Well, I can speak from experience as I own a Catalina Maple kit. I have owned them for a few years, and have had lots of time to experiment with different heads and tuning. I currently have g2 coated batter heads, and stock reso's. They have a fairly good tuning range, but at higher tunings, I find they have a bit of a ring to them. That's where the coated heads and moongels come in. They are a well made product, with nice smooth interiors, great bearing edges, and the cherry laquer finish is very high quality. I really like mine. I just wish they offered them in a 20 kick. Very limited cofigs., and sizes.

That being said, I have a $100 set of MIJ Silvertones that I am super happy with. Sound great, and look cool too. They don't have the tuning range, however, and I am a little afraid of constantly gigging with them so as not to damage them. Especially since they are almost 40 years old. The Gretch's should easily last that long.

If you are worried about being happy with a Catalina kit, you should be easily, especially for the price point.

And you can easily find them used in great conditrion for less than 400, on most C/L pages, and many times for 300 and below. There is an 18-12-14 kit here for less than 300 on my C/L. I just don't have the money, it is the one with the centered lugs. I have seen it listed a couple of times, don't know if it's still available, but look over the C/L listing in Chicagoland, there is likely to be at least one.

I have a Catalina series Gretsch 6 pc kit I bought about 4 years ago for about $500.00 dollars new for the shell pack. They have been giging on the road for approx. 3 years now and they sound great.

One thing you should do when you first buy them is remove all heads and tighten everything you can. They are very well made and with the right heads sound really good. Evans heads with the silver rings should do the trick.

One other thing, use a good supra snare and use the Gretsch snare from the kit for practice.

TOM - drummer

I have a Gretsch Catalina Jazz kit which is really great fun to play and light for carrying about the place. Got it about 6 months ago and it has the original Evans heads - I did however put Puresound snares on and find the supplied snare drum fine. Played it many times now in big and small venues, indoor and outdoor and it will do me I think till I pack the whole game in.

[IMG]http://i91.photobucket.com/albums/k291/davidh_03/gretschcatalinajazz.png[/IMG]

I liked mine,too BUT.....no 13 tom available,and I play 13-16-22.Excellent quality for the money.The finish,Amber Maple,was beautiful.I wish they'd had the round over edges my 70's American Gretsches had.If I found a Blue Catalina Birch for the right money..........

I really like mine. I have a set of Catalina Clubs and Catalina Birch's. I added a second floor tom to the clubs, as I prefer two down and one up. I've gigged with both quite a bit and never had a problem. I left the stock reso heads on the toms but switched the batters to Evans Hydraulics. I also lacquered the interiors. Gave them a sweeeeeeet tone without a ton of ring. I normally use different snares depending on the gig. The birch kit is shown with both toms, but I also picked up a single tree and only use one rack. See my website (link in my sig) for other pix.

There's a good deal of decent drums coming out of Taiwan these days... Gretch is among them. Ludwig has some too... lots of makers do.

If you are buying them to play them..it's an OK venture... Made well and affordable.

Hey Fish! that is a nice collection you have, your wife must be a saint!!!!!! put up those Sling Pics soon!!!guitar2