[YWING85]

anyone know where my church can get a cheap set just to keep at church, preferbly under 200

[SenorPapaCabasa]

Ebay would be your best bet.........

Under 200 is pretty low, man. What are you hoping to use it for?

[+Donny]

for 200?

cymbals alone are about $100-150 each

ebay is the only place you would ever get one that low, MAYBE a pawn shop

OK...since I'm at work and we don't have anything to do, I'll elaborate a bit. If you just want something to hit, you could probably do $200 on eBay. If you want something that won't ever be moved, and you aren't too knowledgable about drum sounds, but want something that will sound reasonable, you'll want to buy that $200 set on eBay and then upgrade the cymbals. Entry levels cymbals sound very bad. And even if you're a drummer and don't really know what you're looking for in a sound, you'll probably notice this, because you listen to CDs. You know that a crash should have a kshhh sound, and when you buy the $200 set, you're probably going to hear a 'conk'. That's not what you're looking for.

[YWING85]

Originally posted by JT
OK...since I'm at work and we don't have anything to do, I'll elaborate a bit. If you just want something to hit, you could probably do $200 on eBay. If you want something that won't ever be moved, and you aren't too knowledgable about drum sounds, but want something that will sound reasonable, you'll want to buy that $200 set on eBay and then upgrade the cymbals. Entry levels cymbals sound very bad. And even if you're a drummer and don't really know what you're looking for in a sound, you'll probably notice this, because you listen to CDs. You know that a crash should have a kshhh sound, and when you buy the $200 set, you're probably going to hear a 'conk'. That's not what you're looking for.

ok....fine, you can see i'm awfully confused and all

just the set, snare the bottom drum, and those 3-4 funny drums on top, i'm sure we could pilfer cymbals from the guy who has drums every week, and for fun, i'll raise the price to 400 what are we looking at now?

If you can borrow cymbals, you've got a lot more options. There are the super cheapy sets out there that I was talking about before. From what I've seen (limited I admit), they have three big problems. The cymbals sound bad, the drums sound bad, and the drums/stands are prone to damage from wear. But, if you can borrow cymbals, you don't worry about that. It's harder to identify bad sounding drums than cymbals, so you're probably OK with the drums. And if you're going to leave them at church, it saves a lot of wear and tear on the things, so the lower construction quality matters less. So one of these kits is an option. At $400 or so, you might be able to pick up the lower end kits from respected manufacturers like Tama (Swingstar series) or Pearl (Forum series). I've heard better things about Tama than Pearl lately, and I've played Tama's Rockstar set (one step higher than Swingstar) and liked it. www.midwestpercussion.com seems to have pretty good prices. You also might be able to score a Tama Rockstar or Pearl Export, Ludwig Rocker (I think), or similarly priced kit used in this price range.

[lopar]

http://www.electronicdrums.com/

Plans and everything on making digital drums really cheap (around $25 a pad..) I'm looking into it.

It didn't look like that would show you how to make the brain. Isn't that the expensive part of an electronic set?

[lopar]

Yeah, the module is the expensive part, but when you can make the pads that much cheaper, including cymbal pads, it's quite a bit cheaper.