My Setup

Morning all.

This is my first blog post back after my amazingly refreshing holiday to Turkey. I can’t recommend this place enough. It’s an amazingly beautiful country. If you ever get the opportunity to go, go you wont be disappointed.

Anyway back to business. I thought id start a small series of blogs about the equipment I am currently using.

My First blog is about my Main Drum Kit and which is also the one featured in my drum covers and the kit I use to teach my students on.

First about the Kit it’s self. It’s a DW (drum Workshop) Collectors Series finished in Blue Ouster wrap and off-set with Black Chrome Hardware. The Rack Tom sizes are 12”x8″, 13”x9″, 14”x10″ and 16”x12″ I have no floor toms on this kit all Toms are suspended via the DW STM system (suspension tom mount). My Base Drum is a non drilled 24”x18″ Cannon which sounds absolutely amazing. It’s loud and crisp at the same time. My snare that I brought with this kit is a DW Black Nickel Knurled steel 14” by 6.5” Snare. Its a very nice snare but I will say its not the snare I use in the videos. (More about that snare in the next part of this series)
My second snare (to the left of me) is a 13” by 3” Pearl Maple Piccolo Snare. I love the sound of this little snare. So tight and snappy, perfect for a little accented part in a song.

The Drum Heads on this kit are all by REMO and they are made specifically for DW. They are a clear/coated head. To give you the best of both worlds. The bright tones of a clear head with the control and dampening of a coated head.

The Hardware I use on this kit is also all from DW. My double base peddles and Hi-hat stand are from the DW 5000 range. These are by far the most smoothest and responsive set of peddles I have ever had the pleasure of playing. (they look pretty good too) My cymbal and Tom stands are also DW.

Now for my Cymbals. All the Cymbals I own and have ever owned are Zildjian. I have around 25 at the moment all being from different ranges. The ones I use on this kit though are all from the A Custom range with the exception of 1 being from there Oriental range. I have never broken a Zildjian cymbal (touch wood) and I still have the very first 1 I brought from over 14 years ago. It’s an A 14” paper thin Crash. The main reason I started with Zildjians is because of the soul fact my drum teacher used to play them. So it was natural for my to get them as well. But I have to say now I love the sound and the look of the cymbals, and for the style of music I like to play I don’t think anything else comes close. (but that’s just my opinion.) if you would like a debate on which company makes the best cymbals please leave a comment 😉

The Cymbals on this kit are:

A Custom
13” Hi Hats
8” Splash
10” Splash
16” Crash
18” Fast Crash
19” Crash
21” Projection Ride
18” China

Oriental
14” China

My stick choice is predominantly Zildjian wood tip 5a’s, But I have recently moved away from these sticks as I found I started to break a hell of a lot of them. (Around 2 pairs a week). So I have recently moved to Vic Firth 5A’s which seem to stand up to far more punishment.

Please check out the DW website. They have some brilliant stuff on there. www.dwdrums.com