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The generously sized wingnuts too easily interfere with each other.

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Gibraltar makes a lot of hardware. Loads, in fact. The first four pages of its current brochure contain details on no fewer than eight bass drum pedals across its Intruder, Avenger and Prowler series, for example.

And even ignoring its sprawling range of rack metalwork and the various bits and pieces of bolt-on hardware available therein, Gibraltar's standard stand line-up (y'know, the basic hi-hat, snare and cymbal stands etc) still covers more ground than most.

Which is why the company can convincingly lay claim to being the world's biggest dedicated drum hardware manufacturer by quite some margin, and why it is able to offer ranges that are as diverse as the 8600 and 9600, and that are aimed at entirely different target markets.

Poles apart

Numerically speaking, the two lines might appear to be closely related. But they are poles apart. The 8600s are single-braced stands and are of classically styled 'flat base' design, where the legs of each stand can be positioned, well, flat to the floor. On the other hand, the 9600s are humungous great behemoths with double-braced legs, massive tubing and all sorts of clever features.

There's not a lot of common ground between the two ranges, other than the usual obvious Gibraltar standards of construction, which are difficult to fault. Other than that, the 9600s are heavily-set bulldogs and the 8600s are skinny whippets. But are they both pedigrees?

Striking a balance

In the early stages of your drumming career it's easy to get caught up in the 'bigger is better' mindset as far as hardware is concerned.

Worries of arriving at gigs with spindly single-braced stands only to get laughed out of the venue by other drummers with multi-lok, ultra-beef metalwork can play heavily on a young drummer's mind.

However, as experience is gained it quickly becomes apparent that in fact the weight and space penalty often incurred by over sized stands outweighs their promises of stability and longevity. Sure, such gear is great if you play 300 shows a year, lay into your kit with the subtlety of a small bison and have a crew to ship all the gear around for you. But for the majority of us, decent, lighter weight stands are preferable both in terms of carry-ability and price.

The 8600 series certainly falls into this bracket as far as weight goes. Gibraltar has designed them to be low mass types, and the slender pipes of the 8609 and 8610 boom and straight cymbal stands (and indeed the whole line-up) helps on this front. But this is still a reasonably full-featured range and the cymbal stands both get gearless brake cymbal tilters for set-up flexibility and all stands have key-lockable tripod adjustment collars to ensure rock solidity.

While these are hardly Mr Universe-style products, they are still more than capable of withstanding the assault that they'll get from players who are less energetic than the Mark Richardsons and Joey Castillos of the world.