James' Drumblog

Yamaha Club Customs - 1 year on…

Just over a year ago I picked up one of the few remaining sets of Yamaha Club Custom’s in the UK - 22/10/12/16 in blue swirl (just like the stock picture above). So just over a year on, what do I think of them?

If I‘m honest I think it’s taken me a little while to really get the best out of them; I don’t really know if that’s me adjusting to them, or them getting ‘played in’ a bit - probably a bit of both ;-) They arrived with coated Ambassadors on, pretty cranked up. Bringing them down to more of a medium tension, I did find it a little difficult to get a fat, ring-free tone out of the toms. The kick sounded great out of the box, and I really haven’t messed around much, other than to fit a kickport. Switching to coated Emporers got me a lot closer to the tom sound I was after without needing any dampening.

Certainly after a few months of fairly regular playing with those heads on I’m very happy with the sound I’m getting, and having recorded a track in a good studio with them, I was very pleased at how they sounded in the control room, and the subsequent mix.

Premier APK Heritage Microbop 16 - First Impressions

I've been considering getting a 'micro-kit' for smaller gigs & rehearsals for a while now (and there a now several to choose from, Sonor's Jungle & Martini, the Ludwig Breakbeat, Tama MetroJam & the Premier Microbop). I was pleased to see Premier introduce their microkit a while back and when the opportunity came up to get one at a very good price (through Drumshop's Black Friday sale), I jumped (or rather, clicked). Since apart from Craig Blundell's video there's not a great deal of reviews or information out there I was curious to see what they were like.

Overall, I'm impressed at what you get; the build quality of the birch shells is very good, bearing edges all well finished. The wrap finish is well done, no problems there. The hardware is decent; spurs, tom holder, floor tom legs and included bass drum lift / riser (which is similar to the Mapex design and clamps onto the bass drum hoop) all nice and solid. The heads supplied are OK but nothing special.

So what's it like to play? On a first outing to a band rehearsal (just with the stock heads and felt strip on the bass drum heads), I was soon smiling; pretty decent volume for small drums. Both toms are easy to tune and sing nicely, with a nice interval. The kick is obviously going to be more punchy than fat, but punchy it is. The snare is good, and once at a medium / high tension it really comes in to its own; great crack, with a little bit of ring undamped - cuts nicely.

Some things you need to get used to; as ever playing with bass drum riser tends to mean the beater is travelling further forward to strike the head and that may require some pedal tweaking. The supplied riser allows vertical & horizontal adjustment of the pedal clamp plate, so you can get the pedal close to, but not fouling the hoop, this helps a lot. As is, the rack tom tends to bounce around a little on the isolation mount, but that's easily cured with some poly tubing on the tuning rods to take some of the 'float' out.

My only complaint is the tom heads didn't take much playing to develop some dents (and I don't consider myself a hard hitter); but this can be remedied easily enough; I've now put some coated G-plus's on.

Overall, a nice little kit, and great fun to play. I've managed to get it into two cases; a Hardcase conga case takes the toms and snare nicely (and can be trundled on wheels), with the kick in its own floor-tom case. Makes a nice change to be able to carry all of the drums into a venue in one trip ;-)

So I triggered rather than mic'ed the kick last night - RT10K->SPD-SX, nice Gretsch Round Badge sample from Superior Drummer. Worked beautifully; no problems, great full kick sound through FOH, and no mic stand for the singer to kick over on the cramped stage...

I'll certainly be doing this again, especially for gigs where I already use the SPD-SX for percussion sounds and a little kick re-enforcement would be useful, and it's impractical to mic the kick directly, for example, cramped on-stage, limited desk channels, or running the PA with limited drum-micing experience.