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• Review

Performance Percussion is an established line of drums aimed at the beginner and educational end of the market. The Performance Percussion range encompasses kits, individual drums, hardware and a sizeable array of percussion and accessories.

Absolute beginners

The PP300R kit on review represents the flagship of the Performance Percussion range and is a full size, comprehensive starter kit that contains everything you need to begin drumming. The kit is a standard five-piece set up of a 22"x16" bass drum, 12"x10" and 13"x11" toms, a 16"x16" floor tom and a steel 14"x6½" snare drum. All the relevant stands and mounts are supplied, including the hi-hat and snare stand, a boom arm cymbal stand, a chain-driven bass drum pedal and a stool.

A pair of 14" hi-hat cymbals and a 16" crash provide metallic accompaniment to the drums and the package is completed with a pair of sticks and a drum key. All the kits sport double-braced tripods and while there is only one choice of kit configuration, four different coverings are available, namely Gloss Black, Metallic Red, Metallic Blue and Metallic Silver.

Mystery shell

The PP300R kit is sourced from China - the shell wood is unspecified but the shells are competently made. They stand at six plies deep and the bearing edges are accurately cut. Inside, the shells have been evenly sanded in a consistent manner. The steel shell of the snare drum contains four lines of beading and is polished to a shiny finish.

The lugs are a commendable detail worth drawing attention to - where you might expect to find clumsy or weighty shell architecture there are instead rather neat low mass lugs that wouldn't look out of place on kits costing a good deal more. The distribution of lugs is not bad either. The toms are all furnished with six pairs (fine for the 12" and 13" toms, not great for the 16" floor tom) while the snare and bass drum contain eight per head (the snare's double-ended lugs means it technically has only eight as opposed to the bass drum's total of 16).

This concentration on the tuning abilities of the snare and bass drum is quite right, and it is only the 16" floor tom that is underequipped lugwise in any sizeable way. The pressed hoops are par for the course and seem up to their job. Likewise the generic tuning rods worked without complaint when assembling the kit and held tuning while testing it.

For the PP300R, Performance have chosen Remo heads. This is an area that conventional budget kits often treat as an afterthought and, as the choice of head makes an enormous contribution to the sound of a drum, it’s certainly a good move.

The Remo heads on the toms are clear, single-ply examples that bring more focus and attack to the drums. The toms could still do with being an inch or two shallower – their deeper dimensions make for a fairly thunderous response. We can’t imagine any fledgling drummer complaining though. The bass drum is equipped with a pretty decent batter head, which sports a muffling ring. The ebony front head is thinner than that on the playing side, but contains a port which is handy for folding in dampening material – not that it requires much.

The drum gives a thoroughly respectable performance. Tweaking the tuning brings about a tight, punchy thud that is destined to have the neighbours banging on the wall.