Depending on where you're located, this might be a solution as well...

http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/msg/4129851816.html

Looks great.

Now take that mattress out of your bass drum and yer all set. lol

The test will be when you attach a pedal... I reckon you need some spurs on the front hoop..

Cheers

I still can't see why you can't turn the toms around with the bass drum sitting correctly?

Hi,

Thanks again for the help!

In order:

[fishaa] I’m in Spain, so no dice on the Craigslist posting (it’s gone anyway...)

[Holliwood] You’re right :-D The foam mattress is from a time when I didn’t know anything about tuning and couldn’t get rid of all those pesky rings and overtones in the bass drum and toms. Now I’ve removed all the muffling from the drums and I’m trying to tune them properly. The snare will be a little tricky, I seem to recall, but I’ve seen a few Youtube videos on tuning and I should be able to get “that great Gretsch sound” of it, right? ;-)

[longjohn] You’re right, I’ll probably need spurs on the front hoop. Any suggestions?

[Vibes] If I turn the toms around and position then close together (about an inch apart), they stick out 5-10 inches from the back, towards the pedal. I’d have to sit a yard from the BD to play them :-D

If all else fails a cymbal stand tom attachment does work quite well and offers a myriad of set up options that any type of bass mounted attachments do not. They are a little more time consuming to set-up, however, once you have it figured out and have prepped correctly it is literally a matter of additional seconds vs. a tom mount so I personally do not find that to be an issue at all. By the time you fool with bass drum anchors or hoop mounted spurs you will have spent more time with that than you would with a cymbal stand mounted tom.

Best of luck to you.

If you go for hoop spurs, read up on them first, the older vintage ones show up often. Danmar seem to be readily available worldwide, but there are some mixed reviews.

Taking another look at your kit I do see your problem clearly, I think that I would turn the BD back to spurs forward. Then mount only the larger tom on the BD forward of your snare, the small tom I would mount from a stand to the left of the former. (This is a nice set up once you get used to it). The Gretsch ball mount will slide directly over the middle (1") section of a cymbal (or a) dedicated stand and you may choose to fit a crash off of the stand as well.. with the Memri locks, it will take only an extra 30 seconds of set up time. I played with this setup quite often, also it allows you to get the ride cymbal in nice and close over the BD..

Good luck with it

Cheers

Tnsquint and Longjohn, I think you’re both right :)

I proceeded with my experiment and took the toms off from the bass drum mount, to attach them to external tom stands (one of these will double as a cymbal stand), and I liked the flexibility much better. My 3 toms (yes, there’s a smaller 10” that I didn’t mention) are now 5 or 6 inches to the right of what they were with the bass drum mount, freeing up more space for the hi-hat stand (the 10” and the hi-hat stand are always in each other’s way)...

I still haven’t found the best hardware setup and the ideal tom position, but it’s clear to me that the added flexibility of not using the bass drum tom mount will help me get there much faster.

I’ll post pictures when that happens :)

Sorry for the delay.

Here are the final pictures of my RIMS adventure Clapping Happy2.

Definitely, the way to go is to use tom holders independent of the bass drum, for maximum flexibility and positioning options.

Here are the pictures…

Now I’m struggling with tuning the blessed drums, but that’s a different story :-D

Thanks again for all the help!

Alex

I resist stand tom mounting because it's less "vintage-y" but it does seem to work better in terms of flexibility, especially when using more than one mounted tom tom.

Before I obtained an actual Set-O-Matic for my Slingerlands, I tried mounting the rack tom on a snare stand and then to a clamp from the crash cymbal stand (12.7mm knurled rods work fine in the vintage socket), and they both allowed me to dial the positioning in right where I wanted it.

I seem to be in the minority in either not noticing the difference or not caring, or liking the reduced sustain, but shell-attached tom mounts do not bother me at all.

We're fortunate to have so many options for vintage drums, like the new Ludwig Atlas lug mount, Pearl ISS, etc.