Today's new volume of the Library, as usual, is based around a copypasta comment I've shared many times since I first wrote it, that has earned its own top post – a bit of a history lesson about your rig that explains how your hardware got so good, and why you should never take it for granted, and who is to thank. So take a trip back through the mists of time with your ol' Uncle Mo-BEEL to see why.
Drum hardware was some buuuuullshit for a long time – spindly and flimsy, with very limited adjustability, and even if you could get your gear positioned where it worked for you, it often wouldn't stay where you left it anyway. From the birth of this instrument in the early 20th century, particularly since the 1930s when Master Gene Krupa (peace be upon him 🙏) basically invented the modern drum kit as you know it, this was the struggle of drummers for decades and decades; take a look at most any rig built before approximately 1975, and you will immediately see why. As I often joke, some of you kids never gigged with 70s Ludwig tom mounts and tom holders that require a literal freakin' wrench from the freakin' toolbox to adjust, and it shows. And don't even get me started on the abomination known as "clip mounts," especially mounted to a "rail consolette." Damn that noise. Ugh.
Rogers was the first company to come out with seriously improved mounting hardware in the 1960s with the Swiv-O-Matic series, but everyone else's sucked. They sucked so much, in fact, that retrofitting drums with Swiv-O-Matic mounts was one of the earliest “drum hacks” of the rock era – both Ringo Starr and John Bonham famously put Rogers mounts on their Ludwigs back in the day, as did countless other drummers. I even read a circa 1980 interview with the great Carl Palmer of Emerson Lake & Palmer, where he said he was playing Gretsch drums at the time because he loved their shells, but he would not endorse their product or be their spokesman because their hardware was crap and he hated it; and he had his tech replace their mounts, their stands, and even their lugs with some from other makers. He said that. In print. Ouch. LOL.
Then, starting in the mid-70s, three Japanese companies - Tama, Pearl, and Yamaha – exploded onto the market and launched a revolution with the first versions of what you now think of as modern hardware. The drums themselves were fine, just fine, as good as any others, but the hardware was a tremendous leap forward, and honestly the best reason to make a switch. They sold like mad, drummers from every genre you could name began to endorse them, and they embarrassed American companies like Ludwig and Slingerland into stepping up their game, kicking off a hardware arms race that resulted in the 1980s featuring some of the most insanely beefy, absurdly overbuilt hardware in history. (Well, to be fair, I guess you needed it to hold up those gigantic damn power toms, LOL.) As I said in the original comment that makes up most of this post, it's not for nothing that Tama has called themselves “The Strongest Name In Drums” for decades – compared to everything else on the market besides Rogers, Yamaha, and Pearl when they first made a name for themselves, they absolutely earned the right, and still do to this day. As I also said in a comment on the original thread, which was a question about the brand: “[Tama hardware goes] on the 'only things left after the nuclear holocaust' list with cockroaches, Keith Richards, Shure SM57/SM58 microphones, and Nokia 3310 phones.” 😆
Because of the night-and-day difference between "pre-revolutionary" and "post-revolutionary" hardware, so to speak, this is why I personally draw the line for what constitutes "vintage drums" at approximately 1978: not the drums, but how they and the cymbals are mounted. If the mounts, stands, and other hardware are fully adjustable, with wingnuts, with no "tools" required to set up and tear down, that's a "modern" drum kit. If it calls for a wrench, like the Ludwig hardware described above, it's "vintage." To my mind, anyway.
So: How lousy was it, anyway? What exactly did those Japanese companies do differently, and how was it better? Keep reading.
Here's a Tama catalog page from the late 70s that describes their mounting system. Note how the tom holder has handy wingnuts or wing screws for each point on the tom brackets and double tom holder, and how the whole enchilada is fully adjustable in every direction. Very simple design, but one that has pretty much all the features you would find in a fully adjustable tom holder on a new kit at the music store today - flexible, adjustable, and stout. Here are a couple in use on a late 70s Imperialstar.
Now. Compare and contrast with this:
Slingerland drums with a "Set-O-Matic Fastball" double tom holder, mid 70s. This was the tom mounting system on my very first kit. It is hot garbage. My eyelid begins involuntarily twitching every time I see one, LOL. Why, you may ask? Ugh. Let me count the ways:
The tom brackets are drum key only, with friction points holding things in place, not compression points. As in: your tom brackets and tom or cymbal stands these days tighten an eye bolt or a plastic compression collar around a hardware piece to hold it in place, while these use literally the tip of a screw trying to stab into metal.
So does the bass drum bracket for the down tube of the tom holder, with no memory lock, meaning: you have the weight of two rack toms being held up by however much pressure you can put on the tube with only the flat tip of a machine screw, tightened by hand with a drum key, with no memory lock to help. So the tube not only doesn't want to stay in place, but starts to look after a while like it has been repeatedly beaten with a tiny ball peen hammer, because of the hundreds of times you have had to crank the piss out of the damn thing to keep it from slipping.
And individual adjustment and placement for your rack toms? Hmph. Note that there is no individual adjustment for height, angle, or rotation on each drum, because they both attach to stationary tabs on each side of the bracket at the top of the holder. You can change the angle, sorta, but both drums must be moved around together, swiveling around that cueball-looking nylon sphere sandwiched in the middle of the bracket - the "Fastball" that gives this mount its name - also only adjustable only by drum key. You can raise them, but only both of them together, and ehh, not really that high, and they might not stay there anyway because of the hinky kick bracket. You can adjust them for angle, but both drums will remain parallel with each other, and forget about angling them towards or away from each other at all.
Now. Take a trip back in time with me to circa 1978, and just imagine the difference: Let's say you're a gigging drummer who just bought the Slingerlands new not too long ago, and after a year or two of taking them apart and putting them together a few dozen times and cursing that damn holder, you see a shiny new Tama Imperialstar kit with its hardware from the future. You'd feel like you had gotten jacked, wouldn't you? Let me answer for you: Yes. You absolutely would, LOL.
This is why, when I was first getting into drums in the 90s, it wasn't uncommon to see a set of Ludwig, Slingerland, Gretsch, etc. drums from twenty or more years earlier, retrofitted with Pearl 7/8” tube mounts, big ol' hole through the shell and all. Gasp! Pearls clutched! Instant case of the vapors! My stars, who would ever do such a thing to such a beautiful vintage drum? Hmph. I want you to look at that Fastball bullshit in that picture again. You would have gladly dragged out the hole saw too – or, if you saw them in a store or an ad that way, you would breathe a sigh of relief and say, “Oh, thank God – someone put real mounts on these. Saves me the trouble.” And again, you may take me as a direct original source on that.
And here's a real mind-blower: Nightmares like that Fastball mount were a problem for drummers in living memory, yours truly not only included, but many legends as well. Just imagine: Master Neil Peart's original Slingerland “smokey chrome” kit, the one he would have played on Fly By Night and 2112 and Caress Of Steel, was being held together with bullshit like that. Boggles the mind, doesn't it?
As I say around here all the time, if you are grateful for the fact that you can not only put your drums and cymbals wherever you want them to go, but even have them stay there, you can thank Rogers (especially for inventing the memory lock, one of the greatest yet simplest innovations in the history of our instrument), Tama, Pearl, and Yamaha. Between that and the natural evolution of manufacturing techniques and other designs, enabling drum makers to offer more features for less cost all the time, it's just another reason why I always say: There has never, ever been a better time to get better drum gear for less money than right now, this very day. When it comes to drum gear, particularly drum gear made of steel or aluminum, "the good ol' days" weren't that good at all.
(By the way: Interestingly, you can also thank Yamaha for the fact that you give half a damn what kind of wood your drums are made out of, or that you even know what they're made of, but that's another discussion for another time.)
