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Owning a kit this size would require a van to transport it, a garage or lock-up to store it in and a roadie to do the lugging

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Like Trivium’s ace sticksman Travis Smith, ddrums’ acoustic drums move fast – in the ground they cover and, in the case of the Trivium drummer with his blinding double kick chops, literally.

No sooner had Travis been welcomed into the ranks of ddrum endorsees than he was enthusing over an ash Warrior kit being built to his specifications, complete with hundreds of decorative spikes protruding from the shells. In the blink of an eye, a Travis Smith signature snare was being unveiled, which was then swiftly followed by the signature kit we see here.

Build

No spikes feature on Travis’s ddrum signature kit, but there can be little doubt of its origins. Consisting of two whopping 24"x20" bass drums, the aforementioned 14"x7" signature snare, four rack toms – 8"x7", 10"x8", 12"x9" and 14"x10" – and a pair of floor toms (16"x16" and 18"x16") it is emblazoned with a design graphic penned by Travis himself.

Production of the kit is limited to 100 sets, of which just 10 are allocated to reach the UK. Perhaps the most impressive thing about this kit is its price, which is pretty remarkable for a kit of this size, let alone one sanctioned by one of the hottest players out there. Rather than being based on a single ddrum range and then tweaked to Travis’s liking, this signature kit contains elements from various ddrum ranges, with several unique features thrown in.

The shells are made from a combination of basswood and birch. The now discontinued ddrum Diatribe range featured all-birch shells, while the existing Diablo line is formed with basswood shells and the signature kit shells are a new composite of the two ranges. In terms of construction, the toms and bass drums share a nine-ply sandwich at just over 7mm thick, while the snare drum’s altogether meatier 15 plies come in at 14mm.

The finish takes the form of a wrap that Travis designed with the aid of ddrum’s graphic artists. Custom wrap specialists Rockenwrap were also enlisted at this point and the resulting pattern – called Rebel Rust – flows across the drums coherently. Featuring barbed wire motifs and sections of the Confederate flag along with a Trivium ‘T’ over a pale yellow/green background studded with rivet marks, it puts Travis’s personal stamp on the kit.

Neat shield-shaped lugs are fitted on all the drums, with a healthy distribution of lugs per circumference on each drum. The lugs were sourced from the former Diatribe range, but the galvanised finish they are coated with is unique to this kit. All of the rims and suspension tom mounts are similarly adorned with this gunmetal grey finish, which is called Warrior Coat. It does give an aggressive look to the shell hardware, but at the same time is eerily similar to the Hammerite paint that careful houseowners apply to guttering and drainpipes for its life-prolonging properties.