The drums are made in Gretsch's South Carolina drum shop. The snare is 6x10", the ride tom is 6x8", and the bass tom is 24x14". The shells are 6-ply maple/poplar/maple with 30-degree bearing edges and no reinforcement rings. The finish is satin mahogany with a natural maple bass drum hoop. Getting the kit was an extremely frustrating test of patience and I will never special order drums from Gretsch again.
The crash/ride is a Sabian 16" AAX "Omni Prototype" (suspiciously resembling an El Sabor Picante Hand Crash cymbal). The hi hats are 10" UFiP Class series. I added a Yamaha Cascara Wedge and a 4" Remo Valencia cowbell (chosen for its size, not for its sound).
I swapped out the "Gretsch Permatone" (i.e. Remo Ambassador) top heads for Remo Renaissance Powerstrokes.on the snare and bass tom and an orphan Evans Strata 1000 on the ride tom. These are all tuned medium-low and sound awesome to me.
The bass batter is a Remo Powermax 2 marching bass head with the felt muffling ring removed. A couple of days after I removed the felt ring, the head started to buzz; I taped the mylar control ring down with a few pieces of Scotch tape and the buzz went away. In hindsight, I probably could have gotten to the same endpoint simpler and cheaper with a Powerstroke 4. It's tuned just-above-wrinkle and I have 12-24 brass thumbnuts with washers tightened against the lugs to keep the tension rods from vibrating loose. It sounds good, but it's definitely a "cocktail" kick tone whereas all the other drums sound more like a proper bop kit.
I use a Gibraltar G Class Pedal on a rug without any bracket (the kit came with a makeshift bar bracket that clamps to one leg only). The G Class pedal was amazingly simple to invert--it took about 5 minutes with the included drum key/Allen wrench; I stuck grip tape on top and industrial Velcro on the bottom; I also have a 2" electrical box as a makeshift heel riser which is a huge ergonomic improvement. I prefer my fuzzy Ludwig beater to the plastic/felt G Class beater.
The stock Gibraltar Ultra-Adjust mounts are weird, heavy, solid and nicely adjustable. I can't find these parts in the Gibraltar catalog. The Ultra-Adjust ball joints had HUGE T-screws that were awkward in the tight space around the cocktail drum; so I replaced them with some socket-head screws--I don't move the ball joints when I break down the kit thus I don't need the T-screws. I added a short Gibraltar cymbal boom rod to place the hi hats and the cowbell near the center. I mount the main cymbal (with the aid of a long cymbal stacker) where Gretsch designed the hi hats to be. The legs and mounts are all memory locked to make a very quick (5 minute) set up.
I have a beat up Beato conga (quinto) case that snugly accommodates the main drum and the 16" cymbal. The small drums, hi hat cymbals, and stick bag fit in a Rockbag 8/10 double tom case. The pedal, rug and hardware go in a Home Depot Husky tool box (I gig with a small $5 WalMart bath rug, not the round rug pictured). Altogether, the gear with the three cases weighs over 80 lbs; With a folding luggage cart, I load-in in a single trip.
