There's a Peavey set for sale here at a music store. NEW!

How much and are you buying it?:D

Not me. I'm at my quota for a while.

I don't really think you would want that set anyway, would you?

Where are the pics of your sets my good man?

Good question, Freis968...

I've remember a Peavey Radial Pro 1000 series set up at a local shop back in the '80s. It looked strange with those tension rings instead of typical cast lug casings.

I was told their tom shells were as thin as the wood on a flat top acoustic guitar. When I plasyed the set for a bit, man, they sounded tremendous ! Talk about attack and sustain !

They weren't cheap, and I certainly didn't want to be the first guy in town to gig on such an odd-looking set-up. Besides, in my neck of the woods, Peavey has always been known as low to mid-level gear for guys who couldn't afford the real deal. Usually only country bands and teens played Peavey stuff.

When the original Grand Funk reunited in the late 1990s, Don Brewer had a set of Peavey Radial Pro 1000s - in fact, the whole band looked to be endorsing Peavey all around. Don's kit sounded fan-freakin'-TASTIC !

My question is, who made Peavey's drums...? I know Peavey certainly didn't make them. I can't recall who owned Peavey back then, whether it was Martin or Gibson, but they kept it a secret as to who was building the shells for those Peavey drum shells.

Peavey is actually high end stuff, they just have a reputation of being "entry level" because they aren't as expensive as a Fender or a Marshall......Eddie Van Halen used to play 5150 Peavey amps remember? Anyway, Peavey is not owned by anyone but themselves, they are still independantly owned and are in the US....Meridian, MS to be exact. And, Peavey drums were made in house back then. They didn't sell too well, but they were quality drums. They just looked a little too weird for the general public and never took off. Kind of like Remo's drums...sounded great, but never really took off....I think the "composite" construction threw a lot of people off on those....anyway.....

Now that I recall, they did have some weird looking lug on them. Anyone have a pic of them?

Here are a couple of pics of them. The first is a lower line (500 and 700). The second blue kit is the high end kit (1000). The high end kit used maple as the mounting ring. Sweeeeet kits.

Finally! Something I actually know a lot about! I researched the Peavey RP 1000 drums back in the late 90's quite a bit.

The story:

There is a British inventor named Steve Volpp who came up with the idea of designing a shell/tensioning system that would alleviate any stress on the shell, itself.

As with traditional drums, when tension is placed on the head through tightening the lugs which are attached directly to the shell, it will actually contort the shell, too. Thicker shells have less contortion, but they are not as resonant (generally speaking). Thin shells are more resonant, but they contort more and, thus, are more limited in their tuning range.

Speaking in highly simplified terms, Volpp's design basically took two tunable tambourines (without the jingles!) or, let's say, "frame drums" and glued a shell in between! In doing so, the tension remains on the "frame" -or, "Radial Bridge".

The result was that an EXTREMELY thin shell could be utilized without the fear of cracking or distorting the roundness of the shell when it's placed under tension -the best of both worlds!

Volpp shopped the design around and it was Peavey who decided to buy the idea and market it.

The shells of the toms and bass drums are constructed with the Radial Bridge idea. The snare drum was the opposite. It is nearly 1 & 3/4" thick of rock hard maple. Constructed in a "block segment" design. It is massive (10 pounds!). The bearing edges are single 45 degre bevels that are sharp -SHARP! The "lugs" are embedded into the wood of the shell and the only hardware to penetrate the shell is to attach the throwoff hardware. By the way, for whatever reason(s), there are TWO throwoffs on the snare drum. There is no butt plate! TWO, opposing throwoffs! Weird, huh?

Now....the hardware that Peavey chose to use is unfortunately the cheap, Asian-made generic variety. There is nothing to speak about in this regard.

The idea works flawlessly. The practicality is somewhat compromised by the facts that the Radial Bridges stick out and suffer from getting bumped and dinged.

They were expensive, so a couple of the lower lines were made using composite plastics for the Radial Bridges. They didn't seem to work as well...and they certainly didn't look as good.

It was discovered that most drummers were afraid of the new technology and didn't want to flip out the big bucks for something that looked so different. Plus....a lot of people associate the name "Peavey" with budget musical equipment and the expensive RP 1000's didn't fit into that image.

I bought an RP 1000 snare drum towards the end of their run. It's a killer! I chose the black satin oil finish -because black goes with anything!

I'll probably be putting it up for sale sometime this summer. I won't take a penny less than $400.00 for it. It's basically in mint NIB condition and that's nearly the price I paid for it 11 years ago. If nobody wants to buy it for that price...oh well. Mister T