Cheap drum kits are cheap for a reason, and they often have poor sound quality that stops you from wanting to play them. The poor sound quality comes from a variety of design features, but there are a few things you can do to improve on it.
Here’s a quick guide on how to make a cheap drum set sound a lot better. You’d be surprised at how much improvement can be made.
Changing the drumheads should be the very first thing that you do. Cheap drum kits come with very poor stock drumheads, and they always sound flat and boxy.
If you get a high-quality set of heads from brands like Evans and Remo, the drums will instantly sound better when you put them on.
However, make sure to get 2-ply heads. They offer more dampening to the shells, which helps control the ugly tones you get from lower-quality drums. This will make them easier to tune.
Cymbals are another huge component that can make a drum setup sound very bad. If you have cheap cymbals made from brass, swapping those out with high-quality cymbals made from strong metal alloys will make a world of difference.
You can do a lot to drum shells to make them sound better. You can’t do anything to cymbals. So, the best option is to replace your cheap cymbals entirely.
It may be a bit expensive to do it, but it will make your cheap drum set sound like it should be used on a professional stage.
Once you have new drumheads on your kit, you need to do your best to tune them well. Tuning is a skill that needs to be developed over time, so getting perfect tunings won’t be easy. This is especially true with cheap drums, as they’re harder to tune.
However, getting to a sweet point with tuning will make the drum sing and sound quite musical.
Once the drums are in tune, you may still hear a few nasty overtones come out when you play them. If you don’t want to hear those, you can apply muffling to each drumhead.
Muffling refers to when you place things on the drums to control the tones a bit. You can use Moongels or Snareweights, but the cheapest solution would just be to use duct tape and a bit of cotton.
Place cotton pieces on the heads, and then put duct tape over them to keep them in place. Doing that should round the tones of the toms and snare drum out.
If the resonant drumhead on your bass drum doesn’t have a hole in it, you should make a plan to get one there. This is called a kick port, and having one in the bass drum will make the sound a lot drier.
This drier sound is often more pleasing to the ear when it comes to cheap drum sets.
You can either cut a hole out yourself, or you can buy a new drumhead that already has a hole in it.
When cutting it out yourself, you can get a kick port kit that will make the process a lot easier.
Having a hole also allows you to add muffling to the bass drum without needing to take a drumhead off the shell.
Cheap snare drums almost always have very loose wires. If you replace those with higher-quality ones, you’ll get a much tighter snare drum sound, and that will improve the overall sound of your drum set.
New snare wires are very affordable, so this isn’t a step that you should skip out on.
On the flip side, you could also get a new snare drum that is of much higher quality than the toms and kick drum.
With tuning being so tricky at times, having a drum tuning tool will help you significantly. Drum tuners measure the pressure on the drumheads, and they help you get all the tension rods to the same measurements.
When everything is even, the drums will start sounding a lot better, as now they’ll be in tune.
You shouldn’t solely rely on a drum tuner, but it will make the whole tuning process a lot easier.
The final tip here is to work on the acoustics of the room that your drums are in. If the room has poor acoustics, even a professional drum kit will sound bad.
You need to fill the room with as much dampening as you can, so it helps to put furniture inside that will absorb the sounds of the drums.
Here’s our guide on how to sound proof a room for drums.
Pro musicians use sound-insulating panels on the walls, but those can get very pricey. A cheaper alternative would be leaning an old mattress against the doorway when you’re playing. It doesn’t look too great, but it works effectively.
Cheap cymbals are made from brass, and they don’t go through the same hammering processes that higher-priced cymbals do. This causes them to sound very harsh and unmusical when you play them.
They don’t have any versatility, and you’ll struggle to get varying levels of dynamic intensity when playing them.
If you want to get a drum set that will sound relatively decent, we’d suggest spending $500 or more. You can apply all the tips we’ve mentioned to a $500 set, and it will sound fantastic. Read this guide if you want to learn how much drum sets cost.
One of the key rules on drum kit setups is that it’s always better to spend more money on cymbals than on drum shells. The cymbals are the biggest part that makes a drum kit sound good or bad, so we strongly suggest getting a good set.
After that, you can get good drumheads and tune your drums well to make them sound great.
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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