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Picky drummers??


Drummerboy

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This is indeed at times a very funny thread.

If it sounds good, you can adjust to your own preference of set up, near enough and folks that run the venue help heaps then its a win win situation? Any drummer turning up with his/her own kit to The Moorings should be allowed to take the house kit down, set up own kit, not get EQ'd differently from house kit, take down own kit and re set house kit. All of this within alloted set time. The rest of the band may have something to say about the minus 20minutes gig they get to not play!

Personally I would prefer to use my own kit at The Tunnels, and share it, as the house one is a little ragged around the edges, or was the last time I tried to use it.

20 mins?

You'd prob be looking at a ten minute set at the most when i think about it, it would take about 10-15 mins to take down the kit (keeping in mind all the mics are already set up), set up a new one and re-mic it. I suppose if you would rather spend most of your stage time setting up a new drum kit then yeah it would be worth the hassle.

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20 mins?

You'd prob be looking at a ten minute set at the most when i think about it, it would take about 10-15 mins to take down the kit (keeping in mind all the mics are already set up), set up a new one and re-mic it. I suppose if you would rather spend most of your stage time setting up a new drum kit then yeah it would be worth the hassle.

Minus 20 minutes i.e. not getting to play coz the drummer was twatting about.

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why would you possilbe want to use a kit that hasnt been EQ'd specifically for the venue rather than the house kit that is set up to sound as good as it can? No matter what drum kit you bring it would have to be EQ'd as the moorings wouldnt allow it any other way, which would then take time out of the gig night, (they wont come in hours early to accomodate you and why should they?) which you would then moan at at the end of the night when you only got to play 4 of your hits instead of 5-6. The band from hull would then piss and moan they came all the way up (with their fancy drum kit) only to play for 20 mins and Flash then has to deal with it all before getting up the next day to start again.

NOW do you get the point?

LOL this is kinda silly now. I was merly making a point about flexability not sound. You talk as if the moorings has a great sound - it does'nt! Fact is the EQs in that "box" of a stage is awful. So it would in fact make not much difference for others to use their kit without spending 6 hours running through a sound deck. I feel im wasting my breath but i can't be bothered arguing anymore.

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This is indeed at times a very funny thread.

If it sounds good, you can adjust to your own preference of set up, near enough and folks that run the venue help heaps then its a win win situation? Any drummer turning up with his/her own kit to The Moorings should be allowed to take the house kit down, set up own kit, not get EQ'd differently from house kit, take down own kit and re set house kit. All of this within alloted set time. The rest of the band may have something to say about the minus 20minutes gig they get to not play!

Personally I would prefer to use my own kit at The Tunnels, and share it, as the house one is a little ragged around the edges, or was the last time I tried to use it.

AMAZING! Someone who talks sense! Congrats Jim Stax you have just been awarded the common sense award:up: Im glad to see you get what i was on about. Tunnels is a decent venue. Like the layout!

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AMAZING! Someone who talks sense! Congrats Jim Stax you have just been awarded the common sense award:up: Im glad to see you get what i was on about. Tunnels is a decent venue. Like the layout!

You are referring to the latter part of my post yes? The first bit is an attempt at taking the piss out precious drum heads.

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LOL this is kinda silly now. I was merly making a point about flexability not sound. You talk as if the moorings has a great sound - it does'nt! Fact is the EQs in that "box" of a stage is awful. So it would in fact make not much difference for others to use their kit without spending 6 hours running through a sound deck. I feel im wasting my breath but i can't be bothered arguing anymore.

you are wasting your breath because you have no idea what you are talking about, as Frosty said you are the king of missing the point.

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Here's my perspective on using kits live, from a sound engineers point of view.

Take your own kit when:

1) You're a bona fide headline act, especially if your bringing your own engineer. "Headline" doesn't mean playing last at a 3 door tax gig to your mates and the mates of other bands who haven't buggered off home yet.

2) You know the house kit is poop and you know all the other bands and the venue are happy to use your kit.

3) You're the only band playing and the venue doesn't mind.

4) If there's no house kit. Obviously.

Changing kits is a pain in my arse for several reasons:

I have to soundcheck the other kit. If the venue is open for business this can result in a loss of trade.(OK, not really a pain in MY arse but venue owners nipping my head about it is)

I have to mic, EQ and dynamically process a different animal. Since most desks are analogue this involves scribbling settings down on scraps of paper. Since a drum kit can quite often constitute half the channels and a large amount of the dynamic processors I'm using for a band this usually more than doubles the chances of me making a fuck up*.

Then there's the storage. How many venues have a big enough stage to accommodate two drum kits in "ready to go" fashion?

At the end of the day, there's not many people here at the stage where their drum sound (if it's not shit) really matters live. If the engineer's sufficiently on the ball the only people who'll notice are other drummers and engineers. It's not as if you've got a whole room of people eagerly anticipating hearing exactly what they've heard on your last hit album and paying a handsome fee for the privilege.

*TIP: If you see a sound engineer scribbling things down at soundcheck don't talk to them, don't even stand patiently beside them (we know you're there, we can feel you looking at us); save the questions until they look finished.

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As a drummer, of course I prefer playing my own kit.....it's set up how I like it, I like the stick response of the heads, the kick drum is tuned to my preferred tension, the pedals are as I like them etc etc.

But for the sake of a 30 minute slot, whether the venue was happy for me to use my own kit or not, I frankly couldn't be arsed with the hassle. 30 minutes is probably 6 or 7 songs if you're lucky which gives you very little time to convince an audience that you're any good.....why waste any of that time pissing around with the drums, when you're average punter couldn't tell the difference anyway?

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Here's my perspective on using kits live, from a sound engineers point of view.

Take your own kit when:

1) You're a bona fide headline act, especially if your bringing your own engineer. "Headline" doesn't mean playing last at a 3 door tax gig to your mates and the mates of other bands who haven't buggered off home yet.

2) You know the house kit is poop and you know all the other bands and the venue are happy to use your kit.

3) You're the only band playing and the venue doesn't mind.

4) If there's no house kit. Obviously.

Changing kits is a pain in my arse for several reasons:

I have to soundcheck the other kit. If the venue is open for business this can result in a loss of trade.(OK, not really a pain in MY arse but venue owners nipping my head about it is)

I have to mic, EQ and dynamically process a different animal. Since most desks are analogue this involves scribbling settings down on scraps of paper. Since a drum kit can quite often constitute half the channels and a large amount of the dynamic processors I'm using for a band this usually more than doubles the chances of me making a fuck up*.

Then there's the storage. How many venues have a big enough stage to accommodate two drum kits in "ready to go" fashion?

At the end of the day, there's not many people here at the stage where their drum sound (if it's not shit) really matters live. If the engineer's sufficiently on the ball the only people who'll notice are other drummers and engineers. It's not as if you've got a whole room of people eagerly anticipating hearing exactly what they've heard on your last hit album and paying a handsome fee for the privilege.

*TIP: If you see a sound engineer scribbling things down at soundcheck don't talk to them, don't even stand patiently beside them (we know you're there, we can feel you looking at us); save the questions until they look finished.

Brilliant post Ian. Fact is that 9 times out of 10 it's going to sound better on a house kit because the engineers been refining the EQ on it over a period of months.

Do appreciate someone wanting to use their own gear though, just a bit selfish when it causes so much disruption and hassle to everyone else. By the time the snare, cymbals and pedal have been changed it's only the toms and kick that are left, and those are the hardest things to EQ, so that's the best compromise in my opinion.

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why would you possilbe want to use a kit that hasnt been EQ'd specifically for the venue rather than the house kit that is set up to sound as good as it can? No matter what drum kit you bring it would have to be EQ'd as the moorings wouldnt allow it any other way, which would then take time out of the gig night, (they wont come in hours early to accomodate you and why should they?) which you would then moan at at the end of the night when you only got to play 4 of your hits instead of 5-6. The band from hull would then piss and moan they came all the way up (with their fancy drum kit) only to play for 20 mins and Flash then has to deal with it all before getting up the next day to start again.

NOW do you get the point?

Thanks Milner, I couldn't have explained this any better myself (but here is some input anyway LOL). It boils down to:

Fairness - if we had to change the kit four times there would be no gig.

Economics - engineers need paid, and sound checks alienate punters, charging a higher ticket price to try and cover those loses this wouldn't help as less people would attend. We're packed out most Saturdays so reckon we have it about right.

Sound - the drummer will play better on is own kit granted... but the EQ isn't going to be so good. At the end of the day NOBODY in the audience will notice the difference anyway.

Grief - I spent the first 2 years swapping and EQ drum kits multiple times each week, which added up to around 200 hours (or 13 days of my life). If I kept that up it would have run to over a year by the time I bailed out. Life is too short.

If Drummerboy is struggling to accept this then he really needs to play somewhere else where the slaves aren't so uppity!

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What would be good is if Gerry Anderson designed a drum riser that worked like the family sofa in Thunderbirds. That way you could have the next drummer setting up his kit in advance, and it just switches the risers hydraulically at changeover time. The cost might be somewhat prohibitive though, but there may be a way to get around this by introducing a drummer tax of some sort.

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