OK I've been playing around with my new Wayfer kit this weekend:
Color and finish are A+. It's a dark blue finish that looks very classy. It's not bright it's very understated and classy. Check out all the pics.
Tuning is pretty easy on toms. I did go with a Remo Amb for floor tom batter. It sounded better than stock Aquarian head. The smaller tom sounded fine with stock Aquarian.
I used the stock heads on kick. At first I tried a PS1 batter but it was way too limiting. INDe stock batter head is an Aquarian Force I with the clear vented muffling ring. Works better. Now I'm getting a good sound from kick. It's not a huge boom and not much sustain. But you can hear the kick now. For our soft jazz group it should work well.
The hardware is excellent. The kick drum spurs threw me a bit at first. I was frustrated it was hard to set them up and I was thinking at a gig it's gonna be a major hassle. But then I discovered enclosed hardware includes 5 very cool looking INDe styled wing nuts that fit onto exposed screw on each kick drum spur plate. And 3 others for tom. You loosen a square drum key screw, insert spurs, and then screw wing nut on one exposed screw end and then tighten the wing nut. Yeah that works! The other hardware is really first rate and gig/road worthy. Ain't nothing cheap at all.
The tom rims are heavy, which helps with taming the thin shells. Seem like a perfect combination.
The shells are very thin and light. Like very very lite. Perfect for me. Ands yes they are musical and sing notes.
The kick hoops are not very wide, so your kick pedal is closer to drum head. That means you can't lift front of kick very high off floor. Gotta keep it almost level. I'm used to maybe 1/4" or 1/2" front lift off floor. That puts chain right up against batter head. The hoops must be 1/4" or 1/2" shorter than what I'm used to. This also makes the spurs spread wayyyyy wide. The little 18" kick takes up an inch or two more with that spur super-spread than if hoops were wider.
You also install kick hoop beveled end (which is fairly sharp angle) so it is contacting heads. INDe makes their hoops this way so that the hoops makes minimal contact with shell and head, unlike if you were putting squared edge against head. I had to call Josh about that. I'm used to beveled/ contoured edge on the outside and not on the contact edge.
They sound great, look great, great hardware, are lite weight, and can be moved around easily. Great product. Our next few gigs use house backline kits, so may be a few weeks before I actually get to try the Wayfarer out live on stage.
