How often do you see drummers using expensive top of the range drums only to jam a pillow in and bass drum, and slap moongel all over the toms? They might as well be playing a beginner's kit if they're going to do that. You can't fool me with that stuff. Who's going to complain if you have cheap toms and bass drum tuned well? toms sound like toms to me. As long as you can hear them who cares? Cymbals are another story. You notice when someone is playing cheap cymbals. I bet in a blindfold test most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference between

MIJ toms and Gretsch toms, but don't get me wrong, obviously I'd rather have the expensive drums over the cheap stuff. I'm just saying, invest in a good snare, good cymbals and get a good pedal. If you show up to a gig with those things and play the crappy Pearl Export house kit you'll get by just fine.

I was joking of course, no pitchfork here. I sort of agree with you, but would add that it really depends on the style of music which part of the kit is most important. You could just as well turn it around and argue that a snare should be muffled anyway, so who cares about that - it’ s the toms that are important, the tone and sustain etc.

I feel that, when you know what you are looking for, some drums just work and others don’t. Some have a wider range and use/flexibility that can be coaxed into what you like, while others may have a very specific sound that may suit your playing with ease (or not). At the end of the day though, most of it comes down to head choice and skill.

Well, keep in mind that Ludwig made wood drums, metal drums and Vistalites, so there's probably a bit too much differentiation among the various types of Ludwig drums to say they all sounded a certain way that was brand-specific..

I brought nice sounding drums and snares for studio sessions only to find after coming back from lunch, the bassdrum completely wrapped with sound blankets along with kitchen towels covering half of the floortom head. I was pretty upset and told the technician that i would never bother bringing gear in his studio ever again and that i would rather use his ****ty/ dusty Pearl kit in his closet because in the end, both instruments sounded exactly the same.

Those kind of guys don't know what they're doing, they just want to make it easier on themselves, not considering what sound the drummer is looking for. What works for one guy may not work for another and to make it worse, you're paying for their service. I would had taken all the towels and pillows off and made the tech work for his money.

That's right brotha but i was hired to do the job and had no say in anything soundwise, that is what they wanted and that's what they got. It sounded horrible to me but it wasn't the first time and not the last.

I went to do a friend a favor at....a local art school...and the gig was to teach kids how to engineer a recording.

This one teacher came up and saw my tiny bop kit and said, "Well, you'll probably want to muffle that bass drum, huh?" And I said, "Do whatever you need to do, man." So he brings out a quarter and tapes it to the batter head. "You've probably seen this one, before, huh?" "Nope....never."

I can't tell you what it sounded like because as soon as the gig was done, I was out of there!