Kitshare DONT'S checklist

This topic has been covered to death but I wanted to share the experience I had last Friday where one particular drummer pretty much offended every common sense "do not" that a drummer might face when sharing someone else's kit.

My band was playing a run down grungy DIY venue (thats meant to imply awesomeness), and I helped the space owner all through the week in getting the place up to snuff, including running sound with my bands PA and working security/bar when I had downtime. I agreed to share my Spaun kit with the other bands provided the bring the usual things (cymbals, pedal, snare, sticks)

The place was packed. It's 110 degrees inside even with a warehouse air blower. The kit is miked and sounds colossal, the room lends itself really well to huge amp sounds and long vocal delays. The crowd was a refreshingly diverse mix of punks, hipsters, metalheads, queercore kids, and randoms from the neighborhood....all really drunk and all pouring out energy. My band burned through a short set with new material and killed it. Good bands. Every one of the other drummers was really considerate with my kit, asking questions, making good conversation....until the very last band. It went something like this.

- Drummer shows up...."hey man I can't find my pedal"

"you need to find one then"

"okay I'll ask the guy from _______"

I go out front to take care of a tense situation with some neighborhood gangstas who aren't being allowed in.

I come back

- "Where is my second floor tom?"

"oh I moved it over here cuz I only play with a 4 piece"

Tom is laying on top of a toolbox.

"I JUST put new reso heads on that man, this is a $3000 drum kit, get it off the floor, have you ever owned anything?"

I walk behind the kit and put the tom in it's case, then someone calls me over to fix an issue with one of the bass cabinets.

I turn around and he's lowered every single multiclamp for the toms, pulled the convertible staight/boom stand out, removed the boom clamps for my splashes, and pulled my iron cobra double out, attached it to the kick and left the slave pedal draped over a tripod foot.

I'm fuming and about to murder this guy with bare hands when someone shouts at me to get outside because the argument has turned into a fight. One of the girls has punched one of the gangstas and he hit her back....melee ensues....Fight moves itself down the street and out of our control so I go back inside....

I see my kit, with the weirdest haphazard boom angles, everything a foot lower than I play at looking nothing like what I carefully put together over years of trial and error....

"hey man, do you have some sticks I can use?"






Their singer (who is the space owner) gets up and starts talking so instead of punching the guy I turn away and let the show happen.

Then I notice the guy not only has his own chewed up sticks, but has unpacked my snare......and he hits with the most awkward stiff arm delivery I've ever seen.

Right now I'm thinking theres gonna be a second melee up in this place.

His band plays a short 20 minute set and finishes while I'm outside. I come back in to start packing and notice his sticks had red paint on them so my snare head is a smudgy green/red mess. Not only that, the guy showed up straight from work and took his sweaty shirt and nasty shoes off and just left them on top of the drum bags for me to move. He's already removed his cymbals (the single correct thing he did all night) and bailed for home. So I'm left to talk this out with the venue owner, who I'm friends with.

"This show was really great, yes! let's do more......but I have to tell you, Nick will never come anywhere near my drums again, and if he's smart, he wont come anywhere near me either....just so you know."

As best as I tried using the sharpie marks I left on my stands, the kit is just off now....feels like something completely different and I will have to get used to it.



TL;DR: Don't be a Nick.

Sigh, some people just don't have any respect for things do they?

I think you should have chewed him out to his bands embarassment. I think that's the only way Nick will ever learn that you don't mess with someone's kit.

Sounds awful. I feel for you. I have been there, done that.

What did you learn from this experience?

What will you do differently next time?


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I would have much rather heard a story about a beating you gave that dude rather then the story of frustration you had to deal with. That dude deserved a life lesson indeed. I am very particular about all my things. Messing with them WILL get someone hurt.

Hollywood Jim said:

Sounds awful. I feel for you. I have been there, done that.

What did you learn from this experience?

What will you do differently next time?


.

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I guess the main thing I take from it is that if I'm handling multiple things at a show, to have someone to delegate other things to so I can devote all attention when bands are setting up and sound-checking.

And also to talk to every drummer involved and make them reiterate that they understand what I expect from them if they're using my stuff.

Old Drummer said:

I would have much rather heard a story about a beating you gave that dude rather then the story of frustration you had to deal with. That dude deserved a life lesson indeed. I am very particular about all my things. Messing with them WILL get someone hurt.

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I was really close to that point man. But like I said, I am friends with the singer of his band who also provided the space for the show. The evening was also a benefit for tenants in the neighborhood evicted due to gentrifcation, so I would have been a slight bit tacky to mar it with a fight. I try to stay professional even when the gig is nothing near professional.

Sorry you had such a negative experience. I realized long ago that sharing my kit is not in my comfort zone.

Take it from somebody who kitshares at least once a month.

Never share a $3000 kit. Im not even sure I would gig a $3000 kit in the kind of place you described. Too many potential issues from drinks, people, moshers, cables, you name it.

As soon as you are done pack up your pedals, snare, brass and sticks and take them to your car. Everything else be damned, get that shit out, worry about everything else after that. Leaving it out is just asking for it to get beat up or stolen.

If you are really picky about your set-up don't offer up your stands. Every time its my kit on the backline I expect the stands to be moved. It really is the norm. I cant expect everybody to play the stands the way I like them and I want other drummers to be a comfortable as possible.

Lastly, there is one Nick at every show. There is nothing you can do about it. He is part of the deal when putting together shows where you provide the backline. You have two options. You can either let him borrow your shit, or you can tell him no. Sounds to me like I know which one you will choose.

Yeah I'd agree with the stands bit. Unfortunately people will move/change them without asking/little regard to your preference. Doesn't mean it's right but there you go.

The pedal/snare though? WhyIoutta!!! *shakes fist*

It happens all the time, just recently I clearly explained what drummers were expected to bring on a kit share where the kit in question was one of mine (the usual it seems on the London circuit: Own Snare, Pedal, Cymbal, sticks and Clutch)

Within a few minutes of one of the bands getting to the stage to soundcheck their guitarist comes over asking about a pedal and clutch. Not even the drummer could bring himself to ask me.

I politely referred him to one of the other bands, deep down one due to the lack of drummer asking me and two he obviously sent his bandmate over as id been quite clear to all of the drummers about what they needed in the days leading up to the show.

I don't like to do that and I'm never a dick about it, even if I'm smarting inside, but he obviously had little disregard to my situation so I felt it was best to return that amount of respect back.

It happens. A bit of respect goes a long way in a kit share situation.

Almost all of your issues are perfectly understandable, but yeah, you have to expect hardware to get moved. Unless you specified before the date that doing so wasn't an option, it's just going to happen. Even if you specify, it's still probably going to happen. Mark that stuff with paint pens.

I have a kit I sometimes provide for a local jam. There are no memory locks, and on purpose. My goal is to make things as comfortable for the other drummers as possible, not preserve my sense of what I think is the proper way to set things up. I have some of the stands marked with a paint pen if I want to return them to a certain setting.

If I were to be going into that venue knowing that I wasn't supposed to be fiddling with hardware, I would have brought some hardware myself. If I showed up to play expecting use of a backline that was functional FOR ME and told I couldn't move anything, I'd politely not say a word and move things to my liking anyway.

If somebody got in my face about it, the conversation would likely end with a punch or me leaving depending on my mood. Don't tell me I have to play right handed, MFer.

Juniper said:

Within a few minutes of one of the bands getting to the stage to soundcheck their guitarist comes over asking about a pedal and clutch. Not even the drummer could bring himself to ask me.

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Those kind of things can be highly situational to me. Sometimes gear just gets left behind, especially if maybe a band played the night before and something got missed at load out. Then you show up and start setting up to play and realize some of the pieces to your puzzle are missing.

I'm not saying that was the case with you at all, it's pretty easy to get a read on the people that are genuinely just having a run of misfortune, and the people who are just generally ill prepared and thoughtless.

See, if I was going to be weird about people changing stand positions or moving a floor tom off to the side, I would not allow my kit to be used. As it stands, when I'm backing a kit, I bring the cheap wrapped rockstars and mark out all my stand positions with strong tape.

For all the breakables, I don't let others use my cymbals as they are all at least 40 years old, not real replaceable in their individuality. All the other stuff, pedals, stands, snare, I'll let the other drummer use it as long as they agree to my statement in the presence of others: "You can use any of my things besides cymbals, but only if you agree to replace anything that breaks while you're playing." If they can't agree to that or I feel them waver, I ask that they use their own breakables, and assume some risk for the kit.

Yeah, that's a bad situation, but also one that could've been avoided by either not agreeing to help out, or by having a cheap second kit you don't care about. Whenever I share a kit, that's all I'm doing so I'm there the whole time to help them out with what they need, I'll even adjust stands for them because I don't trust how one person's "tight" could be my "deathgrip". But these days I just avoid that whole scene, it's a real drag.

I hope your kit heals up

calan said:

Almost all of your issues are perfectly understandable, but yeah, you have to expect hardware to get moved..

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I didnt have a problem with the other guys raising cymbal stands, changing the height of the hats, or adjusting the omni-ball angles of the toms. One of the guys from the other bands and I were talking after his set and he said he normally plays a two up one down, and I would have gladly set the kit up that way for him.

But this guy took clamps and moved them along with telescoping/untelescoping things when he could have just as easily as moved the tom down the L-rod, and there was no need at all for him to remove the splash booms.

Like, I get it if you're a serious player and you need to be in a comfort zone....I'm that way too.

But I saw the kit he plays on. It's a piece of garbage that literally has trash/grocery bags and newspapers stuffed in the kick for muffling. The floor tom is balanced on a milk crate. Stands are held in place with masking tape. Dont show me a kit like that and then come to the gig acting like you have all these preferences. lol.

Apologies. What seemed to be a somewhat irrational concern has been shown to be completely reasonable.

Acidline303 said:

I didnt have a problem with the other guys raising cymbal stands, changing the height of the hats, or adjusting the omni-ball angles of the toms. One of the guys from the other bands and I were talking after his set and he said he normally plays a two up one down, and I would have gladly set the kit up that way for him.

But this guy took clamps and moved them along with telescoping/untelescoping things when he could have just as easily as moved the tom down the L-rod, and there was no need at all for him to remove the splash booms.

Like, I get it if you're a serious player and you need to be in a comfort zone....I'm that way too.

But I saw the kit he plays on. It's a piece of garbage that literally has trash/grocery bags and newspapers stuffed in the kick for muffling. The floor tom is balanced on a milk crate. Stands are held in place with masking tape. Dont show me a kit like that and then come to the gig acting like you have all these preferences. lol.

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Here's another lesson too. Only provide single straight stands with one cymbal on each. The second you introduce multi-clamps and boom arms, you're just asking for trouble! A small Ringo kit with two cymbals would have been reasonable in this instance.

I provided a kit for a jam one time and I wasn't really paying attention when one guy got up to play. I went back up after him and realized he had adjusted all my tom angles, cymbal heights and had retuned all my toms and snare. Another drummer who was watching, said he saw him messing with the bottom head of the floor tom.

At a jam I played at, the drummer who regularly provided the kit, had removed all wing nuts and wing screws and replaced them with regular nuts and bolts. Unless you had a crescent wrench in your pocket, you couldn't adjust anything. He said he didn't like drummers changing his stuff around.

I'm a Nick but not THAT Nick!

Anytime I use someone else's kit I TRY not to adjust anything at all. If I take out drums I treat those CB 700s like they cost $5,000, and the few times I've had to take off cymbals I put them in my cymbal bag and make sure whoever owns them knows where they are!

Some people just don't understand that being able to use someone else's kit is a privilege, those people most likely have never offered to share their kit so they don't even realize they're being an asshole.

eclipseownzu said:

Never share a $3000 kit. Im not even sure I would gig a $3000 kit in the kind of place you described.

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This^

The venue owner can pick up a playable kit for $100 on CL. Hell, you could even pick one up and it would be worth the reduced stress levels.

Matt Bo Eder said:

Here's another lesson too. Only provide single straight stands with one cymbal on each. The second you introduce multi-clamps and boom arms, you're just asking for trouble! A small Ringo kit with two cymbals would have been reasonable in this instance.

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True, but I was also performing on my kit that night. Our songs require the equipment I have. I would have torn a bunch of stuff down, but the place was jam packed and the only area to store things was directly behind the kit. I figured it's better to leave everything where I can see it so I know it's still there.

New Tricks said:

This^

The venue owner can pick up a playable kit for $100 on CL. Hell, you could even pick one up and it would be worth the reduced stress levels.

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In this instance the show is completely DIY, a wholly unlicensed, unauthorized venue thats little more than a single converted room. The guy providing the space is broke, which is why I lent him so much of my time prepping the floors, rewiring lights, and clearing abandoned tools from the storefront. I would feel far more stress playing on subpar equipment, which is the reason I brought my kit in the first place.