FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Verve Drum Set

Question:
We're looking for inexpensive beginner drum sets and several on E-bay appear attractive, but searching through the net yields no useful information. In the price range of $200 or so, we see 5 piece sets by Victory, Argent, Verve, and Titan. Are any of these useful to an absolute beginner drummer? Any recommendations? Any useful links to reviews, etc?

Answer:
I'm an absolute beginner drummer and I bought one of those sets. Mine is Coda, but they're all the same--pretty cheaply made compared to the brand name sets. They are made with the student in mind. The hardware is not beefy enough for frequent transporting, but plenty strong enough to keep things in place even with a good beating. After some tweaking and tuning they sound great to me! Also, as a beginner I couldn't make an $900 set sound any better than a $200 set. Basically I think it's perfect for an absolute beginner. When the time is right sell it and upgrade. The most common opinion of the experienced drummers and teachers on this group is that any drum set sold for $300 and under is wasted money. You'll have to replace heads, pedals and other parts so soon that you will wish you had spent the $500 or $600 up front for a decent set instead of the music store every time something breaks. I recommend you buy a name brand set , not a store or distributor brand, which is what you have listed here. You want see reviews of these brands because they are not worth reviewing. Rich Ballas and I wrote a tome on buying drumsets here: http://www.drumguru.com/drumshop/aboutbuyingdrumsets.htm