How a 20 year old Ludwig Accent became my favorite drum set

 People out there are usually clamoring for the latest gear, the newest products, or even that rare vintage gem that is well sought-after. I am not one of these people when it comes to gear. My favorite gear has always been the gear that is unappreciated, forgotten about, or even bad by some people's standards. 

When I get a piece of gear like this, I usually spend some time with it. I fix it up, I make it my own somehow, sometimes in little ways, other times in big ways. My favorite drum set now is an old made in Taiwan Ludwig Accent Combo that I picked up on Craigslist for $100. 

 

 

 

I am not saying that I paid $100 for everything you see here, once heads, hardware, and cymbals, and the metal snare I added I would say total was around $500. This is still very cheap by today's standards for a drum kit that looks and sounds as great as this one does. 

I've made two videos on this kit, but I need to make a third one because I made a couple more changes since the second one. 

The first video is located here and is the day I actually bought the kit, and shows me working on the original snare drum. 

The second one was just a few weeks ago, but I've since made a couple changes to the cymbals as well as got some amazing old Ludwig Smooth White Silver Dot drum heads for it which you can see in the first pic.  

All of the hardware I am using with the kit is vintage Ludwig and very lightweight, except for one Dixon new flat base stand that matches very well. What is really great is all of this hardware fits inside my vintage Japanese canister throne that I got on Ebay many years ago.

I've been recording with this kit on both my own solo music, as well as drums for the new Echoscape EP that will be released next year.

I think my point of this post is to say that you don't need to have the latest and greatest gear in the world. Make whatever you have your own and you will sound more like yourself and less like the typical masses out there.  

Updates and news

I've got some new things in the works that I figured I could write about here. 

1. YouTube Memberships are active again. Not that they were ever inactive, but I was pretty lazy in creating Member content for a while there. This was largely due to the fact that I had no members, lol. But now there are some of you back again, I will make sure to get some special stuff in there for you at least once a month. 
2. New album coming eventually. I already have 15 songs I've made in the past several months and I'm really excited about the sounds I've been coming up with this year. My previous album, "Reformat", while I still love it, there was a lot of setbacks making that album, largely due to the person who was supposed to be making the artwork completely flaked out on me repeatedly. I was waiting for months for something that never materialized. This was a great reminder as to why I just usually do everything myself. But please still go check it out and purchase it. If you must, you can listen to it on Crapify, but it sounds much better if you buy and download it. If you would like to hear the new stuff, follow my Performance Stream playlist on YouTube. This is where I always post new stuff. Some of them may be changed later or have new instruments added or remixed all together, but it's always fresh!
3. If you didn't know, my channel was hacked and recovered. It was a very close call, and I almost didn't get it back. In that time I was ready to start over with a new channel called "Justin's Drum Adventures", but after I got my original channel back I decided to incorporate the new format ideas into my current channel. Check out the playlist of my Drum Adventures where I visit Good Hands Drum Shop in Manhattan, see street drumming in Brooklyn Chinatown, as well as had an amazing visit to the School of Musical Performance with David Kovins!
4. Lastly, I've started slowly uploading my visual artwork to my YouTube channel. I have many years of digital artwork and I figured the best place to put it is on my channel. Maybe I will make a page here on my blog as well to host the images in case anyone wants to download one.  

 

Donner L1 Essential Review and Demo

 Donner recently sent me their latest foray into the world of analog synthery, the L1 Essential. It is based on the legendary Roland SH101 originally released in 1982 but has something really unique to offer that I have not seen on any other synth. 

The keyboard is a standalone midi controller that connects to the synth module via magnetic connection! It can make this connection with no wires or special configuration at all. You simply stick the controller to the front of the synth and it just works!

I don't have confirmation of this, but it would be really cool if Donner kept making more modules to work with this controller, so you would essentially have a hot swap-able synth/keyboard combo. 

The synth module itself sounds absolutely awesome. I have played with my fair share of analog synths in my day, and the Donner L1 Essential can hang with the big boys. The price point is really nice at only $259 for the module.  Then if you want the KB32M magnetic MIDI controller (I highly recommend it) it is only another $109.  

A real SH-101 will run you anywhere from $1100 to $2000! Behringer also makes a SH-101 clone for around the same price, but the Donner gives you one more envelope section and another waveshape to play with, plus the magnetic keyboard!