DRUMANDSTAGE FORUM

I cringe when I see bad mods done to good drums. It's bad enough when someone has a classic drum and has it professionally cut down, or has nonstandard bering edges cut. And it certainly ins't an issue when someone does something reversible like using suspension mounts over the original tom mounts.

But, what drives me bonkers is when you see a used set for sale and it's obvious that either a kid, or someone ignorant of the product has done some workarounds, or horrific mods. A common one is drilling the shell for aftermarket mounts. Sonor's "Link Era" (not a big fan of that term, personally) tom mounts, toms stands and arms were proprietary and did not play well with others. So, while it's understandable that someone with a tom they can't mount would modify the drum; it's sad to see it eventually hit the market in such a condition.

When I had my Signature 14/16/18/22 set over 20 years ago, I was set up in a band practice room and another drummer who had his drums set up also, was telling me what he would do to my drums if he owned them. He would have sprayed them with a clear gloss. I tried to get him to understand that what he was suggesting basically equated to spray painting a DeLorean, but he just didn't get it.

Jules, I bought your Bubinga Sig. 22 BD and 14 tom (I put it on a RIMS cradle) on Ebay for $400 for both in '03 ish. Thenks for the great deal! I found 10 and 12 toms on German Ebay and a 16ft about 6 months later and eventually added a 15ft. A couple of years later, I ran across a 12 tom shell in the old Sonormuseum for sale section. I bought it and had Precision Drum cut it down to 10" deep. The spacing on the lug holes made it easy to reduce the depth by 2" off the bottom leaving the old top lug holes as the new bottom ones. I recentered the badges and fiber gaskets with double stick tape. The 10" depth made it much more ergonomic for my two rack tom set-up. When I sold the kit around '10, the buyer was very happy to have the option of 2 different depth 12 tom shells.

I wish I had worded the first line of my original post differently. I can’t assure you that I wouldn’t do something similar in the same situation.

I was actually a little jarred going back and rereading what could only be taken as criticism for cutting down a shell. Clumsy lead in, but my focus was more on the nonsensical mods.

I started to get a USA Custom tom cut down because I was having a hard time selling it in its square size.

This is just wrong:

So wrong!