Alright cats,
finally, here are some pictures of my drum set, which has come a fair way, but still has a long way to go! I will include some excerpts from previous posts I have made that correlate with the photos.
Firstly, my main ensemble at the moment is a really freaky funk trio of electric bass and electric guitar with cocktail set. I come from a mainly jazz background, but employ hand drums in many of the funk songs we play. The sound is driven by some incredible slap bass. I particularly love the stand-up set because it allows me to move my body more during performance for expressions sake, and just makes me feel more free whilst playing, not being restricted to a chair on the floor. It allows for some interesting antics. The ergonomics of the stand up kit are much more natural to the human body (once you manage to setup the foot pedals and peripheral hardware properly) and allows everything within much more comfortable and quick reach, whilst balancing the position of the instruments around you, ie hi hat more or less central and snare only slightly left. This allows me to play around the set more swiftly, and make more even use of both hands. Also, by virtue of standing up, it moves the instruments perceived recognition more to a 'front of stage' than 'back of stage' instrument, and one can perform more equally with the guitarists who can move around freely.
My future ideas for this kit are to integrate electronics into it in the way of micing the whole kit, and building a dedicated amplifier/speaker box for outdoor and louder gigs. This mic'ed feed is to be fed through a sampler, allowing me to setup loops in a real-time live situation, and then periodically move to my other instruments, including turntables, bass clarinet, clarinet and whatever crazy percussion I am into at the time. I also intend to incorporate at least one or two trigger pads in the kit, to trigger a synthesizer and or the aforementioned sampler. I have a few other electronic ideas in the pipeline, but I will keep these a secret for the moment. Being an avid electronics engineering undergraduate, I intend on predominately making this setup myself.
Now to the kit:
This is a sonic drive cocktail set, essentially a club jordan lookalike consisting of 8X5.5" snare/tom, 10X5.5" tom, 15X24" floor-bass, a surprisingly high quality pedal and all mounting hardware and some crummy cymbals (although the 10" hats were pretty good). For a generic brand, this kit is of impressively high structural and tonal quality, and the stained wood finish is very attractive! The difference in sound quality between this kit and my old standard 5 piece kit is astounding (compared to a dixon tempo).
I have had some issues, such as a stripped thread on one of the tom mounts, but I replaced this with an old floor tom leg mount. Since I bought this, the cymbals have evolved drastically, with only the original generic bottom high-hat remaining. You will notice also some latin bells in the set. More on cymbals later.
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/fullshot.jpg' height='800' width='600'>
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/fullfront.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/closerfront.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/topshot.jpg' height='800' width='600'>
Here is a closer shot of the method I used of mounting the cable high hat shaft (using two very expensive, but excellent clamps!) The shaft is clamped at top and bottom to the thin pole that goes through the smaller mount on the side of the main drum. Each clamp is highly adjustable and facilitates quick removal (with a half-saddle kind of part the is tightened down ) as can be seen more clearly in the second photo of the close up. I love these clamps, but my girlfriend was astonished at what I was willing to pay for them!!!
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/hihatclamps.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/clampy.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
Cymbals:
With the odd selection of bells and high-hat/bell/ride/sizzler amalgamation, I find great usefulness in superimposing funky bell (across multiple bells) patterns over otherwise fairly straight fat beats and a good for fills and breaks.
The bells and top high hat are made by saluda cymbals and are:
Salbell mini 3.5 inch bell - bells dynamics are so soft that it is impractical for use as such - would have to be between small rubber washes, say, and struck with a triangle beater to get a soft sound. Bell works great when used upside down in bottom hi-hat and adds lots of presence to the hi-hat sound, making it generally sloshier and fatter. This is good for a small hi hat.
6 inch bell, - loud, and lengthy sustain, hi pitched bell, pretty standard, no potential to ride.
10 inch disc bell - this is a very interesting cymbal, it looks like a flat splash cymbal, but is much heavier, and very thick. The bell itself retains a lot of malleability which seems quite strange to me, mildly over-zealous striking of the bell caused minor dents. But nonetheless, this cymbal has a fantastic sound. The three rivets add a modest amount of sizzle, and there is lots of potential to ride and crash. The bell sound on the bell itself is great, for a softer groove, laid-back groove, as it is slightly subdued, and has 'misty' slightly sizzly sounds added to it.
I am now employing this cymbal as the top hi-hat, but with the hi-hat open fairly wide, makes a highly useful sizzle ride, or bell. The small 3.5 bell is in underneath, adding some extra slosh noise. Bottom hat is a regular generic splash of same size. I am much more satisfied with this than the same sized equivalent of two standard generic splashes. The two felts are in between the high hats to muffle the mini bell when the hats are fully closed.
Some of these cymbals were sold as prototypes, and this small cymbal company seems to be highly experimental, in terms of their progressive range of products, and custom making. I was pleased with the price of all the products I purchased, and the 10inch 3 rivet disc bell was absolutely brilliant. If anyone is interested in custom cymbal jobs, it may be worth chatting to these guys, not to mention that many of their smaller cymbals and prototypes make interesting cocktail kit additions.
The ride is a zildjian planet z 24 inch (sound is bearable with muffling) that I desperately wish to replace with something smaller that is good for a crash as well. Please feel free to make suggestions, I like a dry ride with not much overtones, or low overtones if any. A dark earthy dry sound.
The splash is a self inverted (using the foot and ground method :P ) 8 inch paiste 802 splash. This is great and currently used as my main crash. I used to love it for dixie and trad jazz. Very fast decay. There is also a small cowbell and some agogo bells. (i love my bells)
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/hihatclose.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/cymbals.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/bellcompare.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
In the next picture can be seen both the Gibralter claw and the LP claw. The LP is the one that is closer. Do a search to see my other post with a decent comparison.
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/ridemount.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
The following photos show the custom foot-board that I knocked up in the shed out of some 2X4 and ply wood, with carpet on top: The photos are self explanatory but I will just say that this board is like heaven for the ankles! I may consider making another one in the future with deeper cutouts and a cut out for the bass pedal. I find the footing position of one behind the other offers more stability than both straight.
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/footboard.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/boardcloser.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/footboardcloseside.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/feetonboard.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
And finally, this little device has provided me with the most important and valued addition to the sonic quality of my bass drum!!! A external rim mount wing nut adjustable damper. These are cheap as chips on ebay, and are wonderful! It has added lots of punch and boom for me, for what was originally very sustaining and wimpy. The impact pad also helped.
<img src='http://users.tpg.com.au/tweedley/bassmufflerclose.jpg' height='600' width='800'>
There you have it, hopefully these photos stay hosted for as long as I don't change ISPs. Sorry for such a long post, I hope this has given some people a bit of inspiration or food for thought. I welcome and look forward to all comments, suggestions and criticism.
Thank you so much for all the input that this community has provided me during my cocktail set journey! Here's to onward and upward!
Special thanks to Andrew (Zimbop) for helping me acquire some of the heads I'm using. These are great!
Hopefully this summer, I can get some of the electronics underway.
Many regards,
Hayden Tweedley.
finally some cocktail set pictures!
finally some cocktail set pictures!
Last edited by hayden on Wed Nov 19, 2008 4:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.