Gretsch Drums Catalina Club Studio - SWG

This is an excellent drum kit. The finish looks lovely, and the hardware is low mass, yet stable and really lets the drums resonate.

There is good separation between the toms, and have a nice warm vintage tone. They have a good tuning range, so you can get jazzy high pitch or lower rock pitches without everything getting muddy.

The snare also has a great tuning range and is really responsive, picking up all ghost notes as well as having good volume.

Bass drum sounds great unmuffled. Without muffling it has a good sound without too many weird overtones. Adding some dampening to the batter head makes it very punchy.

Generally the kit is very well balanced in terms of tone, and no part of the drumkit feels like it's overpowering the rest of the kit.

Can't think of any negatives to the kit. Really sounds like it's worth a lot more than it really is, especially with the beautiful walnut finish.

I bought this kit to use for practicing and the small gigs in town. Coupled it with a Tama hardware set and own Bosphorus cymbals. At first, the response of the kit gave a jazzy feeling but the overall sound was good. Afterwards, watching a couple of Youtube videos on how to make it a bit more 'rocky', I loosened the bass drum batter head and opened a tiny port hole on the resonant head and voila! It felt and sounded perfect!

For the look and feel, personally I've accepted no substitutes for Gretsch. But this kit specifically, has got -and still gets- many praises from outsiders too. All in all, I am very satisfied.