Gear Pt. 2

What's up everyone!
Thanks to all of you who have recently followed me! I hope you enjoy the things I'm going to be posting about. Stay tuned cause I have some cool interviews that I will be putting up next week sometime. In the meantime, I'm going to follow up on my first "Gear" post and talk about some of the hardware and accessories that I use. Hopefully this post makes sense when I'm done with it. I'm kind of enjoying watching the beat down the Giants are laying on the Packers right now.  (No offense to any Packers fans out there)

So lets talk about the pedals I use.

Most of you out there would probably think about using a DW, Pearl, or Tama pedal before you even remotely considered a Yamaha pedal. Some of you may not have even known that Yamaha made pedals. They actually make great pedals! I have been using one for about 3 years now. It is a Yamaha Professional Model direct drive double bass pedal.

For those who may not know, a direct drive pedal uses solid linkage between the beater and the footboard rather than a chain. This provides a seamless, and lightening fast response without the lag on the up stroke that you see with a lot of chain pedals. That being said, chain pedals are much more responsive these days than they have been in the past.
Anyway, the picture above is how the pedal looks out of the box. I have made a couple changes to mine just to suit my playing preferences. The first thing I did was replace the beaters with DW beaters. The traditional round beaters are cool for certain styles, but the DW beaters add a little more punch.
The only qualm I have with this pedal is the surface of the footboard. It is so smooth which is great for playing barefoot I suppose, but I play with shoes on. I had a couple instances where someone spilled their water on the drum riser. Because the footboards are so smooth, my feet kept slipping off of the footboards which was really frustrating considering it made it almost impossible for me to play anything! After a couple times of this happening I was determined to fix this issue so that I never had to worry about it again. I considered just getting a different pedal but really didn't want to because I love the way this one plays. So all of a sudden it hit me. Grip Tape! I went to Home Depot and got some of that grip tape that you see on steps and stair cases sometimes. I have never had a problem since! It was actually a little too grippy at first, but once you play on it for a little bit, the grip tape will wear down enough to where it is comfortable. So there ya go!
As far as general hardware goes (cymbal stands, snare stands, etc.) I use mostly Pearl stuff. It is actually a lot of the same hardware that came with my first Pearl kit that I talked about in my first gear post. They make great stuff! That being said, I do have a PDP stand and a Gibralter snare stand for my rack tom. I have a Roc n Soc saddle style drum throne but it is starting to get worn out so I'm hoping to get a Pork Pie throne soon. I'm a little tired of the saddle style, not to mention the Pork Pie thrones are so comfortable!
As far as cases go, I have an Enduro kick drum case. It has seen a LOT of travel and one of the straps has a broken clip, so it is getting a little worn out as well. I am also wanting to upgrade that to a flight case soon.  As for cases for the rest of my kit, I used to have everything in separate cases but I got a flight case about a year ago which was originally made for keyboards. I customized it into a drum/hardware case and let me just say, it has been a life saver! It's so much easier to just throw my kick drum on top and roll it into the venue, rather than carrying 15 different things in!


Well, I think that does it for my gear/hardware! Thanks for reading! Help spread the word and be on the look out for some cool stuff happening soon!
Happy Football Sunday!
Casey

Drum Dial

So it's 5:30 a.m. and I can't sleep. It's impossible to have a regular sleep schedule when you are in a touring band. Ugh.

Anyway, I wanted to talk about drum tuning. Not really tuning, but a tool for tuning drums that I think is a necessity for all drummers, especially those who tour regularly. If you have toured at all you will totally know where I'm coming from. You show up to the venue, everyone loads in and starts sound checking. Usually when you load in, the sound guy is blaring music, or someone is already sound checking. Needless to say, 95% of the time it's loud in there and unless you are just playing a local show, you cant tune your drums before hand, then load them up in the trailer and expect them to still be in tune after traveling through different weather conditions and/or being thrown around in your trailer as you drive over some crappy roads (i.e. almost every road in the north east). So what do you do? Well, since it's too loud in the venue to tune by ear, this is where the Drum Dial comes in handy.

Now, I've seen a lot of people knocking the Drum Dial on other forums saying things like "Why would someone need a dial to tune their drums?" and "Whatever happened to tuning by ear?" blah blah blah. To be honest with you, I used to think it was stupid too, but I actually used one and wished I had given it a shot a long time ago!

The thing is, you still have to tune by ear. The Drum Dial doesn't do it for you. All it does is read the tension of the head. So you tune the drum by ear, and then you go around each lug with the Drum Dial and fine tune it. Once it's fine tuned (every lug is reading the same number) write the numbers down and keep them in the box that the Drum Dial came in. Do this with every drum.

NOW you show up to the venue and need to tune your drums, but the sound guy is blaring "Stupiy" by Disturbed. What do you do? Well first you put in some ear plugs, then you bust out your trusty Drum Dial and your paper with all of your tunings and you tune your drums like a boss.

Boom,
Casey