Gretsch Catalina Club Jazz

DenverDrummer said:
forums, I believe are made with 100% poplar. Poplar is a non tonal wood so the shells can sound a little dead. People loved it on the old ludwigs when they used it as an inner ply with Maple, but it was more to stabalize the mid range tones to make the drums a little less ringy.

Exports have been discontinued since 2007 I believe. The older exports made with phillipine mohogany sounded great. Later they switched this out to poplar and they just didn't sound as good. Now the visions are made with birch, sound much better.

Stagestar is about equivalent to Pearl Forum (i.e. bottom of the line). The Swingstars are a mid range kit and are much better built, have better shell material.

Also keep in mind the cheaper the drum, the less accurate the bearing edge is. The bearing edge is the equivalent to a bridge on a guitar. This is where you get the majority of your tone from the head. You can get them recut if they're not accurate, but if your shelling out the money in the first place, better to have them done right the first time.

And yeah as someone mentioned check PDP. They're build to DW specs, but made in Mexico where the labor is cheaper. Some very good stuff I've seen from them.

Regarding cymbals, don't go cheap here. You're better to go out and buy some used Zildjian/Sabian/Paiste/Meinl than to buy anything that's a brass cymbal, or even B8 pro, ZBT, etc. If you must buy a student cymbal pack look at Sabian X's, Zildjian ZHT, and Paiste Alpha.

High quality cymbals are made with bell bronze or what they call B20 bronze (Zlidjian A, A Custom, K, K Custom, Z, Sabian AA,AAX,HH,HHX) Paiste and Meinl use B8 bronze (i.e. sheet metal), but their manufacturing process for these lines is much better than what Zildjian and Sabian do for their sheet cymbals. The B8 or B20, refers to the amount of tin in the alloy (i.e. B8 = 8% tin/92% copper, B20 = 20% tin/80% copper) My preference is for cast B20 cymbals (I play Zildjian K's), but there are good sounding Paiste's and Meinl's out there. Sabian X's are the only student model cast cymbal made, but they have a cheaper lathing process (what makes the grooves in a cymbal) and they are not hammered, so they vary wildly between the same model cymbal. Zildjian ZHT is a specialty B12 Bronze, and is a little less ultra high frequency than some of the other student model B8 cymbals.

As I said with cymbals my recomendation on a budget is buy used if you're on a budget, or shell out of a good quality cymbal pack. A new Zildjian A pack will run around $650, but you will get 14" hats, 20" ride, 16" crash, 18" crash and a cymbal bag. The other manufacturers have similar priced packages.
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Very helpful response thank you so much!
 
Greg L routinely gives good advice. I have to agree that an 18" kick is not versitile enough - in particular if you plan to record a lot of rock & roll. That being said, you can still get a relatively big sound from small drums - but as has been pointed out, you are limited to how low a tone you can only get with an 18" drum (if you want that feel it in your stomach low end - it will not happen with an 18").

If you think the price on the jazz kit is a good deal - the idea of buying that kit and then looking around for a 20" or 22" kick - would give you more options in the studio. I'm more of a 20" fan in the studio - in general, smaller is better - with both drums and in particular cymbals (it in normally easier to control overtones, etc. with smaller sizes).

I'm more of a fan or Birch in the studio - but most decent drums (regardless of make of wood) can sound good if tuned well and mic'ed properly)
 
I think smaller cymbals are definitely better for the studio. Crash cymbals anyway. I'd go big on a ride. Hats depend on how you're gonna be playing them. Smaller "fusion/jazz" sized toms usually record very well, bigger toms are better for live. But yeah, you need a bigger kick.
 
Xdrummer said:
Greg L routinely gives good advice. I have to agree that an 18" kick is not versitile enough - in particular if you plan to record a lot of rock & roll. That being said, you can still get a relatively big sound from small drums - but as has been pointed out, you are limited to how low a tone you can only get with an 18" drum (if you want that feel it in your stomach low end - it will not happen with an 18").

If you think the price on the jazz kit is a good deal - the idea of buying that kit and then looking around for a 20" or 22" kick - would give you more options in the studio. I'm more of a 20" fan in the studio - in general, smaller is better - with both drums and in particular cymbals (it in normally easier to control overtones, etc. with smaller sizes).

I'm more of a fan or Birch in the studio - but most decent drums (regardless of make of wood) can sound good if tuned well and mic'ed properly)
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I've been on Ebay and craigslist a lot and i am surprised how hard it is to find a good deal. On Ebay it seems all the deals are already discovered and on craigslist it seems most of it is not very good. Around the 500 price range used what would be a good birch to look for? What is your opinion on maple? Today someone listed a catalina 6 piece maple for 450, i haven't checked it out yet but was thinking about.
 
DrummingGuitar said:
I've been on Ebay and craigslist a lot and i am surprised how hard it is to find a good deal. On Ebay it seems all the deals are already discovered and on craigslist it seems most of it is not very good. Around the 500 price range used what would be a good birch to look for? What is your opinion on maple? Today someone listed a catalina 6 piece maple for 450, i haven't checked it out yet but was thinking about.
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The difference is subtle in that birch has a bit of a "naturally EQ'd" sound, meaning the mids aren't as present if you look on a graph. Greg_L is right in that the shell material isn't all that important. There are great sounding birch, and great sounding maple kits. I use maple in the studio all the time, and most people playing DW use maple in the studio. Birch became popular in the studio because of the Yamaha recording custom made popular by session greats like Steve Gadd, Peter Erskine, and Vinnie Colaiuta. In fact Yamaha never offered a maple kit until the 1990's, while all the other manufacturers did.

What will make a big difference is shell thickness. As a rule of thumb thicker shells are higher pitched (meaning if you tap the side of the shell, not striking the drum head), and project more, where thinner shells are a bit darker and warmer but project less. There's a whole other aspect when it comes to grain orientation like what DW does with VLT and VLX shells, but most everything in the price range you're looking at is all cross laminated (i.e. on vertical grained veneer ply, followed by a horizontal grained ply).
 
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