I was surfing around Music123.com and I came accross this:
I've never heard of verve. Does anyone know anything about them? I mean, I already have a cocktail, but I was thinking that if somebody was looking for one that this might be an option. The price is $349 USD + shipping. Just thought I'd let you guys know.
Yeah, I added this to the store under Cocktail Drums.
I have a feeling that there is a factory in china somewhere that is making all of these drums with a few hardware variations and then they get rebranded (GP, Excel, Verve, HB, Etc). The crazy thing is that a few years back these cheap ones were all wood chip resin shells. Now they are often using maple (probably not the best quality but maple non the less).
From the pics there that pedal and the hardware is the very same as my GP kit I bought off ebay some time back. Mine does have the maple shells and are not pvc or vinyl wrapped. I of course changed the heads on them and all in all I am very pleased with my set, I play it all the time and am in 2 bands at the moment and it has a very good sound and the guys I play with are pleased. The hardware is not bad at all, I did put some velcro on the bottom of the pedal and I carry a nice piece of carpet with me when we play so I don't use the pedal brace and it works just fine. I was not impressed with the cymbals that came with it but that's no biggy, I just changed out some ones I had from my regular set and bought a set of wuhan 12" splashes for hihats from musicians' friend and put a 16" zilijain crash/ride on it and like I said it sounds great, one band I'm in we do beach, original, oldies type music and the other band is strictly blues, works like a champ. I'll try and get some pics up of mine if interested.
Forgot to add, I think Jmettam is right on the money, theres a company somewhere that putting these out and putting different names on them, or so it appears. Except for the empire brand that's always on ebay, they don't look the same to me, look much cheaper.
