I,ve owned old and new Premier kits and i loved them,but im a junky and buy and sell just to get my hands on as much product as i can.I have a 70,s Gretsch kit that stays with me,but the rest is mostly for fun.I,ve learned to never "tell" people whats good,bad,or indifferent.Let them make thier own conclusions,as most already have im sure.There are a few other "know it alls"on other forums and we know how obnoxious they are.Y,all should just take a deep breath and start over.This thread started out harmless,im sure there is no foul intended.

I'm no whiner, I just made an observation, people are looking for a name rather than quality. When I first put the Premier kit up for trade and had no responses, I said I'll bet if this was a DW, I'd have to beat them off with a stick. Why? The quality and certainly not the sound of a DW is better than this Premier kit, the price tag on both kits are about the same. I was at a drum shop today and the owner had a Premier catalog from around 2000, it had an 18x22 Premier Signia kick, like mine, listed at $1,300. So if it's not the quality or price, then what is it? Simple, the name.

People like myself are not jealous or dislike DW, we just don't understand how so many people have fallen into the DW spell. That somehow DW drums are better than any drum on the planet, the owners of DW are slick marketers, but in no way their drums are superior to any others. In fact, to me, DW's for the most part are one trick pony's, not too versatile. I've heard many DW kick drums sound thuddy and are lacking of resonance.

The drum owner I saw today just had another DW traded to him towards a custom kit he makes. He said a lot of drummers are disappointed with their DW's so they trade them in and he makes them a kit. Then because their are so many DW robots out there drinking the DW kool-aid, he is able to resell a 6 year old kit for $2,000, go figure.

Don't discount the fact that many potential buyers/traders simply may have never heard a kit like yours live let alone demo'ed one. However there is a great deal more familiarity with the ubiquitous DW's, hence the willingness to take on one of their kits.

I have heard but not play the Premiers and thought they sounded great. But I'm also a guy that will attribute the sound more to the drummer and the heads than to the "shell" itself (Don't know if you saw that video I posted of a discarded Ford rim that some guy turned into a great sounding snare - although tuned a bit high for my taste- for an example of what I mean).

Well, if that's the case, then we should all chuck our big expensive drums and buy cb 700's. The shell constuction, bearing edges and finish on drums has a lot to do with the sound as well as the look.

I understand what you're saying about a DW compared to a Premier Signia, sure, more people have heard DW's, but I thought the vast majority of the guys on here were very knowledgeable about drum gear. It's really not hard to find videos of guys playing a Signia kit, they are all over youtube. Any drummer that knows quality, ought to know about all the big drum companies. It's not like Premier just materialized overnight, the company has been around for nearly 100 years and the Signia line had a good 10 to 15 year run.

Okay, so you've convinced us of Premier's superiority. Now why don't you just keep it and quit trying to sell/trade a kit every other week. :rolleyes::confused:

Why? I don't know why. I don't believe Premier drums are superior, but I also don't believe they get the respect they deserve.

America makes very few products of any kind but DW happens to be one of them.. they are excellent marketers but just because a company is out of business does not mean that their product is inferior in comparison to a company still in business ... the mess we are in today is because of greed, and false advertisement,and poor management of many companies ,bank setc etc, I know speaking just for myself I would never buy DW,Yammaha,or Pearl, and I also know I would rather own a 1968 dodge charger than a 2010 dodge charger.

Americans today buy on implulse 80% of the time maybe us old folks just remember back when stuff was made good....

Well, Premier is still in business, I just saw their website. They are currently looking for an American distributer.

i think the reason u got so many responses on the DW was due to the sizes listed. it seems everyone loves and 18" kick! u should have listed the DW with the exact sizes as your premier kit, then u could have had a solid ground for your experiment.