House of Drumming.com

Yesterday I had a chance to try out 2 of the new Mapex Meridian Maple (they are made in China). One was a 8x?, 10x9, 12x9, 14x14, 1616, 22x18 and the other
10x7,12x8,14x14,16x16, 22x18 (snares weres of a different brand).

I tuned both kits and they all sounded very consistent. the toms were incredibly good. heads were mainly G2 coated.

i took my 12x9 gretsch new classic tom cuz i wanted to compare them and I much prefered the mapex one. although I like my kit a lot, the mapex sounded very open (something I still struggle to achieve with my toms). hopefully we´ll record something on saturday.

my friend who owns one of the mapex´s just got back fom Italy where he bought this really cheap "jungle kit"...the hardware is absolute crap, but the
little bastard actually sounds very musical. we recorded a small clip of him playing with a bass player. i began to mix it last night, so there´s still a few things to correct. bass guitar doesn´t sound good though. i must add that the recording was done with cheap gear, but i like his room. check it out:

http://soundcloud.com/duboski/drums-and-bass-groove

now i can´t stop thinking about these Meridian kits...

I think almost any drum will/should sound good if the player gets to use their preferred heads and knows how to tune. I get compliments all the time on my Westbury teaching kit's sound and they're garbage drums.
The steel Yamaha snares sound great to me. I have two 5x10" snares and they don't sound out of place when played with my much more expensive drums.

sejuba wrote:Yesterday I had a chance to try out 2 of the new Mapex Meridian Maple (they are made in China). One was a 8x?, 10x9, 12x9, 14x14, 1616, 22x18 and the other
10x7,12x8,14x14,16x16, 22x18 (snares weres of a different brand).

I tuned both kits and they all sounded very consistent. the toms were incredibly good. heads were mainly G2 coated.

i took my 12x9 gretsch new classic tom cuz i wanted to compare them and I much prefered the mapex one. although I like my kit a lot, the mapex sounded very open (something I still struggle to achieve with my toms). hopefully we´ll record something on saturday.

my friend who owns one of the mapex´s just got back fom Italy where he bought this really cheap "jungle kit"...the hardware is absolute crap, but the
little bastard actually sounds very musical. we recorded a small clip of him playing with a bass player. i began to mix it last night, so there´s still a few things to correct. bass guitar doesn´t sound good though. i must add that the recording was done with cheap gear, but i like his room. check it out:

http://soundcloud.com/duboski/drums-and-bass-groove

now i can´t stop thinking about these Meridian kits...

i don´t wanna get flammed so a small correction goes a long way:

I didn´t mean to say Mapex Meridian drums were cheap (in the sense of being poorly made). they are inexpensive

The only maple drums I've ever played that sounded bad were Dixon snares. They were terrible, absolute junk. I think any kit close to 1000 dollars will sound great with proper heads, tuning and playing.

bstocky wrote:I think any kit close to 1000 dollars will sound great with proper heads, tuning and playing.

Wholeheartedly agree with this.

I had a tiny Tama set that cost less then $500 NEW, and it sounded incredible once I put on good heads.

I play Sonor Force 3005, put G2 over G1's on them and I couldn't be happier!

I used to play a Pearl Forum kit in 20",10",12",14" sizes and it was amazingly good with proper heads and tuning. A student of mine was totally in love with the bass drum sound. I toured on that for two or three years.
I also had a Pearl Rythm Traveller kit and the bass drum, with little muffling and a decent head and some tweaking, was surprisingly big sounding.

The biggest problem with cheaper drums is the hardware not the shells (imho).
I was checking the Vision series from Pearl and it´s amazing the quality in that price range...

I´m glad the kids starting on drums have the chance to start with a decent kit...

Julián Fernández wrote:The biggest problem with cheaper drums is the hardware not the shells (imho).
I was checking the Vision series from Pearl and it´s amazing the quality in that price range...

I´m glad the kids starting on drums have the chance to start with a decent kit...

Great point. I'd rather fit any kit with Yamaha 700 series hardware than any other brand out there, just because the quality/price/durability/weight factor is far above anything else.
Case in point: those Pearl kits had Mapex 900 series hardware, which is their top of the line series. They're heavy, have noisy wing nuts, not too stable for the weight, etc. When I got my Absolute kit, I got mostly CS755 stands and you only had to ask the roadies on tour about the change in weight and stability. And they're significantly cheaper than the Mapex 900s.

PS: I know it might sound biased but I have no particular gain with this, I honestly love these stands and would still use them if I switched brands.