Good heavens.
When I was your age, Joey, I worked my butt off to get a probably third-or-fourth-hand drumset from someone's basement. It had a 12" cymbal, 12" hi-hats that inverted if I stepped on the pedal too hard, the floor tom was the snare with the bottom head and snares off it, the snare drum was thrashed, the heads were 1960s vintage, the kick pedal looked like the first one ever made. It cost $225 and that's because we talked the owner down. (Looking back now I think that I made a great deal because the snare was a 1962 Blue Duco Ludwig pioneer that after restoration got me $600. But I digress.)
Fast forward three years. Again, after working my butt off (I landscaped and cleared ten acres of scrub brush for my old man in one summer), I got a new set for Christmas - a five-piece Taiwan special with a 6-lug kick drum and no cymbal stands. And I played the hell out of that set for eight years until I bought my own set, which I personally picked out after going to a drum store and trying out everything in my price range.
Forgive me, but every time I read about you going on about maybe I should go buy this two-grand-plus drum set, no, I like this one, no, I think this one looks cooler, and you've obviously set your star on this one style of music and this one particular drummer who shall not be name on this forum lest we start a flaming war - - it makes me die a little inside.
We've been where you are, where flashy looks and cool ad campaigns with your favorite drummers catch your attention. And we want those kits - oh how we want them! I wanted Charlie Benante's huge Tama setup on the rack, circa 1993! When Neil Peart added Simmons pads onto the back of his set, do you know how I wanted a set of Simmons drums? Never mind that the nearest place I might buy them was 300 miles away? Alex Van Halen had seethrough drums back in the day, too, and man I thought that was the coolest look.
But when we try and share our experience with you, it's like throwing the frisbee to a statue... it's just bouncing off your forehead. You immediately come back and reply to each poster, saying you get what we're saying.... but you're not.
I don't want you to post immediately after my reply, answering some detail of what I'm saying to you. I want you to sleep on it. (That is, if you do sleep.)
Learn to love the intricacies of your instrument. The one you have right now. I play a Yamaha Stage Custom, man. Not the new birch version which I understand sounds great right out of the box. I'm talking falkata and Philippine mahogany, man, mid-90s technology at its best.... pure middle of the road, intermediate goods. I worked for a long time tweaking these drums to sound good enough to take into a studio and have the engineer ask me if they were Recording Customs. I learned to wring every bit of performance out of a set that cost maybe a third of the one you're posting about. I have played recording sessions, metal, rock, Latin, musicals, doo-wop, theater, church hymns, alternative, coffeehouse, amphitheater, nightclub, stage, and bar with these things. I have a great income. I toyed with the idea of picking up a set of DWs or a Yamaha MCA as a retirement present to myself. But you know what? I fell in love with these drums, because I know them so well and we've done so much together. And who cares if they're "intermediate"? The way I tune them, they fool studio engineers. People constantly come up to me and tell me how much they love my sound... other drummers, man. And oh yeah, the snare I'm running right now is a secondhand Supraphonic copy with an inverted bead I picked up in a warehouse sale for $75 twenty years ago this week. No vents, no mods, no crazy gimmicks. It's me bleeding and sweating over that Ambassador to get it sounding like a million bucks. I've had to replace almost all the cheap Chinese lugs on that thing, the shell's even slightly out of round, makes tuning it a pain in the butt. But when I get it dialed in, it sounds like Thor cracking his hammer across your eardrums.
Am I getting through to you? Because I think between me, PFOG, Caddy, Ian, and the rest of the forum, we just want you to get off the dang "what should I buy next" kick and sit down and PLAY. I wish that the next time I come to this forum and see your name starting a thread, you've posted a sound clip or a YouTube link where you (and maybe some of your friends who play guitar and bass or whatever) put together something and we get to hear your style, your phrasing, your sense of timing. Then I feel like I'll have something worthwhile to say to you about what direction you can take to improve. Because the gear... the gear is just the medium. And whether you go get that flashy acrylic set with the wide front hoop and the front tom set down so low or not, it will NEVER get you the gig or make you play better. Only the gear between your ears will do that. And so long as that's the only thing you ask on this forum, that's no improvement at all.
If this sounds harsh, sure, I can live with that. My bandleader just called me in the middle of having supper with my family, and I ended up playing a coffeehouse gig with a snare, bass, and ride cymbal only. Unrehearsed. And everyone in that coffeehouse got up and danced. I did not need a wide bass drum hoop or vents in my snare. I just needed me to be there and play what needed to be played. Bam.
Play. Play whatever, but please just play. And let that be the end of it, already!!