1. Quick links
2. Editor's picks
3. Black Friday FAQ
Black Friday has been and gone with its usual mountain of music gear savings, but fear not, the bargains are still out there. This page is your place to find all the very best still-live percussion deals - all curated by experts who've been covering Black Friday drum deals for years.
You can still shop in the massive sale at Sweetwater, where the official Black Friday sale offers up to 75% off a range of music gear, including electronic drum sets, cymbals, snare drums, sticks and more. There are some nice deals on cajons, too. And at Guitar Center you'll find their official sale remains in full swing, with a focus on delivering up to 40% off electronic drums from Roland, Alesis and Simmons.
An exciting twist for 2023 is that we've seen a slew of proper discounts on Yamaha's excellent DTX range of e-kits, like this $470 discount on the DTX6K3-X kit complete with TCS heads. Yamaha rarely takes money off its e-drums, so now is the time to strike if you've been struggling to track down a deal.
We've rounded up all the places you can still make savings below and hand-picked some of our favourite offers below that. Get amongst it. We'll be over here prepping our Cyber Monday drum deals hub - stay tuned for still more bargains very shortly...
Black Friday drum deals: Quick links
Below you'll find all the latest percussion sales ahead of this year's official Black Friday drum deals:
- Amazon: Shop BF deals on drums gear
- Donner: Get 25% off sitewide
- Guitar Center: Up to 40% off Holiday Sale
- Musician's Friend: Up to 50% off BF sale
- Reverb: Shop the official Black Friday sale
- Sweetwater: Up to 75% off official BF sale
- Andertons: Chunky drum discounts
- Gear4Music: Deals on budget kits
- PMT: Extra 10% off sale prices
- Thomann: Up to 60% off Cyberweek sale
Black Friday drum deals: Editor's picks
Explore our top picks from this year's Black Friday drum deals:
Black Friday drum deals FAQ
When do the Black Friday drum deals start?
2023's Black Friday drum deals will officially come to fruition on Friday November 24th - the day after Thanksgiving. With less than a month between Black Friday and Christmas, stocking up on Christmas presents is how most people utilise their Black Friday and Cyber Weekend - with Monday 27th November seeing a slew of Cyber Monday drum deals for you tub thumpers out there. If you want more inspiration we have a drummers gift guide right here.
Last year's festivities would imply that Friday 24th won't be the only time to pick up some killer deals on drum gear. Most of the best Black Friday drum deals will start popping up from around the middle of October, some even earlier. Many of the deals will remain valid until the end of the year, too.
Obviously, we all want bargains - so during this Black Friday/Cyber Monday period, we'd keep our eyes peeled, looking to strike on a great drum deal. It's worth noting that as Black Friday is now a global event, discounts and sales may start and end at random times of the day (or night) - so watch your favourite retailers and bookmark this page too. We'll be keeping you up to date with the cheapest prices on the gear you want!
What deals should I expect?
Throughout the next couple of months, we'll be keeping an eye on the biggest drum retailers. Last year we saw our Guitar Center Black Friday deals and Musician's Friend Black Friday deals hubs going wild, with a huge influx of drum gear bargains. This year, we're expecting to see some deals of equal measure on everything from cymbals and drum sets to accessories, sticks, and more.
Black Friday is one of the best-ever opportunities in the year to grab a great drum bargain. Last year, we were blown away by the incredible savings at Guitar Center. On offer was massive savings on gear from Roland, Alesis, Tama, Gretsch & more as well as 15% off qualifying purchases with the code blackfriday15.
Musician's Friend were also slashing up to 15% off qualifying items with the discount code BLACK FRIDAY and Sweetwater were knocking an almighty 70% off select drum equipment.
Electronic drum kits are always hot ticket items on Black Friday, and we've compiled this feature covering 5 reasons to pick up an e-kit on Black Friday. We also have a dedicated Black Friday electronic drum set deals page for all things e-drums.
In terms of the types of deals to look out for, Black Friday bargains come in four main flavours:
- Single item - A single product with a great discount
- Site-wide discounts - A single discount percentage on a large range of products across a site
- Discount codes - Load your basket to a certain value and redeem a discount code for money off your basket contents
- Added value deals - These include multi-buy discounts, or additional products or software for free when you buy certain items
Are Black Friday deals worth it?
On the whole our experience of covering deals year-round tells us that Black Friday is the best time of year to find genuinely good offers on the top drum brands and the widest range of offers. It's a very lucrative time for the big online retailers, so they save their best deals for this time of year.
We only cover deals that we know are decent and represent the best prices of the year, so if you're drowning in options and don't know which offers are genuinely worth your hard-earned cash, if we've not covered it on MusicRadar then it's probably a hard pass.
Do bricks and mortar shops have Black Friday sales?
Absolutely! The convenience and speed of online shopping means that often the best place to pick up great drum deal is by heading to your favourite retailer's website, but you will find great drum deals in physical stores too. Basically, everyone gets involved in Black Friday price cutting.
Buying in a physical store is particularly beneficial if you want to test a piece of gear before you buy - recommended when you're planning on spending a serious amount of cash. But don't forget that your chosen store might be limited to the stock they can fit in the building and may direct you online anyway if you miss the boat in-store.
Whether you buy online or in-store, you should always check the refund policy of the place you're shopping. This will give you extra peace of mind if you're making a big purchase, or something more impulsive that you may wish to return down the line.
Shopping tips
Here's a few pointers - based on personal experience - that will help you bag the best percussion bargains when the time comes.
1. Create a wishlist early - The most sensible way to take advantage of this year's Black Friday drum deals is to know in advance what you’re looking for. This will make searching much easier, rather than having to trawl through loads of deals you don’t want to find the ones you do, or pondering title you don't need.
2. Work out what you actually need - Check out your favourite brands, see what you need and will genuinely use - don’t waste your cash on features you'll never use. Has there been any new gear launched lately? If so, perhaps the old version will be massively discounted for Black Friday?
3. Consider your drumming goals - What do you want to achieve with your playing for the next 12 months? Do you want to record more? Practice more? Start a function band? Now could be the time to invest if the right gear comes up.
4. Streamline your current gear - Something else you should consider ahead of time is whether you have enough space in your collection for a new kit or set of cymbals. Could you offload some gear you don't use to make room and generate funds for some new gear?
5. Sign up to mailing lists - In addition to bookmarking this page, we'd recommend signing up to mailing lists of your favourite retailers now to get the jump on the best deals when they do come around.
How we choose the deals to cover
Here at MusicRadar, we are experts in our field, with many years of playing and product testing between us. We live and breathe everything music-making, and we draw on this knowledge and experience of using products in live, recording and rehearsal scenarios when selecting the products we recommend.
First and foremost, we are players and creators, and we want to match like-minded folk with the right products for them, at the best prices.
For us to recommend a deal on drum gear or anything else it has to be a product we rate that’s a genuinely great price or part of a truly fantastic bundle. It’s also important that we only recommend retailers where you will have a positive shopping experience.
Why you can trust us
We spend a lot of our time scouring retailers for fantastic deals on our favorite drum products. Not only is it our job to research and recommend the best gear in our buyer’s guides and reviews, but we’re also dedicated to helping musicians get the best deals on the stuff they need, too. After all, the only thing better than new gear day is a hearty discount.
We cover a lot of the big sales events throughout the year, including Memorial Day, 4th of July sales and Amazon Prime Day, and we have a good view on which products are likely to receive the biggest discounts and when, the prices they’ve been in the past and which deals are genuinely worth a look.
Black Friday drum deals: What happened last year?
Last year's Black Friday drum deals were nothing short of spectacular, with electronic drum sets especially doing a roaring trade. We saw some tasty discounts, with Sweetwater slashing hundreds off the excellent Roland TD-07KV and Guitar Center knocking a tasty amount off a Special Edition Alesis Nitro Mesh.
We're expecting to see many more drum deals like these come around for Black Friday 2023, as well as deals on drumsticks, accessories and more. Here are a few more offers from last year to give you some idea of what you can expect this time round.
More places to shop this Black Friday
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