Breakbeats Set White Sparkle : Small size, big sound.

Small size, big sound, big value. This kit punches above its weight!

I always liked the idea of a ?portable? kit, but have never found one with a satisfactory sound until I tried a set of the Ludwig Breakbeats. When I played them I was shocked at how good they sounded, especially for the price. A little research on the web confirmed many satisfied owners, and eventually I bought a set.

Well, these are worth every penny. With a little bit of effort on tuning and the right heads, these little beauties deliver a sound as good as a kit that costs twice the price - and maybe weighs twice as much too.

Firstly, and most obviously, this kit offers easy portability and a low price. The surprising part is that they deliver very usable sound too. I have other drums that I use for gigs but this kit is very attractive when space is limited, or when you just don?t want to carry all that gear! I originally planned to use this kit for occasional gigging in small rooms when the ?full? kit would be too loud, and when traveling to rented rehearsal space. However the sound is so good I could use it for a many of the gigs I do.

In keeping with the compact theme, the kit arrives nicely packed in a single box about 60x60x45cm. Some ?building? is required: the floor tom and kick are delivered with heads removed, stacked inside each other, and the small tom and drawstring bags are inside that. The snare and rack tom are fully assembled with heads installed.

The shell sizes are: 14x5 snare, 10x7 and 13x13 toms, and 16x14 kick. The shells are 7-ply, made of Poplar I believe. Of course we can?t expect Bubinga, Birch or Maple for this price! The bearing edges look clean, and the sparkle wrap is securely applied to the drums with clean seams. The shells seem to be in a pretty good state of ?roundness? with a maximum of about 5mm difference between horizontal diameter and vertical diameter on the floor tom and kick drum of my set.

The kit is delivered with some basic heads: Toms have Remo ?UC? clear Pinstripe-style batters and thin clear no-name resonant heads. The Kick has a Remo UC clear PS3-style head and a white smooth PS3-style resonant head with the nice 70?s-style Ludwig logo. The snare has a Remo UC coated ambassador-style batter, and a clear no-name snare-side head. These Remo UC heads are a lower grade than ?standard? Remo heads and will need to be replaced at some point. This is fine, and not a surprise ? this keeps the cost low, and most players will install their own preferred heads anyway. And the kit will sound even better when you change the heads.

Getting started with the stock heads, they tune up nicely. The toms are easiest to tune and quickly deliver a punchy, rounded sound. The kick sounds pretty good too with a little experimentation and damping. I was really expecting a funky ?little bass? sound from the kick, and it is easily capable of delivering that. But I was surprised at just how deep and rounded the kick can sound with a bit of work. At a low tuning it is only a few ?notes? up from my 22? maple kick even though it?s a fraction of the size! I still plan to damp a little more of the boom out, and I will try some different heads for this. If you like a rounded punchy kick sound, a quick search on the web confirms that further improvements in bass drum sound can be achieved with Remo Pinstripe, Aquarian Superkick II, Evans Hydraulic, etc. In any case, this kick can sound much bigger than it looks.

The snare did take some work to get a good sound from it, and I had to crank up the tuning until it started to sound decent. Just for fun I put a new batter head on it (a coated Remo Powerstroke 3 that I had lying around) and it sounded much better, delivering a nice funky pop. Some owners have reported improving the sound further by dressing the bearing edge and/or lacquering the inside of the shell, but just putting a good head on made a big difference for me. I have other snares that sound better, but with a good head on it this drum holds its own.

The hardware supplied with the kit is just the basics, given that this is a shell set. You get:

1. A kick-mounted single tom holder with a spare clamp. (This is very substantial and does its job well).

2. Legs for the floor tom of course ? juuuuuust about long enough unless you sit very high.

3. A raiser for the bass drum. This attaches to the bass drum hoop, to lift the kick off the ground by maybe 5cm, so your beater will hit the centre of the head. This is a good idea and helps to deliver a good kick sound. Some people have reported some ?movement? problems with the kick raiser, but it?s not due to a problem with the raiser in my opinion; it?s because the hoop has a channel in its cross-section (presumably for strength). The edge of the hoop is the ?thicker? part, but this thicker part is not deep enough for the contact point of the raiser (the raiser works best when clipped onto a flat section of hoop). This can be overcome to some extent by clipping the raiser onto the raised edge. However as a permanent solution I fitted a strip of rubber (actually some parts of a rubber Gibraltar BD hoop protector which I cut to fit) in the channel of the hoop. This gave the hoop a flatter overall profile for the raiser to clip onto, and made the whole thing more stable. Stability is further improved if you use a pedal that has a baseplate.

The other common problem with kick drum raisers is that the chain of your pedal can catch on the rim of the bass drum. This is also easily fixed by leaving a small gap (5mm is enough) when clipping it onto the rim. If you do these small mods, there?s no movement, and no need to buy a different raiser.

The final item in the box is a set of fabric bags for covering the drums. You could use them for transport, but they don?t offer much protection - they are more like dust covers. The advertising suggests using them for dampening the sound, and they certainly take the sting out of the snare drum for home practice. They don?t offer much protection for transport though, so I am using my soft cases from another kit for that ? the kick drum even fits in my soft case that was designed for a 16x16 tom!

In summary, the Ludwig Breakbeats set gives you a lot of kit for little money, with easy portability. It takes a few hours? work on tuning and setup, but this kit can sound great, and it plays great. Highly recommended.