A couple of days ago Ed Francis shared a tip about spiking your drum set hardware layout with tape to make sure that you set your drums up exactly the same every time, which leads to a more efficient set up and comfort when playing. His post reminded me of another important aspect of setting your drums up: consistency when setting the height and angles of your cymbal stands and hardware stands.

One of the main ways to consistently set your drum hardware up the same for every show is by using memory locks. Memory locks are basically small metal pipe clamps that you attach to your hardware stands to mark and stop at a certain height/angle that you like to have your stands at. These memory locks are moved up and down the stand by tightening or loosening the lock with a drum key.

Memory locks are great, but I have a very small SKB hardware case that doesn’t have enough room for me to completely disassemble a cymbal stand, which is basically what I would have to do if I used memory locks on my stands since you wouldn’t want to move the memory lock every time you put it back in the case. In order to fix this problem I just started marking my heights and angles with a fine tipped Sharpie! This completely eliminates the need for memory locks, and allows me to collapse my hardware inside itself enough to fit everything in my hardware case.

Continue Reading....