From Electric back to Acoustic
I’d been playing Bass for the last 2-3 years, and so the Clavia ddrum had not seen the light of day in all that time. It would get a serious playing / bashing every once in a while (mainly after a bad week at work!), but it was not getting used to its full potential.
As I began to get the urge to get back behind a drum kit again, I was reluctant to put back together the complex setup that I was using in The Flares (and in fact I’d already sold a few of the extra devices to fund my ever changing bass rig). I spent some time working with the ddrum4 in its ‘native’ form to try and find a simple setup that I was happy with the sound of.
Unfortunately, I could not see a way of working with the ddrum4 without the use of external mixers, FX etc. Also, the drumming gigs that I’d been offered for this year were not really suited to an electric kit, so I decided it was time for a change.
I sold the ddrum4 and my SPD-20 (Octapad) on eBay, and that gave me a good sum of money with which to look at buying an Acoustic kit.
A couple of trips to Poole Percussion, along with advice from other drummers (who I know and respect) left me with a choice of two kits in my price range (£900-£1000) – the Tama Superstar and the Mapex Pro-m Micro kit.
I went with the Mapex – the kit is a little smaller, with shallower toms. They are a little more ‘controlled’ than the Tama kits, and as I am not a huge fan of ‘large, ringing toms’ then this seemed ideal for me.
I surrounded the kit with a set of Paiste PST-5 cymbals. I was impressed both with the quality of these (for the price), and also how good a proper ‘set’ of cymbals sound. In the past I’ve always had a mixture of cymbals, and struggled to find crashes that sound good together. I also found similar problems with the electric kit – choosing the cymbal samples was more about how they sound together as a ‘set’. If you’ve got the opportunity / money to buy a full set from a manufacturer – then the advantage is they’ve done this hard work for you.
I kept the Mapex Janus double bass drum / hihat combo pedals from my electric kit, and also some of the ‘extra’ cymbal arms I’d bought over the years to allow me to mount some extra cymbals on the kit.
I topped of the purchase with a set of moon gels to further dampen the drums when needed, soft cases for the drums (I’d kept my soft hardware case from the electric kit), a hardcase for the Cymbals and a Pro Mark Drum mat (to stop the kit sliding around on stage). This basically cost me slightly under £1000, which is an amazing price for the quality of drum kit I’ve got.
A few careful bids on eBay managed to get me a secind hand Sonor Jungle Snare (for about £30!). I'd experimented with using an 'auxilary snare' on the electric kit, and really enjoyed playing funk riffs with 2 snare sounds. With the addition of a Pearl ISS mount, I've clamped the Jungle snare onto my HiHat stand and tuned it really high for that real funk 'crack'!
I've always liked the sound of a china crash cymbal - not to be used too often, but it's a great effect. I bought the PST-5 FX pack that gave me the 10" splash and the 18" china, but I soon found that the 18" china was just too 'big' and too 'loud' for the styles of music I was playing. Luckily I managed to sell it on ebay, and I've now got a 14" Diamond china crash (which is made in the smae factory as the Wuhan range of cymbals). Wuhan cymbals get mixed reviews from people - the sound of them varies greatly from cymbal to cymbal (so it's always worth buying one from a store if possible), but many of them do have a really nice sound. They're not 'pretty' to look at - but they are all hand made, and for the price (which is normally ridiculously cheap!) they are excellent value for money.
Over the months I've added a few extras to the kit, mainly depending on wat music I was playing. The 6" RotoTom is very useful for Reggae sounds (and combined with my Jungle Snare with the snares turned off, the two can do a reasonable impression of Timbales). The 16" Floor Tom is only a cheap tom found on ebay, but with matching skins does not sound out of place with the rest of the kit. This is useful when playing folk sets (with Wreckers / Maggots) as these typically use a lot of low toms. The 12" splash was an experiment. Like the Diamond (Wuhan) cymbals, the Stagg cymbals are very cheap. This one sounds half way between a Crash and a China - but seems to fit into the kit very well (and was ridiculously cheap!)
Skins...
I have to confess that prior to moving over to electric drums, I completely ignored the impact that drum skins can have on your sound. When I started playing drums for Lady Winwoods Maggot (after a brief break from playing drums), I thought I'd 'treat' my drum kit to a new set of skins. When talking to the guys at Poole Percussion about what I was planing on doing, and what skins I should have, they looked at me like I was completely mad when I explained that I'd never actually changed the skins on my kit, and it was about 15 years old!!
Anyway, now I'm back on acoustic drums again, I've started experimenting with drum skins to find the sound I like. I've already mentioned that I'm not a huge fan of ‘large, ringing toms’, and I started off by using Moongel to dampen the skins to reduce the 'ring' or 'overtones'.
Early on, I replaced the standard skins that were supplied with the kit with Evans G1 skins - mainly because these were the ones used on my Clavia electric kit so I already had a couple laying around. With G1s on the toms and my jungle snare, and an Evans Reverse Dot on my snare, the sound of the drum kit improved immensely. However, I still found I was using Moongel on the toms and snare to control the ringing.
After some research on the web, and talking to a few other drummers, I started experimenting with Evans Hydraulics heads. These are a double ply head, with a thin layer of oil between the layers. Many drummers find these skins too 'dead', but they were exactly the sound I was looking for. I've now got Hydraulics on all four toms, and I am really pleased with the sound of them. I started by using the G1 skins on the bottom of the toms, but then moved over to G2s on the bottom (to really deaden the sound). This gives me exactly the sound I was looking for -plenty of low end 'thud' with no ringing or overtones (and makes them much easier to tune). I swapped the Snare skin for an Evans Genera Dry - and this 'does exactly what it says on the tin' - a really dry sound with no ringing / overtones. With these skins, the moongel has now been 'retired'; the drums all sound great as they are.