I bought this kit without any expectations from it just so I can jam with my friends and practice until I get better with the drums. I am recording and mixing dude so I can recognize the good sound and this has impressed me for what it's worth. Trough the years I have assembled many kits in my studio so that part and tuning is no challenge for me. However, I got not very well built pieces. Here are a few things that could have been a lot better:
-toms must be way more circular (mine are eliptic-shaped lol)
-screws on the one leg holder of the floor tom were really untightened
-screws for the snare wire were damaged and I couldn't have untightened them
-screws for the strainer were really poorly tightened
-wood layers on 10" tom have unglued
-the wood where top drumhead should sit on 12" tom or floor tom (don't remember anymore) was heavily damaged for about 2cm of the radius
Hardware is actually really nice, no complaints there, tho if you start to practice really hard, you will want to change (in order): pedal, throne and hh-stand.
I have read reviews of this kit and the major thing that people have complained about are cymbals. My experience is:
the ride is good enough to start gigging so is the hi-hat, but in order to get the crash sound like a crash, you need to hit it hard and it will still be poor and you will want to change it first if you want to do some gigging with this.
So, the pros and cons:
PROS:
-price, definitely...if you tune this right and fix some issues like i had, this thing will sing!!!
-you will get pretty nice hardware (even those locking thingies)
-every piece in this kit is really good sounding and not just for it's price
-after a few days of improving this kit, you can do gigs with it or even record it
CONS:
-for this price, it is expected that it will not be THE finest made kit and you have to deal with it
-crash cymbal is at least hillarious
RATINGS EXPLAINED:
total: good...because it is
features: very good...this has everything that you need - even to make some money on gigs with this thing
sound: very good...not just for it's price, shells do make some nice sounds and they resonate well
quality: okay...let's be real, some things really need to be worked on
Conclusion: yeah, this kit has it's imperfections, but you will actually get more than you pay for...with just a bit of working around on some problems previously mentioned. So, if you are even thinking about buying something this cheap, this will get you satisfied.
Hope this helps you,
Cheers
