What's the worst kit you've had to play on?

Bought a Tama Swinstar online few years back as a band practice kit For 150.00 .. They are long gone.Worst.............

Must have been destroyed! I played on a swingstar with the zola stuff in them for a good while, and thought it sounded great with a good tuning.
 
Not that easy whilst playing "Whole lotta Rosie" at 20bpm faster than it should be ;) It's one of those get up - "right, you're playing this" kinda deals. Haven't done that for 30 years!
Poor Henri had to play "Smoke on the water". 16ths with that hihat to snare journey :(

Being a Brit and badmouthing Premier can get you thrown out of the country I hear, Andy..

You've spoiled yourself with Guru though. I think you have to offer a cheap Taiwanese Guru kit for the masses...
 
Must have been destroyed! I played on a swingstar with the zola stuff in them for a good while, and thought it sounded great with a good tuning.

Could not get the mounted toms to sound close to good The Bass And floor were just ok......Hated the mounts very limited tom positioning.
 
I was in search of a rehearsal studio where I could practice drums, and found a cheap one. Upon entering the drum room, he said: 'and we've got a nice little jazz kit here' - it was the tiniest drums I've ever played on, with a stool that I was too high and couldn't be adjusted. Just about managed to drum on there, but never returned.
 
I was in a rehearsal studio in North Jersey, way North... It was a Yamaha Tour Custom - I couldn't believe how bad it was especially since I'm a huge fan of Yamaha drums. It was really beaten up, the room acoustics were not great either - tuning barely helped. At least my own snare and cymbals made up for the sound as a whole.

What's a bigger buzzkill than crappy sounding drums...
 
One of my friends had a Gretch Blackhawk kit (the one from the Sears catalog, late 80's-ish). What a POS. My used $200 Percussion Plus kit sounded like Ludwig Classics compared to this. When his band started to play out later, he would always borrow my Ludwigs instead of using his own kit.
 
A back line kit for a corp event, with multiple bands. it was like a showcase...kind of. I'm not sure WHAT the event was TBH... Some music company... seemed like a pyramid scheme so I didn't pay attention.

The kit was supplied by one of the bands, which was late. Quite a bit late.

It was a Tama Starclassic, which should have been great to play, but the guy did NOT know how to tune a kit, and had a giant comforter stuffed in the bass drum, which had an Aquarian Superkick with that giant felt ring on it to begin with!

We were about the 4th or 5th band (3-4 song 20 min sets), and I swear it took the (experienced) sound guy almost 2 songs of the first bands set to get ANY sound out of the bass drum through the PA because it was so full of blanket. This was in a nice 1200 seat theatre also, not some dive club with crap sound gear.

I play off the head, and brought my own pedal, but this bass drum head was like hitting a brick wall. It was such a badly tuned, sh*t feeling kit I couldn't believe it.

I've played on atrociously kept, small beat up rental kits on multiple band things and have actually had fun on them, even with them half falling apart, but that Tama kit was a nightmare.
 
Before i bought my first kit, i used to practise on my school drums, and on my friend's sound percussion they are absolutely disaster. My school has a Tama Superstar and a Mapex(forgot the name), the hardware of them are too old, school is too cheap to change it, so the bass drum is unstable, and one time i hit it too hard, the bass drum flipped on its side. The sound quality is probably worse than the hardware, the toms have way to much sustain, bass drum sound dead like a unmuffed floor tom, but the tama is a bit better than the mapex kit. my friend's sound percussion is brand new, but it sounds fake(sounds like hitting a plastic bottle)
 
I've played in lots of churches, so pick one and it was probably the worst.
 
One of the worst was the set provided by a club in Germany a couple of years ago-- they were supposed to provide a good jazz set, but when we got there, what they had was a 20 year old student model Sonor with a 24" bass drum, and 10" and 12" power toms, and that's it. It was pretty goofy, but it worked out OK in the end-- you play with what you have. Another time a pretty fancy hotel in Hong Kong provided me with this horribly beat up, clapped out set of Pearl Exports-- I had to play four sets a night for six weeks on those pieces of junk.
 
What is zola stuff?.......
It was a coating Tama used in their drums. My ImperialStars had it. They sounded great, btw. They put it in Swingstars, RoyalStars and even Rockstars for the first couple years. My Rockstars Pro kit, however, did not come with it, It has an inner-ply of basswood instead.


Regarding the thread, the worst kits I ever played were at the various rehearsal studios I've gone to throughout the year. Right now, I practice on a Groove Percussion kit with the garage band. It's not my kit, but I play it the most. I have fresh Attack 1-ply heads with sound rings on it, and it doesn't sound half-bad. Without the sound rings it's not so great, but It's not so bad with fresh heads on it. It will sound even better if I can get some fresh resos on it. I don't like the snare much and it's not half-bad either, but next to the snare drums I own, it's just ok.
 
I'm sure Drummerworld has some worse stories that though?

Not necessarily worse - but the worst I've had to deal with... a few years ago my band opened up for a National blues act... the drummer had a beat to hell, 60's Ludwig champagne sparkle 5pc kit (it could've been gorgeous with a little work)... it was ALL original except for the heads - old, OLD pinstripes all around - each with a duct-taped 'X' from rim to rim... Original (useless) bass drum spurs that did nothing to keep the drum in place - so he had a chain from bass drum lugs around the back of the throne. With each beat of the bass drum beater the bass drum and mounted rack toms would rock back and forth (about 2-3 inches)...

The 5x14" matching snare was cranked way beyond choked -- it sounded kinda like a metal folding chair with a piece of cardboard on top... the strainer was somewhere between totally broken and rusted in place - which really didn't matter since there was little to no snare response anyway.

The owner was a really nice guy - "move anything you need to, make yourself at home" I took a look and attempted to make a few adjustments but frankly, I was worried that this hardware would not take much adjusting... the throne was completely rusted in place at one height (suitable for the over 6' drummer and not my 5' 8"'s).

He had no fewer than 4 different sized cowbells strategically placed all over this kit - each one more 'in the way' than the other.

Did I mention that to go along with the metal folding chair snare - the toms sounded (and felt) like wet cardboard boxes?

Suffice to say it was probably the longest hour set I've ever endured... due to an unrealistic switchover time between bands there was no real option to use much of my own stuff, so I just dealt with it.

Luckily, I've never encountered another such monstrosity - even at open jams... so far anyway!!

Peace,
Mikeyboyeee
 
LOL pretty much every studio kit with the exception of SuperDisc, long ago in Detroit and Sigma Sound in Philly :)

I pretty much insist on bringing my own kit to sessions, as I have my own particular sound and I try to keep that consistent. Its also so much more comfortable!

D

N&C
 
Is there a "best kit you've played on" thread somewhere?

Last night I jammed with a couple guys at the bass players home studio. I actually brought a few things with me because I expected the worst.

This was the best sounding kit I've ever played. It was a Pearl Export with zbt cymbals and everything was tuned perfectly and sounded better than anything I've ever played.

I'm going to throw my Ludwigs in the trash.

I'm used to playing an E kit in rehearsal so obviously my ears were ringing all night. In fact, they are still ringing.

Although I really loved the sound, it's not a good rehearsal environment because the volume of the instruments just completely obliterates the vocals.
 
A Percussion Plus kit. At a local studio no less!

I put a tune on it and it played okay. Poplar shells, sounded mushy.
 
Why is it that every benefit I have ever played, the drummer's hi hat is so high that you need a pool stick to hit it?

Not one in general... but this has happened so many times to me I started thinking I was the problem.

And they're never easy to adjust.

Sitting in with other bands is always a nightmare for me. Or splitting a night and using the other guys kit. Same with showcases.

I'm sure there have been good ones... but man I remember all the bad ones.
 
Back
Top