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The purple glitter is just one of 15 finishes offered - shame it covers up the genuinely gorgeous bubings

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Tama’s Starclassic is a stunning, well established series of drums. Starclassics have previously been offered with maple or birch shells and now Tama has added bubinga.

Bubinga is also known as African rosewood. It has a gorgeously deep, dark tinge with streaks of reddish brown and black and a fairly even, wavy grain. You can see this on the insides of the bass drum hoops and the inners of the shells. However, Tama has chosen to apply a range of coloured finishes to the drums – in the case of the review kit this is Ultra Violet, basically a purple and black sparkle lacquer.

The shells consist of eight plies of bubinga with a single outer ply of maple. Apparently the maple provides a better base for the application of the 15 different shell surfaces on offer.

To compliment your choice of shell colour Tama gives you the option of three metallic hardware finishes, Black Nickel, Brushed Nickel and Regular Chrome. The review kit features Black Nickel, a sort of smoky chrome which is undeniably attractive. What’s great about the plating is the way it is carried through to all parts of the mounting hardware and shell fittings, giving the whole kit a splendidly uniform appearance.

As for shell sizes, Tama offers a seemingly unlimited choice of toms ranging from 8” to 18” in diameter with no less than five different choices of shell depth. The latter encompasses the shallow Hyper-Drive, through Traditional Regular, Accel and Deep to X-tra Deep.

Balancing act

The toms are kept afloat by Tama’s Star-Cast mounting system. Isolation mounting systems are all very well, except that to make them strong they are often bulky and can restrict how you can position your toms. Tama has recently improved their Star-Cast system on both counts, by switching to aluminium so that the brackets are lighter and by streamlining the design.

The mounting bracket is contoured so that it snuggles right in under the actual die-cast rim of the drum. The result is that it actually makes it easier to position your toms closer together. What’s more, Tama claims you get an even truer tonal vibration. Finally, the Star-Cast mounts, which were previously a contrasting black and not the prettiest on the market, are now plated to match up with your drum’s shell fittings, lugs and rims.

The drum rims themselves are Tama’s Star-Cast heavy die-cast zinc hoops. They are tensioned by Tama’s Hold-Tight washers – stainless steel, cup-shaped washers with little rubber insert rings to prevent your heads losing tension.