On drums...

So, I finished up a snare conversion the other day for my "Convalescence Kit." It was a 14x10" XP8 rack tom, but after a little cutting and drilling, it became a mighty fine snare drum! 8-ply (7mm) maple. I am very happy with it and look forward to playing the hell out of it over the next few months on tour. Here is a link to the gallery of pics for the snare: http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/cre ... tid=143596
Teaser pic:


Here is the kit I will be taking out with the snare. Just a minimum of cymbals set up for the pics, but these are the drums. 12x8, 15x12" 22x14" and the 14x7.5" snare. Not sure if I will take out the 12x7" or 10x6" Pearl Maple aux snare just yet.



Here is a gallery of my XP8s in various configurations. http://pix.kg/p/231482049310%3A630645513/scl
There are a few more pics to be added soon that show my 18" floor and 13" tom.

I have a large set of nice Midnight Mists (10 12 13 14 15RT 16 18FT 16 22 24BD 14x7.5 SD) and a player's set of Silver Metallics (12 13 16 22). The 13 and 22 Silvers have sacrificed their hardware to complete the same size Midnight Mist shells I found not long ago. The 14" tom shell I got with the 13 & 22 shells became the aforementioned snare. The 22" silver shell turned into a Thunder Drum when I picked up a few more lugs and claws. There is a pic of it in the gallery...

_________________
Chris

Great convalescence project, Chris. Your kits look great, I'm interested by your setups, fascinated by the buzz saw Paiste; nonetheless, what really grabbed me is the room and everything in it. Fantastic studio.

What is the curved wood bit attached to the Pearl snare?

_________________
Gregory

Thank you!
Despite being less than nice to all of my Paistes, I have two that have a greater propensity to crack. One is my 17" Dark Energy Crash, the other is the 18" Dimensions Dry ride in the picture. Good thing I have a Dremel, they still sound great. The Dry Ride is just soft and sluggish feeling to start with and dents easily. I use it often in smaller set ups and crash it a bit... The 17" DE crash (pics of it coming in the next round of Rogers) is just a little thinner at the edges. I purchased it off of ebay for a song since it already had one small mouse bit repair. It now makes the Dry Ride look tame. It now just stays on the home kit and was replaced by an 18" version for touring, which surprisingly is higher pitched-leading to my hunch that's the 17 is a thinner anomaly from the generally consistent Swiss cymbalsmiths.

The big kit is just what happens when you have a bunch of drums, hardware and cymbals that are not getting torn down and moved, so the monster just keeps growing. At the heart of it all is a standard 4-piece kit that feels like my tour kit. The rest is gravy.

The wood attachment is a Yamaha Groove Wedge. It's a multi-ply maple thing that effectively extends the drums diameter to make toneful cross sticking possible on smaller drums and can be attached to larger drums to improve the click tone. That 12x7" maple snare sounds so nice and has lots of body, but the cross stick tone is horrid w/out the wedge.

The live room is amazing. It's about 18x28' with 12' ceilings and just enough treatment to sound controlled, but not anywhere near dead. Best part is that it's attached to my place. Even in the middle of the city, no noise complaints, ever.

_________________
Chris

Love that snare Chris. Gorgeous looking and perfect size.

_________________
Cliff

River City Trio

What if we did all have the same opinions?

Thanks! It turned out much better than I hoped. I love this size-it fits in my 6.5" hard cases too-a bonus! The fat-back hits in the middle are concussive.
The lugs are quite rough and pitted, but they were a bargain and only to get this snare up and running. If I find some nicer condition lugs I will get them since this deserves nice lugs. Same with a clockface Rogers strainer, the Stealth is positioned and drilled so that a Rogers will bolt right on.


THe band is Oakhurst out of Denver Colorado. Can be found at www.oakhurstmusic.com We just launched a new website and I have a lot of work to do getting my corner of it up to date.

_________________
Chris

_________________
Cliff

River City Trio

What if we did all have the same opinions?

Nice website, Chris. Looking for you rmusic, I got as far as the barrel and hit a decision tree. But I did discover that you will be in Wisconsin next week, and we would surely make it to Kenosha if we had a couple more dimes to rub together at the moment. It's about a three hour run, so we'd have to stay overnight somewhere. Oh well.

Chris, how do your tour plans get arranged? There seems to be a great deal of travel between stops. Is it not possible to arrange for other stops between those gigs? Madison and MIlwaukee are not on your schedule, but Chicago and Kenosha are. Is there a logic to that? Also, there are numerous small towns all over the midwest that have theaters, and some, though clearly not all, have a music hungry population.

_________________
Gregory

This particular tour is just hitting our strongest markets in the area. A couple of the guys in the band are limited on time right now and forced pinpointing our stops vs a smooth and easy flow through a region.
The official release of our record isn't until the end of the month and at that point we will be more thorough with touring over the summer.

We will probably have more stops through WI later this summer. I'll let ya know, Greg.

_________________
Chris