Every drummer who travels with their kit or stores it away for long periods should own a decent set of drum bags. Putting your kit in bags is the best way of maintaining the quality of the shells and hardware, as leaving the kit exposed can lead to damage.
Gator is a popular company that offers good drum bags, and the GP-FUSION16 set is one that all drummers should consider.
In this review, we’ll look at every feature included in this set, and we’ll discuss which drummers would greatly benefit from it, as well as which drummers will need something a bit stronger.
You get five drum bags in this set, with each one being large enough for all the shells of a standard 5-piece drum kit. The bags are deep enough for most sizes with each shell, minus ones that have unconventional depths.
All the bags are made from 600-Denier nylon, making them both durable and light enough to carry easily.
Each bag also has 10mm padded and lined inner sections to add extra protection to all the drums that you store.
The zips are heavy-duty, so the weight of your drum shells won’t affect them and how well they work.
Finally, each bag has a carrying strap that makes it easy to transport when you’re walking with them.
The quality of these Gator GP-FUSION16 bags is excellent, as you get a combination of light weight and durability.
They’re durable enough to protect your shells in most environments, and they’re light enough to carry over your shoulders when loading your drum kit into a car to get to a gig.
The heavy-duty zips are also fantastic, as they’re strong enough to hold heavy drums and not get damaged. Drummers who have used these bags for years have only said good things about the zippers.
The carrying straps are surprisingly comfortable, and they don’t cut into your skin when you’re holding a heavy drum over your shoulder. Some bags have straps that do that, so it’s worth mentioning that these don’t.
The two other construction features to mention are the padded interiors and the collapsible design of all the bags.
The padded interiors are there to protect your shells once they’re placed inside the bags. They’re 10mm thick, giving plenty of protection to all your drum shells. They’re protective enough to keep the shells safe even if you drop a bag accidentally.
You obviously shouldn’t aim to do that too often, but your drum shells will be perfectly fine if you do it occasionally.
Also, the padding helps when the drum bags are placed next to each other in a car. There will be a lot of movement as you’re driving, so the pads will stop the shells from rubbing against each other.
When your drums are out of the bags, you can collapse them so that they don’t take up a lot of space. This is an excellent feature that gives these an edge over hard cases if you’re someone who wants to save as much space as possible.
However, hard cases tend to be a lot more durable than soft bags, so you may prefer those over these if you’re looking for major durability.
The GP-FUSION16 drum bags perform exactly how you’d expect drum bags to perform, meaning they’re highly reliable. If you’ve used drum bags before and you were happy with them, you’ll be more than happy with these ones.
They don’t offer any significant features that make them better than other soft bags, but they do the job they were designed to do very well, and that’s all you need when you’re looking for protective cases.
When it comes to soft cases for five drums being sold in a bundle, these GP-FUSION16 bags cost around the same as the other options from different brands. So, we wouldn’t say that these have excellent value for money.
For something to have great value for money, it would need to offer more than the competition with an affordable price tag.
With that being said, we think the price tag here is highly justified. There are a few cheaper soft case bundles out there, but none of them are as durable as these ones from Gator.
If you have the money to spend on these, we’d suggest getting them over bags that fall in the $100 to $200 range.
Also, just keep in mind that hard cases are typically a lot more expensive. If you want hard cases for better durability, you’ll mostly be paying double the price or more.
If you have a drum studio with multiple drum kits to use, you’ll need bags or cases to keep the drums that you aren’t using stored. These Gator bags are a decent option for that, but it’s always better to hard cases if you’re planning to leave the drums in one place for a long time.
These bags are an amazing option for live gigs. They’re the ideal drum bags to put your practice kit into to take it to a gig and back. When you’re not using them for transporting your kit, you can neatly pack them away somewhere. You don’t need much space due to their collapsible design.
The Gator GP-FUSION16 Drum Set Bags are a solid option for gigging drummers. If you get these bags, you’ll just need to get a hardware carrying case separately, as this bundle doesn’t include one. After that, you’ll be all set.
These bags are light and durable, and they work brilliantly as transportation tools. We’d just suggest looking into hard cases if you want to store your drums for extended periods.
Drum Teacher
Brett Clur has a Drum Performance Diploma from Trinity College London has been playing drums for over 20 years. He is passionate about advanced concepts and uses his years of experience to teach his students about them. While he is a full-time drum teacher, he is also working on growing a YouTube channel where shares his insights. You can see him playing there, or on Instagram where he posts daily videos.
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