Building Bill Bruford's Symmetrical Tama Kit

In two of my previous blogs, I wrote about successfully restoring a Tama "Bill Bruford Signature Series Palette" snare drum, and then building a duplicate version wrapped in chrome. Although they looked and sounded great, I thought about completing this project by adding a kit to go with it. Now I suppose I could always could buy a Tama Starclassic kit, and use the snares I built, but where is the fun in that? Bruford's Signature snare drum had all black Tama lugs, just like his Tama kit with King Crimson. That particular kit was a Canary Yellow Tama with deep power toms. Bruford would reappear with a another version of that yellow kit at the 1999 Modern Drummer Festival alongside his all acoustic Earthworks band. That kit also had black lugs, and featured an 18" kick drum, 16", 13", 12" and 10" toms. That kit appeared to be a rarity, perhaps even custom-made for Bruford. I've never seen another Tama kit that matched it. If I could gather the right shells, get some yellow drum wrap, black flanged hoops, and black lugs, perhaps I could make a version of that kit for myself!

Bill Bruford playing his symmetrical drum set-up

Back in 2000, Bruford explained the rationale for his symmetrical set-up; "I started using my current set-up with the second edition of Earthworks, after King Crimson, in about 1997. Broadly speaking it's a symmetrical, or ambidextrous kit.  (I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous!) The two cymbals and two toms on the right are mirrored by two cymbals and two toms on the left, around a pivotal central hi-hat..."

"I arrange the drums flat on the same plane, like a timpanist with five timpani. Personally I find moving the left stick a few inches to the left (to reach the high tom) easier than moving it up and forward, as on a traditional kit. The drums are also arranged in a "broken" pitch order to avoid the common descending roll of drums from high to low. The set-up also avoids the now unnecessary problem of the right hand playing the hi-hat on the left side which I always found strange..."


As I discovered during the Bruford snare projects, those black Tama Starclassic lugs were no longer available, having been replaced by Black Nickel lugs. Those lugs are really expensive (around $20 per lug!) and a kit this size would require nearly 70 of them! At that price, I'd be better off buying a Starclassic kit. Now, I don't know how I missed them before, but Shaw Percussion of England makes their own, inexpensive version of the Tama Starclassic lugs in both chrome and black! Shaw is similar to the Goedrum company in China, which also makes Gretsch style lugs. I've used quite a few of the Goedrum lugs on many of my "Gretsch" style kits, so finding the folks at Shaw was a great resource. Like the Goedrum lugs, the Shaw lugs are cosmetically close enough to the original with only a few subtle differences, which was suitable for my purposes.

The 10" x 8" Tom

Once again, I began to assemble the kit with a variety of used orphan drums; I love taking these discarded gems and recycling them! The kit pieces I was able to cobble together were; an 18" x 16" Sound Percussion concert tom for the kick; a  16" x 14" Ddrum Diablo floor tom; a 12" x 10" and a 13" x 11" Ludwig Accent toms; and a 10" x 8" PDP Double Drive tom. I chose the Ddrum, Ludwig and PDP toms not only because they all came with black hoops, but because ironically, the PDP, Ludwigs and Ddrums all had identical lug spacings. I'd also come across a 20" x 16"  Ddrum kick with all black bass drum spurs, just what I needed.  There were in fact, times when Bruford would use different sized kick drums; A 20" x 16" or 22' x 16", instead of the 18" x 16". As fate would have it, the Ddrum 20" x 16" kick's lug holes spacings matched the Tama-styled Shaw lugs, so I decided to go with the 20" x 16" to avoid any extra drilling and decided to use the 18" x 16" for future project.

The 13" x 11" Tom

With the drum sizes decided, I needed to get a pair of 20" Gibraltar unfinished maple hoops that I primed and painted with yellow lacquer to match the 5 yellow wraps I'd ordered from Jammin' Sam in Arizona. Next, I ordered 68 black lugs from Shaw and got to work on drilling, sanding and prepping the shells before the lugs arrived. The 10" PDP and the 13" Ludwig toms each had black tom suspension mounts, however the 12" Ludwig tom didn't. As it turned out, I actually had an orphaned 12", 6 lug chrome suspension mount lying around. After a bit of sanding, I was able to prime and paint it in satin black to match the others. I already had all the drum heads I needed; Evans G1 Clear in 10", 12", 13" and 16", making the only other heads I needed were for the 20" kick drum. I ordered a 20" black Evans EQ3 with a port hole, a Tama decal for the front, and an Evans 20" EMAD Clear head for the batter side. The first tom I finished was the 10" x 8", and since I'd made 2 different sizes of the Bruford Signature Palette Series decal, I decided to use the smaller ones because they matched the size of the Tama Starclassic Performer logos and frankly, just looked better.

The 16" x 14" Floor Tom

After finishing the 10" x 8" tom, I got to work on the others. I suppose I could've tried to find a 16" x 16" Ludwig Accent floor tom, however I came across a 16" x 14" Ddrum Diablo floor tom for next to nothing, and since the lug holes matched, I thought I'd use it instead. The 12" and 13" Ludwig Accents were up next. Again, the lug holes lined up perfectly. It was great having drums that didn't require drilling new holes and filling the old ones. Last, but not least I began to assemble the bass drum with a pair of Ddrum d2, black bass drum spurs. To be honest, it took me a bit to find a suitable yellow color for the hoops. They were either too bright, too orange, or too pale. Finding one that had a "lemon" or "canary" color with a hint of green seemed to do the trick. After trying several shades of Krylon yellow, one of the Rustoleum spray paint colors seemed to match the wrap nicely.

The 20" x 16" Kick Drum

After the remaining lugs arrived from the UK, I finished off the bass drum with 16 black Pearl claws, the Evans bass drum heads: The front with a Tama logo, and then the 16" floor tom, the 13" tom and the 12" tom. I then affixed the smaller Bruford Signature Palette decals, and added the 3 black RIMS suspension mounts with 3 Gibraltar memory lock tom mounts. Truth be told, I've been using Bill Bruford's symmetrical set- up with my Gretsch USA Custom kit since 2007, so I already had all the stands with L-Rod clamps, as well as a DW 5000 kick pedal and a DW 5000 cable Remote Hi-hat with a Tama multi-clamp and stand. Bruford's Signature snare drum actually used flanged hoops to make the drum sound livelier, as opposed to the heavier die cast hoops used on most Tama Starcassic drums. Since neither the original Tama Starclassic drums, or these restored toms had tone dampeners, I invested in a set of 10", 12" 13", and 16" Evans clear "E-Rings" to control any unwanted overtones on the toms, and a 14" for the snare. With all of the individual drums finally finished, it was time to put them all together see how they all looked and sounded. So without further ado, here they are...










The entire kit sounded great, especially the toms. They were perhaps the biggest surprise of all. They sounded so good in fact, that I eschewed using any of the Evans clear E-Rings. I did need however, to add a bit more muffling to the 20" kick drum, but overall, I'm pleased with the sound of it. I can't wait to play them live with my jazz and fusion quartets. I'll post more photos and videos once I get the kit set up in the studio, and following my first performance with it!