Looking for info on drum set for a kid

[Dragon]

OK, now it's my turn! I'm looking for a "real" drum set for my 5-year-old (this kid has incredible rhythm!). Musician's Friend has an unheard-of 5-piece kid's set for $140 or so...does anyone know if it's worth getting something like this, or should I just buy him a used full-size set, or just a cheaper 3-drum set, or what?

Last year I got him a plastic set with some kind of metronome thingie in it, but he's way past that...

Thanks in advance!

[Emeric]

I'd be tempted to go the full size kit. Check out the intro kits by CB percussion and dixon. Good hardware and shells. Up here in the North we sell them for $449 Canadian (no cymbals)...

Emeric

[dmas]

Ludwig makes a junior 5-piece set (16" bass drum) and I believe it is fully tuneable. It only comes with one bass drum mounted cymbal and no high-hat cymbals. I think I saw it in Interstate's catolog www.interstatemusic.com

Good luck

[S8-N]

I'd go with a full size kit. My drummer plays a Pearl export series kit and I have seen that thing take some ABUSE over the last 12 years. They still look and sound great.
Somehow I doubt that a youth kit would actually stand up to the abuse that a youth would inflict upon it.
Get cheap cymbals for the first few years because they WILL crack.

[Dragon]

I just hadda follow up on this one (and get all weepy because S8-N ain't here right now). I decided to take his and Emeric's advice and spring for a full-sized kit (dmas, I appreciate your pointer as well).

This was partly based on the fact that I gotten my older son a nice kid-sized guitar, which he played for about 4 days before giving up. Now I have a mini-Ovation that I can't even really play, so it's a total loss unless I can sell it or something. This way, at worst I'd have something to mess with myself, though I can't actually play drums worth a bean.

So I decided to go for a fairly cheap set of full-sized drums. I prowled every online source and offline catalog and then remembered I had bought my Strat from Sam Ash when I had been on the East Coast awhile back. I found this little gem there:
http://www.intersolutions.net/samash...2&r=0.46884818

It's a step up from the cheapest they had, with double-braced hardware and stuff...I don't think you're going to find a full set with cymbals anywhere else for $350! It came with two spare lugs, and sure enough, I ended up with two broken lugs when all was said and done. The pedals aren't great but we can live with them, the rest seems pretty good except the crappy pot-metal lugs. I'll have to take a picture of a happy Steven barely peeping over the top of all this stuff and post it.

The best part is that Sam Ash still doesn't quite have their act together as far as figuring shipping costs...they charged me a whole $12.95 to ship the two huge-ass boxes of drums from Florida to California! So if you're looking for a starter set, check this out!

[DaveO]

Hey Dragon,

Thanks for resurrecting this posting - there's some good info I can use. Our son's birthday is in April and we were wondering the same question.

[GT]

Hello Dragon,

Good to hear from you, you don't grace these forums enough. I took my daughter to Sam Ash, to look at drums. She went right to the Pearl set without knowing any thing about brand names. But to my wallet, the Groove Percusion set looks like a steal.

The cymbal crash cymbal looks kind of cheap. How does it sound? Probably better than my drum machine. Does it come with a throne?

[El Barto]

Agh! It's driving me insane! I've listened to those MP3s over and over and I still don't hear a great difference between all those mics, even though I *love* the way they sound...when I first heard the MC012 I was like "WOAH." Am I retarded if I cannot discern the MP3s?

[El Barto]

Woooops, replied to the wrong message. Discard that last message by me...heh.

[Dragon]

El Barto, I think you're in the wrong thread!

GT, I been busy...you'll see soon enough! Thanks for the compliment though. I'm not pretending to be a drum expert at all, but that cymbal sounds pretty good. It's billed as a crash/ride, and I found if you tap it from the bottom, it gets a totally different sound. This is probably old (hi :-) hat to drummers but it's always fun for me to discover stuff.

One of the biggest secrets for real-sounding electronic drum recording is to mix a real hi-hat and cymbals in with drum machine or MIDI drums, BTW.

Neither the cymbal nor the drum set comes with a throne, but just like with the set I opted to get the "next-to-cheapest" and ended up with a Groove Percussion throne for $39.95 (also from Sam Ash) that -- if I take off the collars -- goes low enough for Steven and is also double-braced and decent quality.

Speaking of Pearl, their site has absolutely the best intro to drum setup I've been able to find. I was just there last night...let's see:
http://www.pearldrum.com/education/howto/how0101.html

Enjoy!