I’m sitting here writing this review a good few months after doing the accompanying video, nothing particularly unusual about that. However, I mention this because, listening back to the audio side of things, I’d actually forgotten how good these drums sounded in relation to the price point. 

These aren’t expensive drums, but to be honest, upon looking up the price to do this piece recently I was genuinely surprised they are as affordable as they are. Even with the [lower end] stock heads on them, they sound pretty good and very playable straight out of the box.

The review kit I was sent was in PDP’s cherry stain finish. The snare was 14×5.5”, the toms were 10×8”, 12×9” and 16×14” and the kick was 22×18”. Fairly standard sizes and very representative of the times (I’m personally glad the 12/13/16 tom thing died out), although there are also a few size and matte finish options available (ebony, cherry and ultraviolet stain) too.

The shells are a maple/poplar hybrid and they have the FTM (Floating Tom Mount) system PDP’s “teardrop turret” lugs on them. I found no issues with any of the drums either in terms of design or build. With the stock heads on them, I generally preferred the sound the kit gave at the more medium tunings, but overall I think the drums worked at all the three tensions I tried.

These kits are intended to provide a bridge between the Mainstage and Concept Series lines.

As mentioned before, these are very useable drums straightaway and I really like that about them.

If you want to gig with this kit, you’ll definitely need to change at least the snare and tom batter heads, but that in itself should not be a surprise. Other than that, I think these drums provide great value for not much of an outlay. 

This is so much further on from where this type of kit was twenty years ago, probably even less time to be honest. Wonderful stuff.

More over at – http://www.pacificdrums.com/drums/spectrum-ebony

David Bateman

February 2020