Worst setup of gear you've owned
- Thread starter mikyok
- Start date
Benthedrummer
Silver Member
Pretty easy for me.......TAMA Rockstar DX. Standard rock sizes, absolutely awful kit. Accompanying that mullet was another mullet.....a 20" Zildjian Ping Ride. The 3rd mullet was a Pearl Masters Studio snare.
The three put together was a total creative cataclysmic cacophonous catastrophic creature.
The three put together was a total creative cataclysmic cacophonous catastrophic creature.
In the 80's I bought a Pearl Vari-Pitch snare, basically a Roto Tom on a phenolic shell with a strainer, lugs and bottom head. I was thinking it would give me lots of 'options' . It had its moments but the rod holding the Roto had to be rewelded to the heavy mounting frame within the shell (twice) and I actually sold parts of it to a buddy refurbishing a Pearl snare for his drummer son. The rest decorates the wall of my drum space.
Playing in a Nola type band , I was always trying to do extra percussion and tried the Off-Time Hi-Hat. This played two small hats when you opened the hats, and I beefed up some beats but , it caused really bad leg cramps when played and it is now part of a flowerbed that my wife decorated with old sticks, a bunch of broken cymbals, drum stuff.
Playing in a Nola type band , I was always trying to do extra percussion and tried the Off-Time Hi-Hat. This played two small hats when you opened the hats, and I beefed up some beats but , it caused really bad leg cramps when played and it is now part of a flowerbed that my wife decorated with old sticks, a bunch of broken cymbals, drum stuff.
Cmdr. Ross
Platinum Member
Had a buddy who owned one & I got to try it for a weekend. I quickly realized I'd have to completely relearn how to use a bass drum pedal for it to be useful. He got it back within 24 hours.
Got a 21" Zildjian K Custom dry ride in a trade and had it for about 6 months. Never has anything worth $400 sounded more like a trash can lid than this thing. Traded in for a full set of RTOM pads & couldn't be happier. I know some people love them, but man...
piston broke
Junior Member
I had a 9 piece Remo kit, double bass drums and obligatory 90s gong drum. Used to lug it all along to gigs only to find they were usually too big for the stage.
TK-421
Senior Member
That's clearly the newer redesigned version of the K Custom Special Dry Ride that debuted in 2017. I agree 100%, I really hate those rides. But the original K Custom Special Dry series that came out in the early 2000s sounds nothing like that. I've owned several of those original rides, and to me they're some of the best-sounding dry rides out there. The new ones? Meh.
Someone added rivets to this one, but it will give you an idea of what the original ones were like.
Benthedrummer
Silver Member
It's bizarre isn't it?
For me it was Vater sticks. I still don't know to this day why? Why did I break sooo many Vater sticks? I went through a period of using them. Never, EVER again.
cbphoto
Diamond Member
Same thing happened to me with Zildjian ādippedā drumsticks. I bought a brick of them and they shattered & cracked so easily I thought I had a bad batch. When the second brick of sticks broke like toothpicks I moved on.
vyacheslav
Senior Member
Dang, Al, what's up with that throne? It looks like a trombone stand with a thinly padded seat on top. My vertebrae are aching just looking at that picture! It's amazing what we can put up with in the exuberance of youth!
vyacheslav
Senior Member
I would have to say my example was my first "real" (non-JC Penney's toy) kit was a "Dixie" MIJ red sparkle that I loved. The problem was, it was only a rack tom, snare drum and bass drum, no floor tom. I had a really cheap set of brass hi hats and an MIJ flat base "Propedal" hi hat stand. The only other cymbal I had was from my JC Penney toy kit. I rigged up a folding music stand as a cymbal stand (like Al P did in his picture with the chimes). But I wanted a crash and a ride. The drummer in my Dad's trio was a huge influence on me, and he had two cymbals, a ride and a crash. That's what I thought you were supposed to do. So I left my hi hats WAAAY open (much too far to actually close them together) and used the top hi hat as my ride! I put my crash on my left like he did, so my cymbals were all on my left side. About a year later, my parents got me a red sparkle "Stewart" MIJ snare. I used that as my main snare, and used the snare stand it came with to put my Dixie snare in the floor tom position with the snares off and used a snare as the "floor tom" for a long time. The problem was, like many of us, I didn't know anything about tuning at that time. The snare "floor tom" was higher in pitch than the rack tom, of course. So, being a idiot noob, I wanted to do the "drums go down in pitch during fills" thing (again, like my Dad's drummer would do). I started all my fills on the floor tom and went "backwards" to accomplish this (floor first, rack tom second).
I think I "recovered" in my adult life from playing such a weird set up, but I think my backwards tom set up and my not using a hi-hat as inteneded still sneaks into my playing once in awhile....in a good way!
Ironically, the next kit I got as an upgrade in 8th grade was a used Ludwig Standard: 12", 20" and a 14" snare...again no floor tom (I still used that dang MIJ snare, but at least I tuned it lower and muffled the bejesus out of it to get to sound similar to a floor tom). I updgraded again when I was a senior in high school (1990) to a Ludwig Rocker (the good ones with the clear interiors), and those were brand new, but that was during the hanging floor tom era, so of course I ordered my Dave Weckl clone kit with the 13" and 15" hanging floor toms. It wasn't until I was in my mid to late 20's until I owned an actual floor tom with legs.
I think I "recovered" in my adult life from playing such a weird set up, but I think my backwards tom set up and my not using a hi-hat as inteneded still sneaks into my playing once in awhile....in a good way!
Ironically, the next kit I got as an upgrade in 8th grade was a used Ludwig Standard: 12", 20" and a 14" snare...again no floor tom (I still used that dang MIJ snare, but at least I tuned it lower and muffled the bejesus out of it to get to sound similar to a floor tom). I updgraded again when I was a senior in high school (1990) to a Ludwig Rocker (the good ones with the clear interiors), and those were brand new, but that was during the hanging floor tom era, so of course I ordered my Dave Weckl clone kit with the 13" and 15" hanging floor toms. It wasn't until I was in my mid to late 20's until I owned an actual floor tom with legs.
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alparrott
Diamond Member
Like I said, cobbled together hardware. It was a very old milking stool top and I forget where the rest of it came from. Prior to that I used an office chair with the back removed. This was the mid-80s where there was no internet and I lived in the sticks with very little access to anything that someone else hadn't thrown out or sold second- or third-hand. Now I can hop on Amazon Prime and have anything in two business days, which would've sounded like science fiction to 15-year-old me.
SharkSandwich
Junior Member
Way too many drums and some E-Drum pads that I didn't need but I thought were cool. Extra points for the awkwardly placed splash and cowbell off to the side.
Looks ergonomic to me! Flat mounted toms and cymbals are just another passing fad - they'll get over it.
And the mic stand and boom?!? Looks like it's perfectly placed for that short female backing vocalist who doubles as your cowbellist (cowbeller?)
The only thing I see missing is the hi-hat mounted tambourine. I can lend you mine if you need it!
piston broke
Junior Member
I had the same experience - first time I used them, hit a cymbal and the tip broke right off. It was a Paiste mind you.
PorkPieGuy
Platinum Member
I feel the need to write this disclaimer:
I know there are kids out there who would do anything to have access to the gear I find "trash," and I was definitely one of those kids at one point. Thank God that I'm in a position where I can let my snobbery fly, but I had some of the absolute best times with this garbage gear and I learned a ton in the process. Anyways, here we go:
There is a lot of gear that I've disliked, but here I've tried to list the worst:
Drum kit:
Early 1990s Tama Rockstar.
Splash:
Sabian B8 Chinese splash.
Ride:
Zildjian 18" Scimitar Bronze
Worst Crash:
17" Zildjian Rock crash.
Sticks:
Vater sticks. I found a brick of them on sale and gave them a try. Hated the balance of them. I gave a lot of them away.
Snare:
5.5 x 14" vintage Slingerland 6 lug, 3-ply. This one hurts to admit (I'm a BIG vintage Slingerland fan too).
I know there are kids out there who would do anything to have access to the gear I find "trash," and I was definitely one of those kids at one point. Thank God that I'm in a position where I can let my snobbery fly, but I had some of the absolute best times with this garbage gear and I learned a ton in the process. Anyways, here we go:
There is a lot of gear that I've disliked, but here I've tried to list the worst:
Drum kit:
Early 1990s Tama Rockstar.
Splash:
Sabian B8 Chinese splash.
Ride:
Zildjian 18" Scimitar Bronze
Worst Crash:
17" Zildjian Rock crash.
Sticks:
Vater sticks. I found a brick of them on sale and gave them a try. Hated the balance of them. I gave a lot of them away.
Snare:
5.5 x 14" vintage Slingerland 6 lug, 3-ply. This one hurts to admit (I'm a BIG vintage Slingerland fan too).
Cmdr. Ross
Platinum Member
The one I had was definitely the post 2017 model. I've heard some recordings of it & they sound great in context, but outside of that...no.
Some of those heavy Zildjians could be 'challenging' in that era. I remember when the local drum shop got a 12" Z Splash (the original Zs with the funky geometric stamping) in and the owner hit it for a group of us spotty adolescents spellbound by the look of the thing....
And how we laughed when it basically went 'crunk'. It sat in the shop for years unloved and was known as the Zildjian Krut. However a good Earth Ride is a thing of beauty, just a shame not all of them were.
mikyok
Platinum Member
Wish I'd have made an offer for that 20" brilliant earth ride.
Some of those early heavy Zildjians, the Earth, Rock & Ping rides were amazing, heavy but still musical (late 70s/early 80s) the latter offerings not so much