QUESTION about 4-piece setups...

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John, he didn’t for his Stainless Steel kit though.

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Then there was the kit that might satisfy all viewpoints...tom mount + snare stand

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I used a snare stand on my new-to-me kit (with no tom mounting) for like two gigs before it motivated me to drop the money on a tom mount. Pain in the ass to adjust the height and angle from behind kit plus the extra weight in my hardware case. It really didn't offer any positioning that was more useful to me than the Maxwell rail mount I installed, and in fact put the tom out farther left than I wanted. This is a 24" bass drum with a 12x8 tom, so not a super deep tom, but I had no problem positioning it where I need it and I'm about average-ish height at 5'9".
 
If I’m only playing 1 up I generally don’t like using a snare stand for the tom. I guess it depends on the bass drum size, though. A 20” bass drum still allows you to get the drum pretty far over the BD while still being comfortably low. A 24” BD, on the other hand, doesn’t give you much leeway for tom positioning with a snare stand. You basically have to push the drum closer to the hi hats and likely higher than you may want to clear the BD.

If I have a mount on the BD from the factory, I will generally use the mount right on the drum. If it doesn’t have a mount I will try a snare stand but I usually will use a mount hanging off a cymbal stand to avoid all the bulk of a snare basket under the tom.
 
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I was playing with the tom on a snare stand for years. Just recently I switched back to the tom mount because, um, my cowbell mount broke and I didn't want to buy a new one. I'm putting the cowbell on the right side of the double tom mount. Now I realize that I prefer the tom on the bass drum mount. I don't even like cowbell really but, without fail, the audience does. We're also entertainers!
 
Why are so many drummers with 4-piece kits putting their single ride tom on a snare stand and not mounting it to the bass drum, like most of us older drummers did back in the day?
I'm seeing this everywhere now.
I use a stand for my tom because I like the flexibility. I can get my tom exactly where I want it, and I can angle my bass drum so it's in a more ergonomic position.

I've been doing it for almost 20 years, and it just works for me. Before that I had used a tom arm mounted to a cymbal stand, but that requires heavier stands than I want to use.
 
I’ve used both for varying reasons when I’m playing a 4-piece kit, none of which have to do with the tone of the kick drum. How it looks is never a factor either - it’s always about functionality.
 
It was presumably a different kind of playing in 1939, so hanging the toms far apart and oddly angled may not have been as quirky as would be the case today. When I owned this kit, it was near impossible to get the toms to a playable position; the smaller one, sort of, the one on the right, nope. The rail mount, on a 28" bass drum, as a challenge. I tried 2 snare stands. Hard to clear the 28" bass drum. At some point I got RIMS type mounts and played the two rack toms off of an old Ludwig double tom floor stand, set next to the hi-hat (a la Roy Burns).

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Why are so many drummers with 4-piece kits putting their single ride tom on a snare stand and not mounting it to the bass drum, like most of us older drummers did back in the day?
I'm seeing this everywhere now.
I did this with my kits for a while. I liked that I could get larger ride cymbals in a little closer. My T-Rex arms could hit the bell on my 24" quite a bit easier.

Somewhere along the way, I decided to lighten my load and go back to the tom mount on everything. It's also a lot quicker setup. Plus I mostly play 20" or 21" rides nowadays.
 
Well, that’s why I started doing it over 50 years ago. And John Bonham did it too...
Bonham only used a rack-tom snare stand on his thermogloss kit, and that's only because he originally bought it as a double-bass kit, mounting the 12x15 on an Atlas stand between the BDs. When he stopped using the second BD (at the band's insistence) he had to continue with the snare-stand mounting for the rack tom since neither BD was fitted with a tom mount.

His subsequent green sparkle and amber Vistalite kits used a standard Ludwig rail consolette BD mount for the rack tom. The stainless steel kit's 12x15 tom was hung from a Ludwig double-tom BD mount:

Amber Vistalite:

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Stainless Steel:

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Why are so many drummers with 4-piece kits putting their single ride tom on a snare stand and not mounting it to the bass drum, like most of us older drummers did back in the day?
I'm seeing this everywhere now.
The larger the drum, the thinner it needs to be to make it easy to activate it. In the 80's everything was heavy and thick to prevent damage. Today kick drums tend to be thin and not support the weight.
 
Why are so many drummers with 4-piece kits putting their single ride tom on a snare stand and not mounting it to the bass drum, like most of us older drummers did back in the day?
I'm seeing this everywhere now.
Yea, what's up with them whipper snappers anyway always trying to change things up. Sheeeesh!
 
For me it's about ergonomics and positioning. I like my rack tom directly in front of my snare drum, and I've yet to find a bass drum tom mount that can get the rack tom into that position without having to angle my leg at an awkward angle.

So, it's a tom stand for me in front of my snare drum, although I wouldn't mind using a snare stand because, well, it looks cool.

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I prefer toms mounted on bass drum but some the kits I buy don't always come with that option.
 
I just don't want a huge distance between my drums, especially just getting back into drumming and going from rack tom to floor tom. I like everything tight and close. I'm currently vascillating between 1 up or 2 up for starting out again. Years ago, when I played 2 concert toms, 4 rack toms, and 1 floor tom, this wasn't an issue. I could hit anywhere and I always came in contact with a drum, LOL.
I have mounted my rack tom on a snare stand in the past because my kit doesn't have a bass drum mount and I didn't have a mount for the cymbal stand. That and if I have more than one rack tom, I tend to have the toms shifted over towards the center more, so the 2nd tom usually ends up where the post for a tom mount would go.

For me and what I'm normally playing, the distance isn't a concern. I'm seldom playing a straight down the row tom fill.
 
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