IF YOU'RE FAMILIAR with the name Remo, it might come as a surprise to see it emblazoned across the front of a bass drum, rather than sitting discreetly at the outer edge of one of their famous heads. Then again, with the number of top players currently using Remo's professional series drums (Ricky Lawson's putting them through their paces on the Michael Jackson tour), perhaps it wouldn't. Whatever, after several decades as the world's top manufacturer of drum heads, Remo have begun to make drums. Very successfully, too.

They produce several different kits, ranging in price from the professional Encore series at one end right down to the Junior Pro kits, aimed at drummers under the age of ten, at the other. What we have here is a Discovery kit that retails for £414 without stands, placing it roughly in the middle of the range. Obviously that's a lot of money, especially if this is your first kit, so you'll want to know exactly what you're getting for that kind of outlay. Read on.

The Remo Discovery is a five-piece kit featuring "Power Toms", a deep-shelled snare drum and a deep bass drum. The term "power tom" refers to tom-toms that are several inches deeper than standard. If you ask me they don't really sound any more "powerful" than standard toms, just... well, different.

The tom-toms with this kit are 12" X 11" and 13" X 12", with a 16" X 16" floor tom. The smaller toms are mounted on the bass drum via two "L" arm holders which angle the drums by means of a ratchet filter, and these are the only bits of hardware supplied as standard.

The bass drum is the fairly predictable 22" in diameter, but is again two inches deeper than the standard size at 16". I'm not sure exactly what effect this has on the sound, but the drum does seem to have a remarkably deep, full tone with enough punch to rattle your teeth (and probably the panes of the greenhouse in the garden next door). Supplied as standard with this drum is a Remo "Muff'l Ring Control", a smart doughnut-shaped device that does away with the need to stuff the bass drum with an old blanket or pillow to damp the sound.

"Depth" really is the Discovery's forte: in keeping with the rest of the kit, the snare drum is relatively deep, 7" to be exact. Deeper snare drums, especially lower-priced ones, have a tendency to lose some of their cutting edge and brightness at certain tunings. Not so this one, a fine all-round drum that sounds crisp and controlled at a range of tunings, but particularly pleasing when tuned high.

Really and truly, the sound of a drum is something you have to make your own mind up over, because what I like you may hate (and vice versa). All I can say about these drums is that I had no trouble getting a fine, workable sound from all of them.

Tuning is also a matter of taste: providing you do it properly and carefully in the first place, the pitch of your drums is up to you. Still, it's often a good test of a drum kit to see if the quality of the sound remains constant with high and low tensioning of the heads. The Discovery toms pass this test with flying colours, remaining well-rounded at as wide a range of tunings as you could ever need.

And that's about your lot with this kit. At first glance it's not much different from many others in this price range, but what sets it apart is its superb and consistent quality of sound - just about the best I've ever heard for this sort of money.

The price does not, of course, include any stands or pedals and you'll therefore need to add the cost of a hi-hat stand, a snare drum stand, a cymbal stand and a bass drum pedal (at the bare minimum) to get a final total. This need not involve as big a dip into the wallet as you might think, though: Remo do a perfectly adequate package of economy hardware that includes the basic elements listed above for under fifty quid. You could also do the rounds of a few music shops and pick up some secondhand hardware; it might be slightly unfashionable, but it'll do the job until you can afford to upgrade, and it'll certainly be cheap.

Whatever you decide, the fact is that you can get this kit up and running for well under £500. It may take a bit of saving, but it'll be worth it.

REMO DISCOVERY DRUM KIT: £414 inc VAT

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