the drum. Ie, you could not place that 14 in it without pushing out the sides of the box which compromises the strength/integrity of the box. And this drum was busted through both the inside box AND the outside box that housed it. To ship it this way seemed completely unacceptable to me.
The drum shop had already looked at those two drums to see if there were any obvious flaws and even with my review, none could be found. I took the drums home and, due to some more recovery time needed from back surgery, I didn’t set them up for a month (yeah, unbearable).
Upon setting up the bass drum I noticed it had a flaw in the paint job. A scuff mark. But, coincidently was located where I would have some rack toms and felt the manufacture would think I had to have damaged it and therefore, I didn’t do anything about it. But, obviously, it bothered me a lot.
14 in floor tom had not been tuned at the manufacture. I knew this because 3 of the lugs were just hanging loose. Another massive disappointment. This manufacture promotes being able to play these drums upon receiving them without anything being done. I later learned why that drum wasn’t tuned. It was because it couldn’t be. It was out of round severely and was returned to manufacturer for replacement. I, for reasons I can’t fathom, didn’t check the rest of the kit immediately upon that discovery.
16 in floor tom has been hard to control in tuning. I got negative feedback about it at my last show. So, I checked for out of round and it is off by a little over 1/8in. So I’m confident that this drum will be replaced under warranty. But that could take 3 months, so I’m obviously not happy about it. Remember, like the 14 this drum was shipped in a box with its hardware sticking out of it.
After realizing that I now have 2 drums out of round, I decided to go over the rest of the kit very carefully. Here is what I found:
22 in bass drum is off by 1/8 inch (out of round?) Is it considered out of round on a drum that big to be off by 1/8? I don’t think this drum sounds that good, so I’m not sure if its because of a personal tuning issue or if that can be the problem. Is this a substantial enough of a problem to have this drum returned?
8 in tom is off by 1/16. I think the drum sounds good, but maybe it should sound better? Is 1/16in out of round substantial enough to care for an 8 in drum? Since the drum is so small, I was thinking it might matter. 8 in tom’s batter bearing edge has over 1” of a rough spot on it. That shouldn’t be considered acceptable should it?
10 inch tom is perfectly round. Easy to tune. It has a small nick on the batter bearing edge. How big of a deal is this? Drum sounds good though.
12 inch tom = somewhat difficult to tune but is not really out of round (not perfect like the 10) and has a nick in the reso and batter bearing edges. The reso one is larger, fwiw. Should I care about that?
I had some corrosion on a couple of hoops and the company was really cool about that and insisted on replacing the whole set of tom hoops (8 hoops).
Cliffs: I have lots of issues with my high end/expensive kit. How many of them are worthy of complaint. I hate to be a complainer, but it is where I am now. Thanks for reading/answering my questions. I've had these drums for 4 months and this is the first time I've removed the heads (except the bass drum).
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