good size drum set for beginner?

[volsball]

What would be a good size drum set to get for a beginner? I do not know anything about drums, but my sonm really wants a set. I don't want to spend a fortune because he could totallly change his mind in a month or two. I thought about going to a pawn shop or something for the first set, and then if he really likes it, I may get a new set later. Any opinions?

[brandondrury]

Probably the most important piece would be a metronome. The rest of the drum kit is just a collection of round things you beat on.

In all seriousness, I'd try not to spend more than $200. Find some used piece of junk and see if he actually likes it. You could spend up to $5,000 pretty easily, but I couldn't imagine why.

A kick, snare, two toms, hi-hat, crash, and a ride should be just fine for any beginner, in my opinion. I'm no drummer though.

Brandon

[snoopy]

A few hundred bucks will net you a great set of drums now days and may even include cymbals.
Don't ever get a fancy mega piece drum outfit for a beginner....they need to learn how play
in time and form a constant/solid groove before they get into 25 minute drum solos. I like
Brandon's idea about the metronome.........buy a cheap little keyboard of $25 bucks that has
varible tempo and different rhythm styles to play along with.

[TAlderson]

My brother started about a year and half ago, and his set was a cheap Peavy set picked up at a neighbor's yard sale. I agree with Brandon, find something used, it's a much better deal, since a lot of people buy good drum sets, then never use them. My brother's teacher is also making him learn hand drums. This teaches him rhythym and basic stuff without all those glitzy cymbals and loud snares that would entice him to go overboard. It works, too.

-Tyler

[brandondrury]

It's important to define what "good" is, here.

Price doesn't mean "better" with drums. I guess it's not much different than anything else, I guess. More $ spent just means "different".

I'd define "good drums" as drums that have strong hardware that you have to duct tape to hold together. "Good drums" allow a person to really learn timing and groove skills and just about any cheapo drumset will do that.

Brandon

[lumpy]

volsball,
Look at the DD55 by Yamaha. It is not a drum set, but a set of electric pads with some nice built in features that will teach proper timing. I borrow one from my brother in law all the time for home practice, living room jam sessions, and church work. They are lots of fun and your son can use headphones while playing. If he shows an interest, move him up to a decent entry level drum set; Yamaha, Ludwig, Tama, and Pacific all build nice ones.

The DD55 is $239.99 from Musician's Friend, but used one's can be found on eBay. Also, even if he moves up to a set of accoustic drums he will probably always play around with the DD55 cause they really are a lot of fun.

Honestly, I would stay away from the real cheapo drum sets. Even the cheapest one's cost over $200 and the heads are terrible. A decent set of heads for a standard kit will set you back another $60 at least. Drums are not like guitars where you can go buy a Squire Strat/practice amp for $150 and have something kinda cool.

If he moves up to an accoustic set, stay away from the Zildjian ZBT entry level cymbals. Paiste and Sabian make much better entry level cymbals for the same price. For some reason Zildjian has never figured out how to make decent entry level cymbals, and I'm a Zildjian user.

Just some tips. If you really want to encourage his drumming, and the world needs more drummers, start him out on something that will teach him, and sound cool. Keep us posted.
Lump

[brandondrury]

That's funny that a drummer says you can get by on a cheap guitar and a guitar player says you can get by on cheap drums.

Well, I wouldn't take my word for it.

Seriously, I'd like to talk more about this. As rule, cheap guitars are pretty terrible. There are a few exceptions (most notably the Agile guitars). A lot of it may depend on genre, but the real reason that cheap guitars are cheap is because the play like shit and don't stay in tune. The poor playability is really only a serious problem to a shredder type of guy. Most other styles you can get by with much less.

Anyway, so what really seperates a piece of shit drum set and a mega dollar drum set besides tone?

Brandon

[lumpy]

I've been looking for an affordable accoustic bass and shopped the Agile site first. They don't make accoustic basses, but anyhow I noticed that they had a beginner's electric guitar package with a Strat copy, 15 watt practice amp, soft case, strap, picks, extra strings, and a chord book for $150. A couple of years ago I bought a Yamaha accoustic package with basically the same shit sans the amp for under $200. The first person to play the guitar besides me was Graf, the guitar meistro from the Nixon and he was pretty impressed with my cheap guitar. It even sounded good enough to record.

A $200 drum set is round and will make a sound. The heads will be thin and hard to tune without the ol tape trick, and most inexperienced drummers don't know shit about resonance. I bought a cheezoid set of Sunlite drums years ago, and after spending an additional $70 for some decent heads, they sounded passable. The hardware was junk, but no problem for me cause I just used some old Ludwig Speed King pedals I had laying around. The kit did come with cymbals, but they sounded like trash can lids. Also the wrap started coming unglued during the summer, and made the bass drum look lumpy ironically. I'm pretty anal about taking care of my stuff. So, in order to make my $200 drum set sound just passable, I would've had to spend an additional $300 - $400 on cymbals, heads, and hardware, and they would've still looked like hell.

Also on a no-name drum set, there is a serious lack of tuning lugs which makes them even more difficult to tune and keep in tune. Some snares even have only 6 lugs! The shell material is going to be a plywood construction that is not going to sound as nice as maple or birch of coarse, but that's not too much of a problem for beginning drummers cause they have nothing to compare it to.

For $200 you can buy the Yamaha DD55 pads, your aspiring drummer will have a lot of fun fucking around with them cause they can sound like Lars', and most importantly they will learn the important aspects of good timekeeping. Also your ears will be saved cause drums are noisy. Then spend the extra money and buy an intermediate drum set like a Tama Rockstar, and a decent set of cheaper cymbals like Paiste 800's. You can find good buys on vintage drums on eBay, but vintage drums are like vintage cars; cool as hell but high maintanence.

Just my opinion.
Lump

[brandondrury]

Thanks for the post, Lump. All of that makes sense. I guess tuning is a bigger deal to young guys than I had imagined. In my experience, almost no young drummers have even considered the idea of making their drums sound better with a little tuning.

On a side note, I had such an experience about two months ago. So I had a go at tuning his kit for him. I just twisted stuff until it sounded about right to me. Anyway, I was mixing their EP and I noticed that the drum tuning was pretty rough. I checked the song order and it turned out that the song they recorded first (fresh after my mega drum tuning) sounded pretty damn good but the kit faded very quickly.

This tells me that A) I got lucky and got a drum to sound good on my own. B) The kit just didn't hold tune vey long. Of course, in the big time sessions I've been a part of, the drums have been retuned after almost every take.

In case you guys are unfamiliar with the Yamaha DD55, here's a picture. I honestly wouldn't mind having one of these, especially if they had a midi out.

[DogpitStudios]

The Yamaha seems like a good Idea. My first set was what my older sister brought home one day from her friends house. The kit was considered the whore of the town since it had been in every 16 year olds basement in this town for the last 5 years. It was a no name set, and it was CRAP. She took up drumming and got pretty good with this crappy set, and I played around with drumming for a while on the set, while I took my classical piano lessons. I got pretty good teaching myself for around 4 years on the set, and eventually moved it on to an other owner when I bought my tama rockstar, which has lasted me an other 5 years so far.

Ben