Size does Matter! By David Blampied
Drum size that is. The size of my drums was something I deliberated over in my head over for months. Arriving at the conclusion that the only way to solve this dilemma of choosing what size drums to use was just to do some good old fashion research, and tire kicking at a lot of music stores. As it turned out this was pretty simple to resolve. I have a Tama Superstar series birch kit that the toms, deep power toms that descended in sized in one inch increments. What I found was that most of the odd sized (11”, 13”, 15”) drums were difficult to tune and get a good tone from. Not only the drum itself, but the odd drums seemed out of intonation sequence the other drums.
So as a result from this experience I decided to go with all even sized toms. As an added benefit to this choice, when I do a descending drum fill on the toms going from an 8” to a 10” to 12” just sounds better. The tonality from a 14” drum to a 15” drum is just not enough at least from the perspective of a diatonic scale. Plus who the hell wants to play and odd ball drum anyway.
Having a history of large bass drums, almost exclusively playing 24” bass drums for 20 years in varying depths I felt it was time to step down to a 22”. I can’t say I’m disappointed. The 22”x18” Spaun maple custom bass drum supplies a nice low end punchy thud. Without a lot of over ring to be stopped with pillows and blankets. In addition the batter head I use, an Aquarian super kick II is a fantastic drum head, it sounds great and is really easy to tune.
Perhaps one day I’ll put together an all odd sized drum kit together and see how that goes, drum workshop is now making the 23” bass drum, I’m sure other makers won’t be far behind. I wasn’t too impressed with DW’s new 23” bass drum but I guess it’s nice to have options.
So as a result from this experience I decided to go with all even sized toms. As an added benefit to this choice, when I do a descending drum fill on the toms going from an 8” to a 10” to 12” just sounds better. The tonality from a 14” drum to a 15” drum is just not enough at least from the perspective of a diatonic scale. Plus who the hell wants to play and odd ball drum anyway.
Having a history of large bass drums, almost exclusively playing 24” bass drums for 20 years in varying depths I felt it was time to step down to a 22”. I can’t say I’m disappointed. The 22”x18” Spaun maple custom bass drum supplies a nice low end punchy thud. Without a lot of over ring to be stopped with pillows and blankets. In addition the batter head I use, an Aquarian super kick II is a fantastic drum head, it sounds great and is really easy to tune.
Perhaps one day I’ll put together an all odd sized drum kit together and see how that goes, drum workshop is now making the 23” bass drum, I’m sure other makers won’t be far behind. I wasn’t too impressed with DW’s new 23” bass drum but I guess it’s nice to have options.
