GP50BL Complete Junior Drum Set (Blue, 3-Piece Set)

This Drum Set was for our 5 year old. He LOVES his drums. We are very happy with the purchase. The set arrives in one large box, about 2.5 feet square. The shells are nestled inside one another and the high hat is collapsed with a hinged pole to allow for folding/shipment. It all goes together rather quickly. Nothing difficult, just takes time. But really not that much time. Maybe 30 minutes. Once we had it together, we adjusted the heads to sound good and then had at it. The cymbal is small and sounds meh - ok, cheap. It's works. It is more of a "trash cymbal" and not a primary crash/ride. But I wasn't exactly expecting hand tuned Turkish bronze either, so not disappointed at all. The high hat is actually well made, doubled braced and is mechanically pretty darn good. No issues. Again, cheap bronze detracts from the sound, but not horribly so. That said, no keyholes, deformities, or other damage with hard playing. And if you know anything about drums, you could pay a lot more for one cymbal than the entire set costs, so keep all this in perspective. My son likes the smaller sticks that came with the set. He generally reaches for those over some of the standard Vic Firth sticks we have around. The drums sound pretty good. I wish it had a floor tom. With that, it would be really complete and we could do some very cool stuff on the set. But as it is, it's a great learning instrument. The shells are well made. Finish is really nice. The dark blue is sharp. The snare isn't great, but not bad either. My son can beat on these all day and they still look good. Heads are holding up fine with a kid who has very limited restraint. Looking for some nicer cymbals to add to the set. Also likely to add a floor tom if we can find something small. After a few weeks of lessons and practice, we are seeing some real gains and this set really made that happen. Otherwise, I could see our son growing tired of the practice pad and not wanting to drum anymore. With this, he runs to his room after school and plays, practices, and has fun. That's the key, keeping it fun. Having a set helps. 08/24/2015 UPDATE: After having this set for a few months, we remain happy with the purchase, but are now feeling the limits of a 5 piece setup. Lessons continue and we are now having issues. The lessons include Low and High toms as well as floor tom items. We can't do that with this setup and are now looking to upgrade. Somewhat wish I had picked out a 7 piece over this. Not to fault this set, it has held up well under the constant banging by a 5 year old learning to play (with mom and dad having a few goes too). 5 stars still remain based on what was purchased and what was received. These look great, sound pretty good, and holdup well. I guess I would equate the feeling of buying a Honda Accord and being sad that all the BMW 3 Series are beating the pants off the Accord. You know what you have, and you feel you made a smart purchase, but deep inside you want more than what you have.

Got this for my 6 year old who didn't like the rock band for the Xbox that much since it wasn't real drums... Problem was he took those drumsticks and went to town on anything else in the house. Tables, banister, his little tykes furniture, etc.. So I figured this would give him another target for those drumsticks. It shipped amazingly fast, I got it four shipping days after I placed the order. Came in a surprisingly small box but everything was nested so it fit well. The pieces were mostly well packaged, but the front black head with the logo for the bass drum was really crunched up around the edges and looked pretty awful, not really fixed after tightening it onto it. And the cymbal was also dented up in several spots. But it didn't impair playability, and assembly was pretty straightforward although as others have mentioned, the instructions are pretty poor. But it's rather self evident when you look at it how things go. All told about 20 minutes to assemble, and that was stretched out some because I had to keep stopping what I was doing to get him back out of the way and to tell him to stop hitting things before they were put together. Seat is poor, I'm going to be replacing it with a better unit, it's just not very sturdy. But on the opposite end of the quality spectrum, the drums were just phenomenal. Solid construction, and they're taking hits from him that I thought for sure would drive the drumstick right through the heads... He just gets too into it sometimes and no matter how many times I say "Not so hard, buddy," he delivers some really hard hits. The paint and finish is great - no mars, nothing to impair the looks of the drums. And the chrome looks good as well. It comes with these little drumsticks that don't work too well, even for a smaller kid, so we're still using the normal full-sized ones that came with Rock Band. The pedal for the high hat is a little tougher for small kids, but he's starting tog et the hang of it. There may be a way to lower the throw some so it's not such a high angle, but he's managing anyway. All the pieces are easily adjustable for height and angle, so it's simple to get everything set up based on the actual size of your wee one who will be sitting behind them. No tools needed, everything is either wing nuts that you do with your fingers, or uses the key to tighten, which is included. I'll throw a few closeup photos of it if I can figure out where to add them. Edit 6/27/2010 Had it for over a week now. had been using it in my great room, by the big TV, so he could watch Animusic and play along, and I noticed some stains in the carpet under the throne. Not sure from what, as putting my finger in the hollow tube, I'm not getting any residue or anything, so it may just be microscopic pieces of the metal that wear out from him turning around or something, but it was very noticeable and did not come out by vacuuming. I had to use a carpet cleaning spray and do some scrubbing. So I would strongly recommend putting a rag or something under the center of the throne so that anything that would make a stain gets on the rag, not your carpets and floors. Other than that, it is holding up incredibly well and he just cannot get enough of it.