Thinking of Completing my Drum Set (and a Bit of Story Time)

This is going to be a random rambling post by yours truly. Because there are still no post for this month so, yeah! Might as well post about random stuff from my brain.

Author's note: Most of the pictures in this post are remastered using my S25 FE. Some photos might look a bit weird.

It's yours truly!

You guys probably didn't know, I used to be a drummer back in my college days. Student by day, drummer (sometimes very drunk) playing on gigs at night.

Yeah I'm drinking light beer so that I don't get drunk before performing.

I'm mostly a self-taught drummer, but I do have some fellow drummer mentors that taught me how to read notes, coordinate my arms and legs while playing drums and other fun and cool drumming stuff.

A Year After

I had four bands, three of them disbanded and my second band is still alive and can be reunited anytime with few phone calls and home visits.

My first band really peaked but done mostly covers. We did songs from Funeral For a Friend, Coheed and Cambria and A Static Lullaby.

Over the Obstacle

My second band is a home band with my local friends and cousins as members. This band may look really simple but we cover metal core and progressive metal and have a few original compositions. But we haven't played live on stage.

The third band is a one night only band, so no biggie.

Beutiful Army

This is my fourth and last band. It got a silly cheesy name. This band covered Paramore, Senses Fail and Silverstein songs.

"Regal" 5-piece drum kit (2nd tom removed).

During the peak of my band days. I bought my own drum kit, so that me and my band(s) don't have to go to a rehearsal studio for band practice, which is kinda expensive and have limited time. My drum kit is very cheap. It's vintage style and looked like 80's style with deep tom drum shells. This kit is now 21 years old at the time of this post.

It's a generic drum kit but it got "Regal" brand around it. At first, I thought Regal only have drum sticks, but now they make drums? I know that's not true but I picked this kit anyway because this is the cheapest in the music store.

Me with my drum set.

The kit was originally black with chrome hoops and lugs. It's a five piece drum kit that came with stock 16" crash and 13" pair of hi-hat cymbals. These cymbals are not brass and have crappy sound. I bought an 18" brass crash ride cymbal as an extra.

Spraypainted drum hoops.
2nd tom included and tuned as 2nd floor tom

As the drum kit gets old, I customized the look of my drum kit to make it look new again. The first mod is the colored drum hoops. I was a fan of a band called A Dozen Furies so I kinda replicated the look of ADF's drummer's set up. But this is a poor mod job. The paint chipped away from the hoops. The kit got uglier so I customized it again, but now with really nice budget, time and effort.

The kit's new look.

I powdercoated the drum hoops and lugs, sanded the bearing edges of the drum shells and re-wrapped the shells. It looks really nice and I love it. They still have stock resonant drum heads, but the batter heads have Remo Emperors. The only problem is the snare throwoff latch, it's really loose, I might replace it or tie a string to keep the throwoff latch in place. For the pedal, the stock single bass pedal is missing, I forgot where I stashed it. I currently use Gibraltar 6700 dual-chain drive double bass pedals.

Cymbals!

Now for the cymbals. I still got the stock 16" crash that sounds like a swishy washy china. And I got a 13" pair of stock hi-hats that sound like tin cans. The extra 18" generic brass crash ride is reliable and survived some heavy hitting.

Playing the newly customized drum set.

Later on, I bought additional nicer cymbals. I got an 18" Zildjian ZBT china, 8" Zildjian ZHT splash and a 6" Zildjian SFX Zil Bell. I also have a Dadi Percussion drum tambourine. To mount the extra cymbals, I bought some Gibraltar Hardware cymbal mounts and clamps.

Current drum setup

The kit is looking good, but still have the stock cymbals and still doesn't have an actual ride cymbal. Meaning it's not yet complete.

A bad 2024 Xmas party solo performance (lack of practice and no ear monitor).

After playing live (and an embarrassing solo live performance at that), the drummer spark in me (or hilariously an early sign of mid-life crisis) re-ignited once again. I want to play drums again. And I also want to redeem myself for that poor live performance at my last Christmas party at my former workplace by making a practice session video. But first I want to complete my drum setup before playing with my old second band again.

I was thinking on going cheap. Zildjian, event though it's my preferred brand, their entry level Planet Z brass cymbals are still expensive. I got a very low budget so I searched online and I saw a few unknown brands from China. They got these alloy (not brass) entry level cymbals. The set is really cheap, it got 14" hats, 16" and 18" crashes, 20" ride and a free 8" splash. They sound good enough for practice sessions. If I buy the set, it will update and almost complete my setup. I'll replace the stock crash and hats (probably make the 16" an o-zone trash crash and the 13" hats a china stacker), keep the brass ride and get an additional Wuhan 12" china.

That's the plan. I'll post some pictures of my drum setup once it's complete and probably make a before and after post.

Cheers!