I play Sonor Maple light Designer drums. I love their tonality. You can tune them almost any tuning and they sound excellent. I play 2 different size bass drums and different heads depending upon the music. I tune the heads so the batter head is tuned higher than the resonant head. That gives me a nice crisp full tone without too much ring.I use these mostly in the studio and have a similar Mahogony Gretsch Catilina Kit I use on the road.
Jazz
My kit configuration for jazz: 18 x 16 Bass drum, 10 X 10 rack tom, 12 X 10 rack drum, 14 x 14 floor tom. The heads are Ambassadors on the batter and Diplomats on the resonant bottoms. I tune the drums relatively high as bop players would.
I play a DW Collector 14 x 6 snare drum with Yamaha wooden hoops and Renaisance Diplomat batter head and Diplomat resonant head. Very sensitive and sounds really great in quiet as well as louder venues. I tune this drum so it is the most sensitive and still remaining responsive. I removed several wires from the strainer as it makes the tone of the drum more evident.
Cymbals for this configuration are 24" Istanbul Agop ride, 22 " Classic Bosphorus ride, 20" Classic flat ride, 13" K Zildjian top hat, 13" Zildjian Quick Beat bottom hat. I also use a pair of 14" Quick Beat Hi Hats at times.The 24" is a little trashy but controlled sounding like early Tony Williams ride. The 22" offsets the tone by being more lagato in tone. the 20" is really quite and works well behind a jazz vocalist.
Rock
My kit configuration for Rock and Fusion are the same drums except the bass drum is 22 X 16. I use pinstrip heads on the batter side tuned down where the heads are loose and give me a wet puntuated tone.
The snare drum I use for this configuration is a Ludwig Hammered Bronze 14 x 6.5 with an Ambassador batter and Diplomat resonant head. The throw off on this snare is a bit sticky so I will replace it at some point.
The cymbals I use with this kit are the same but I add a Paiste 10" splash and two 16" fast crashes (a Paiste and a K ).
