Cocktail Drums

[lumpy]

I'm going to buy a set of cocktail drums for my lounge. Any of you skin bashers ever play such a monster? I don't even know if you play them standing up ala Dave Clark or sitting down.
Lump

[brandondrury]

I'm guessing that cocktail drums have little to do with cocktail sauce.

Brandon

[lumpy]

Cocktail drums are portable and don't use as much space as conventional drum sets. They resemble a tall floor tom with a downsized tom and snare mounted to the side with a couple of brackets for a crash/ride and a pair of stationary hi-hats. The bass drum batter head is the resonant side of the primary floor tom base and uses an inverted bass drum beater that moves up instead of forward. They were fairly popular in the 30's and 40's before the modern drum set was firmly established. Of coarse they have their advantages and disadvantages. They don't sound at all like a conventional drum kit due to the smaller sizes. There are a few drum companies still making them, including Yamaha. You can also find the vintage variety on eBay for a song. I want one for the "Lumpy's Wood Lounge" I'm putting together on the back of my house for drunken jam sessions.

I was just wondering if anybody had any experience playing on a cocktail kit and could give me a few pointers on what to avoid.

Lump

[snoopy]

A fella I know in STL that plays with The Darrells has talk about his kit before (Yamaha) his main complant was that the "kick" sound really sounded like a big tom (which it is) and got king of annoying after 6 or 7 songs,