The Drum Kit

Drumkit 2

Drumkit 2 saw Ginger through the heavy touring of 2nd half '67 and 1st half '68. That kit took a thrashing to say the least - the stress on the shells and fittings must have been enormous resulting in component replacement

For the Final Tour Ludwig provided a new kit with there own fittings. This kit showed the design changes engendered by power Rock drumming - the heavy fittings and four legs on each bass drum. One assumes that the shells may have had increased reinforcement as well.

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Note the double legs on the bass, equal 14" depth of the floor toms
& splash cymbal

In publicity photos Baker is seen playing a Ludwig 5" chrome Super-Sensitive (not Supra-Phonic) snare. This has a very unusual batter raised almost level with the rim (riveting on the rim can be seen in this photo) - probably to get a deeper tone closer to the Leedy and to ensure greater penetration by allowing rim shots as standard strokes (check out the Farewell video)*. As they were being filmed at the Albert Hall concerts he played this snare but the Leedy remained the main concert snare with Ludwig as spare.

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Note the heavy Ludwig fittings, chrome snare and 15" hi-hat.
Also the 13" crash has moved to the top tier.

The cymbal configuration did not remain the same (Courtesy Michael Briefman):

15" New Beat Hi Hats and adjusted cymbal layout. Based in Michael's info I may have to change some of my layouts.

* Baker was a compulsive rimmer which has two variations - hit the rim cleanly which provides a different sound (the Leedy has very heavy cast rims as befits a marching style snare) and hit the rim and batter simultaneously which gives a loud penetrating snare shot. The latter has the disadvantage of occasional snare/rim separate sounds. Baker also used the same technique on the top-toms but with a greater propensity for rim/batter sound separation.

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At the Alameda Coloseum soundcheck - he's been practising - check the bass batters

Note: The cymbal descriptions are based on best advice and eye-balling the photos. The actual array probably varied as different cymbals were used. I stand to be corrected on my analysis.

Final note: The Silver Sparkle kit (which variation?) is now in the hands of Ginger's son, Kofi. Ginger still uses the Leedy snare, hi-hat, 22" rivetted (now his main man), and several of the other cymbals.

Drumkit 1 Drumkit1 Variation

Sources: Chip Stern, Bob Ciani "Great Rock Drummers of the Sixties", Ginger Baker interviews, Dan Tingstrom, Warren Baker, plus lots of photo analysis expecially from the new Chris Welch "Cream".