DW Performance Series 5-piece Drum Kit Review - Sweetwater Sound

Get this Performance Series drum kit here: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detai...

In this video I am playing a DW Performance 5-piece kit. DW created the Performance Series to allow for a wider range of drummers the ability to get their hands on a kit with all of that legendary DW quality and sound at a great price. This kit definitely has many great features and you can see and feel that just by sitting behind the drums for the first time. Then once you start playing the drums you can tell right away that you are playing drums of the highest quality.

Great Features
DW's John Good is always finding new and better ways to make drum shells, and what he came up with for the Performance Series are called HVX. H for horizontal, V for vertical, and X for diagonal. Those letters correspond to the woodgrain direction of the shell plies and this combination not only makes for a great drum shell but it also made it possible to bring the cost down.

On this kit you get 9" x 12" and 8" x 10" rack toms, a 14" x 16" floor tom, and an 18" x 22" bass drum. These drums feature 8-ply HVX construction and have one diagonal outer ply. The snare drum is 6.5" x 14" and features 10-ply HVX construction with two diagonal outer plies.

The drums shells are made with 100% North American Hard Rock Maple and are also Cool Tempered. Once a shell has been baked under pressure, they take it right out of the oven and place it in a pressurized cooler to ensure that the glue instantly crystalizes and the shell hardens to a perfect cylinder. Add to that DW's great hardware and you get a drum that tunes easily.

As for the hardware, DW definitely did not skimp on the quality there either. The drums come with a scaled-down version of DW's trademark turret lug, STM (Suspension Tom Mounts) system which allows your drums to vibrate and resonate freely, True-Pitch Tuning Rods, and the snare drum comes with the fantastic MAG throw off.

How does it sound?
These drums sound great. I had them tuned in no time at all and they stayed that way even after some good bashing. They are warm but also have a nice snap and attack. The pitches between the toms really gave me a nice high to low sound and the beef on the bass drum is just that, beefy! On top of it all was a snare drum that was very easy to play, with nice rebound and crack. I always like to experiment with snares to see how they sound tuned way up high or way down low and the Performance Series snare did both very well. The MAG throw off also makes it so easy to get your snare wires buzzing in just the way you like and takes absolutely no effort at all to turn on or off.

How does it look?
The sound of the drums you are playing is more important then the look but let's face it, it is nice to sit behind a great looking kit. The color of the kit I am playing on is the Titanium Sparkle. The chrome hardware really looks great with that sparkle shell finish. You can also get a Pewter Sparkle version that is even darker and looks amazing too.


This is a really nice drum kit that looks and sounds great. What else could you ask for? It comes at a nice price, will work in any studio or live situation, and as long as you give them some love and take care of them, these drums will last you a lifetime.

-- Nick D'Virgilio