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Buddy rarely took a stick to his second floor tom – an extravagance not available to most of us!

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The bearing edges here are, at about 30 degrees on toms and kick, noticeably less steep than on most modern drums. This additionally softens the impact a teensy bit, balancing out the brightness of the thickish, straight-sided shells.

Both front and back bass drum heads have BR shield logos. We slipped an old-fashioned felt strip under the batter, with no other damping, allowing the drum to sing. Because of the shell's large diameter and shallow depth you get a 'slam' rather than a 'biff'. The shallow depth also means the response is fast and sensitive.

With both heads intact and tuned quite high to produce a note rather than a thud, you certainly get an authentic big band taste.

The snare is a little less inspiring. The strainer is a generic, pull-away mechanism, solid though not the smoothest, and the cheap snare wires are held by thin plastic straps. Not exactly luxurious.

The response was a bit sluggish right up to medium tension. Only with the batter tuned quite high did we get the expected crisp, full tone - a combination of ringing edges with a reasonably resonant centre. Overall it's a decent enough drum, just not quite commensurate with the world's greatest.

As Buddy fans know, he placed his towel on his second floor tom and rarely took a stick to it. Fine for him, but rather an extravagance for the average Joe, lumbered with two 16" floor toms when a 14" or 18" would be more useful. But then it wouldn't be Buddy's set-up...

Buddy always played a top-of-the-range kit, which this is not. So let's not confuse this handsome Taiwanese-built tribute for cash-conscious fans with the sort of kit worthy of the master himself.