SOME DRUMMERS CAN'T SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES...

This photo was recently posted on Facebook by Sabian, manufacturers of fine cymbals.  This is some guy setting up for a recording session.  I don't know who he is or who he plays for but that is not important.  Just take a look at this guy's setup.  Do you see what I mean when I write over and over and over about the importance of the proper use of hardware for both functional purposes AND visual attractiveness?

This guy has a beautiful black Pearl kit with white coated heads.  Very nice.  Very professional.  But look at the twisted pile of tripods cluttering up the carpet all around the base of it.  What the heck, dude? Never heard of multi-clamps?

Simplicity and space-saving tactics were definitely not on this guy's agenda when he put this kit together.  What a distracting, ugly-looking forest of metal hardware blocking the view of the drums.  It's bad enough that the sound engineer has planted a dozen black microphone stands all around the perimeter, this kit was already unsightly when the drummer decided to use a separate stand for every tom and cymbal instead of finding ways to combine mountings and minimize the number of tripods touching the floor.  He's even using a full-size heavy-duty stand to hold up one small splash cymbal.  I don't want to even think about how much this guy's hardware trunk must weigh!  So superfluous!

Now take a look at my kit.  While Mr. Professional Studio Musician above has no less than twelve tripods crowding up the floor (not counting the snare and hi-hat stands), my awesome arrangement has only eight, and that is counting the snare and hi-hat stands!  Include my stool and you get up to nine, but the dinky little tripod in the back is hardly comparable to that other guy's splash stand.....and I'm sure I'll find a way to eliminate that one in the near future.  I just need to experiment with a couple of different mulit-clamps to achieve the desired mounting location.

I must also point out that I have more toms and cymbals than Mr. Pearl up there, plus I have tons of percussion items strategically arrayed all around my set, including but not limited to chimes, blocks, bells, triangles, etc.  Sure he has a dozen cymbals to mount, but I have sixteen and I'm still using half the amount of hardware as him.  He is simply not trying, and not even thinking.  This is probably because he has a full-time drum tech who does all the setting up and tearing down of his equipment, not to mention the cleaning and hauling.  He doesn't have to worry about any of that.  He has people.  All of his weighty Pearl junk goes into large, rolling cases that are loaded onto an eighteen-wheeler truck by a team of roadies while he's napping in the dressing room of his luxurious tour bus.  This guy ain't shovin' his stuff into the trunk of a Toyota to go knock out a few worship tunes at church.

Which is why my kit is so incredibly superior.....and rarely moves from where it's set up in my house.