I’m on a budget. What’s best to spend money on, shell pack, hardware or cymbals???
Well, to be truthful, there aren’t many people who AREN’T on a budget of some sort and as much as we’d love to spend endless amounts of cash getting the perfect kit it’s very rarely the case. I’m giving an example budget of £400 here.
To answer that question you need to ask yourself the following question and come up with an answer:
“What do I need this kit for??”
If it’s just gonna stay in one room and it’s purely a starter kit then you needn’t get a kit with fantastic hardware (stands and tom mounts. Basically….. metal!). The actual shells (drums) don’t have to be fantastic as you can get a relatively “cheap” kit, skin it and tune it to sound half decent. For this instance I’d be more drawn to spend my money on the cymbals. “Cheap” cymbals are basically “nasty” cymbals! (Or at least they are for the most part anyway!) Cymbals are a massively important part of the kit and are very commonly overlooked. If you have nasty sounding cymbals it can throw the whole kit off and make you not want to play it as often. So, our budget is £400. I’d get a cheap starter kit for £150-200 and then the rest on some half decent cymbals. Hi hats being top priority, then crash, then ride. That’s done in terms of usage.
If you intend on “gigging” the kit, or at least taking it up and down and moving it around, then I’d recommend a kit with better hardware. I recently purchased a kit for a school I’ve just started working in. As it’s a primary school, and little kids can be mischievous little darlings at times, I figured I’d get a kit with some extra strong hardware incase they decided to go “exploring” on it! I went for an old Pearl Export kit as I knew the hardware that came with those kits was near on bomb proof! The cymbals weren’t fantastic by any means, and the drums themselves aren’t of the highest quality, but it does the job. I had enough money left in my budget to re-skin the kit so I managed to get a pretty decent sound from it. My budget was actually around £600 but I did it for £400.
If you intend on gigging it, but want a pretty good sound from the kit I’d recommend spending money to by a separate snare drum, a nice set of hi hats and a nice crash. The bass and toms can be tuned to sound half decent without being top quality, but as the snare and hi hats are used more frequently it’s worth spending a bit more money on these. With crashes, even though you may see drummers with hundreds around them you only need one to start with, and if you don’t have a ride it’s not devastating to begin with either. For this kind of set up obviously you’ll be looking at buying pretty much all the bits separately so looking in second hand shops or somewhere like “eBay”. On eBay people sell drums, shell packs, hardware and accessories all separately. So again, if the budget is £400 I’d spend £100 on a snare, £100 on some hi hats, £50 on a crash and £150 on the rest. Even if you have buy a whole cheap kit to bin some of it, you’d probably still get a better set up than if you brought the whole thing directly from a shop.
Obviously shopping on a budget isn’t always easy, so be prepared to put some time and effort in, don’t be afraid to shop around and know what you’re after before you buy!
