"K3" by Trio Electrique

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Building the Phil Collins Gretsch Kit - Part One

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Back in 2017, I managed to acquire a dozen of the revolutionary new wireless Versatriggers from Poland; Battery powered drum triggers you can mount inside a drum shell. Replace the acoustic drum head with a mesh head and you have yourself a v-drum. I first tried out the Versatrigger on an old Viking snare I'd converted previously with an internal Pintech trigger, and a Remo Silent Stroke mesh head. After connecting the Versatrigger wireless USB hub to my MacBook Air, I was able to tweak the sensitivity and trigger the drum surprisingly well. I also learned I needed to be able to access the trigger for adjustments and battery replacement, so double headed toms weren't practical. The kick and snare are easy enough to cut out a round hole in the bottom head, but the toms would have to be easy to access as well. A modest kit with concert toms would work perfectly. I didn't want to build just another small v-drum kit of virtually identical trigger pads either, so when
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Building Bill Bruford's Symmetrical Tama Kit

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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
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Building the Bill Bruford Signature Snare - Part One

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Bill Bruford's "rimshot" is one of the most unique and exquisite snare drum sounds ever heard. From his earlier days on his 14"x 5.5" Ludwig Supraphonic Super-Sensitive snare with Yes, to his brass 14" x 6.5" Tama Big Beat snare with King Crimson, Bruford's crisp rolls and sticking technique were a thing of beauty and a joy to behold.  In his later years, Bruford moved away from the metal snare drums of rock, to the jazzier sound of the all-maple 14"x 6.5" Tama Starclassic snare drum with his all-acoustic group Earthworks.  It was during that era that Tama offered the "Bill Bruford Signature Palette Series" snare drum, a customized, 6 ply Starclassic; 2 ply Maple, 2 ply Birch and 2 ply Maple. It was also outfitted with all black hardware; lugs, hoops, strainer and a custom "Black Metallic Sand Blasted" finish, with Bill Bruford's personally autographed and numbered decal. Listing for around $650, the snare quic
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