01 · Acoustic Drums
Touring Kit
Pearl Decade Maple
A practical maple platform with the attack and body I want for amplified rock and electronic music.
The kit is an instrument. The rig is a system. The goal is still the song.
A working look at the drums, electronics, recording tools and choices behind my live and studio sound. Not a trophy case. Gear earns its place here by surviving rehearsals, sessions, stages, edits and the occasional bad decision at load-in.
I care about tone, but I care just as much about repeatability. On tour, the useful setup is the one that feels familiar under bad lighting, survives transport, works with the production, and lets me stop thinking about hardware once the count-in happens.
In the studio, the rules loosen. Acoustic drums, electronic pads, samples, MIDI editing and sound design can all belong to the same performance. I am less interested in “pure” drum sounds than in sounds that make the track feel larger, stranger or more physical.
This is the useful overview. Specific cymbals, heads, hardware and auxiliary pieces can change with the production, backline and music. I would rather keep this accurate than pretend one exact setup follows me everywhere.
A practical maple platform with the attack and body I want for amplified rock and electronic music.
Electronic components let acoustic performance meet samples, programmed parts and production-specific sounds.
An older module that still does useful work: low-friction MIDI capture, practice and triggering software drums.
The center of a compact home recording setup for drums, vocals, modular signals and routing experiments.
Useful when the final drum sound needs modern consistency while preserving the timing and dynamics of a played performance.
Microphone choice is session-specific. Placement, phase and the job of the track matter more to me than collecting logos.
The live rig has one job: translate physical playing into a large, controlled sound every night. That means durability, fast setup, sensible placement and enough flexibility to adapt to a different room, backline or production without wrecking muscle memory.
Electronic drums are not a replacement for “real” drums in my workflow. They are another recording interface: velocity, timing, articulation and feel captured as editable performance data.
My compact e-drum setup revolves around a Roland TD-3 and a mixed pad ecosystem. The goal is not visual elegance. It is accurate triggering, low latency and enough dynamic range to play a part instead of drawing one.
The UMC1820 gives me enough I/O to treat the room like a small laboratory: drum inputs, vocals, modular/electronic sources and scratch routing can coexist without constantly repatching the whole idea.
The exact chain changes, but this is the general logic behind a lot of my modern drum work.
Get the timing, dynamics and musical intent right before obsessing over samples.
Remove crosstalk, false hits and obvious MIDI artifacts without sterilizing the part.
Select or layer drums that fit the record rather than forcing one signature kit onto everything.
Render kick, snare, toms, cymbals and rooms separately so the mix still has real control.
Parallel weight, ambience and saturation are useful only if the groove still speaks clearly.
This section is intentionally expandable. It can grow into searchable articles, setup notes, videos and product-specific pages without turning the main page into a telephone book.
No. The song and production decide. Touring rewards consistency and speed. Recording rewards experimentation.
Sometimes I layer, sometimes I replace, sometimes I use none. The goal is not proving how the sound was made. The goal is making the record hit correctly.
Because a tool can be old and still solve the problem. For MIDI capture and rehearsal, dependable triggering matters more than a touchscreen.
Yes, when they are genuinely locked. Gear changes with backline, production and partnerships, so this page is designed to stay current rather than fossilize one snapshot.
Explore the records, current projects and the PIG tour where the rig gets used for real.