cost of building a new cocktail set from scratch

[fw]

Hey Guys!

I just ran the numbers on building a 14x24" 6 ply maple cocktail drum from scratch. It would just be the one drum, natural wax finish, with three mounts for whatever would end up on it. The prices are rounded slightly, but the overall cost is accurate. Shipping and tax would be extra of course. The shell would come from anderson international trading and everything else is from drummaker or this website's links.

14x24" 6 ply maple keller shell $80
Bearing edges $30
2 14" 2.3 mil 8 hole rims $29
16 Tail light lugs w/hardware $45
16 Tension rods w/washers $10
2 14" heads $20
3 Floor tom legs $20
6 Floor tom brackets $43
1 Gibralter throwoff muffler $10
1 snare fan $0 (we all have old snares laying around)
Pulse bass drum pedal $30 at Musician's Friend
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$317 plus tax and shipping

Adding a 10" tom adds about $120. Ouch!

You could cut the lug cost about in half with old Pearl style lugs, but I've never been a fan (they remind me of my old CB700 set). You could also do the cheap mounting brackets instead of gibraltar brackets and save about $15 bucks, which you'd probably lose once one of them strips when you mount a cymbal off of it. I can't really see how to trim the cost down any more to still get pro results. Do you guys have any ideas? I kept my drum cheap by joining old marching drums together and recycling most of the hardware. The leftover lugs made the tom tom attachment, so I just needed to buy 10" rims, a suspension mount, some floor tom legs and brackets, heads, and some plastic covering (which is super expensive, unfortunately).

I can't see how to turn much of a profit on building these...I have new respect for Dennis at Phattie!

Will

[mangorockfish]

I used the old style Pearl lugs on my drum and really think it looks cool, but I love those lugs anyway. Just bought 28 of them off ebay. I think they are classy looking in their own way
Mangorockfish

[fw]

My problem with the old Pearl style/Japanese import style lug comes from my old snare. It was a six lug CB700, and the tension rod casings broke whenever I cranked the drum to a more or less reasonable tension. I ended up having to replace the inserts with old Rogers casings. The lugs themselves held up fine, and the problem might not present itself on a drum that has enough lugs to start with. I never had any problems on my toms.

I loved that set, but even the 20" bass drum only had 6 lugs! Come to think of it, I snapped a few casings on that one, too.


Will