I’ll admit that at this point, with so many drums and kits under my belt, there’s not a whole that makes me go ‘oooooh…’ inside, but when I picked up the 12” tom from this kit, I did just that. And the reason for that reaction was the thin nature of the shell and the way it looked inside.
Lounge Series drums are cross laminated 9ply mahogany and Scandinavian birch shells which are only 5.5mm thick (or thin, depending how you want to look at it) and have no re-rings. The shells have an inner ply of mahogany and a rounded 30’ bearing edge for a nice full sound.
The drums shipped with all Remo heads, with coated/clear Ambassadors on the two toms and a smooth white logo front and a clear Powerstroke 3 on the bass drum. I changed the kick batter head for a coated PS3 just for preference.
The kit is finished in Kensington Crown, which is in basic terms, a flat matte brown colour. It looks really cool up close and further away reminded me of some of the old vintage kits you can get.
When I first saw this finish though, I wasn’t so sure. In fact, when I saw the finish against the colour of the bass drum hoops, it didn’t do that much for me at all. However, my mind did change and to be honest, the hoops look much better in person to me than they did in the photos I saw. I think the richness of the wood used for the hoops is what changed my mind there.
All of the drums have BDC’s Palladium hardware, which is is both visually interesting, very nicely finished – read: very shiny – and also quite complimentary to the whole vibe of the kit. The toms have triple-flanged hoops.
I’m quite used to playing 12 & 14” toms together, albeit not with an 18” bass drum.
Ok, so a drum kit is all about how it sounds, and I’ll say now, I love these toms. I mean, I wouldn’t be using them every day just through personal preference in sizes, but in the context of this kit they’re very useable and musical.
Because of the kit’s sizes, it was obvious they’d be able to do that higher tensioning type thing that you commonly get in jazz situations.
However, I was hoping all of the drums would be tuneable down to a more general-use kind of level, and they were. The kick drum, despite being so small, had plenty of punch and body to it. In fact, the mix I had in my ears, along with the P&D throne as well, was almost perfect for me; it was just a wonderful blend of sound and feel.
For the ‘lower’ tensioning in the video, the kick and floor were round about as low as I could get them with a key, the rack being just a little higher than that. At that tension, the toms had a good degree of attack but with a nice clear and consistent ring to them. While they did, when tightened up a bit more, get understandably more “bop-py”, they did still maintain some character and ring too.
Both of the toms were unmuffled and the bass drum just had some shredded newspaper in it. The rack tom was on BDC’s Tomsprings – https://www.britishdrumco.com/britishdrumco-tomsprings , which help separate the drum from the muffling effect of a snare basket. Although this is the first time I have tried the Tomsprings, they definitely seem to work.
Notwithstanding my initial impression, I do now love the look of these drums; there’s something – to my mind , anyway – classic about the way they look but they also come across as quite modern too. I think they exude a great vibe and they sound fantastic, much better than I was expecting, and I was expecting something good to begin with.
Lounge Series drums are available in four set configurations – this one being the Lounge Club 18 – and as individual drums, which include 10×7”, 12×8”, 13×9” & 14×10” rack toms, 14×14”, 16×16” & 18×16” floor toms and 18×14”, 20×14”, 22×14”, 24×14” & 26×14” bass drums. There’s also two snare drums available in 14×5.5” and 14×6.5”.
More details on the Lounge Series over at – https://www.britishdrumco.com/britishdrumco-lounge-series
David Bateman
June 2021
