PREMIER GENISTA BIRCH DRUM KIT

IT’S ALL IN THE BUILD

The orig­i­nal Genista was an exclu­sively of Birch con­struc­tion. Pre­mier has re-released the kit with the option of two shell types – Amer­i­can Maple or the clas­sic and orig­i­nal Birch. I got to have a go on the birch vari­ant in a Stage 22con­fig­u­ra­tion fea­tur­ing a 22×18” kick, 10×8”, 12×9” quick toms, 14×14” floor tom and a 14×6” match­ing snare drum. There are a lot of other very use­ful con­fig­u­ra­tions to suit with shorter toms and smaller bass drums, as well as full rock set ups with two floor toms. You can also add on drums as you please, pretty handy really. There’s also some great wraps, lac­quers and fin­ishes avail­able includ­ing some strik­ing sparkles such as the Burnt Orange I tried.

Each Genista fea­tures 5.6mm 7 ply inter­nally lac­quered shells the toms and floor toms under­sized by 3mm for eas­ier tun­ing. You also get the awe­somely over­sized Genista Dia­mond Chrome lugs, Die-cast ISO tom mounts (only on the Maple vari­ant), 2.3mm triple-flange hoops, Roklok Tom Mount and Super­sonic Pre­mier drum heads. Cru­cially, you get a full set of dou­ble braced awe­some hard­ware with mem­ory locks and includ­ing a sec­ond boom/straight stand and bass drum pedal. Over­all, it’s a con­vinc­ing argu­ment so far.

THAT PREMIER FEELING

The kit imme­di­ately felt good to play with a lit­tle give in the heads. The over­all sound is full and punchy. In a way, it’s almost a frac­tion EQ’d. Birch has always had this char­ac­ter­is­tic to me. You get more focused tone with fewer over­tones. The under­sized toms are easy to tune and responded to minute adjust­ments well. The Bass drum was nice and full with a fat tone. Inter­est­ingly, it sounded fat­ter when I stood up and leant for­ward mean­ing that your audi­ence is really get­ting the full sound. The snare drum, despite being an 8 lug drum, still responds well to tun­ing and yields a really full tone with a heap of balls. There’s decent crack when cranked higher but really, the drum pre­ferred medium to low tun­ing. I put a zero ring on the snare when tuned low and it was deep and oh-so stu­dio like. You can thank the 6” depth for that. I would pre­fer a 10 lug snare to be able to han­dle higher ten­sions though. The throw off was smooth enough but not life changing.

OVERALL

Over­all, Pre­mier have done a good job bring­ing this kit back to life. Some will buy just on the looks alone. The lugs really do have great pres­ence. I would be curi­ous to hear the Maple ver­sion to com­pare, but for me, Birch is a really nice alter­na­tive with a fuller tone. It’s also great that the price of this kit isn’t astro­nom­i­cal either.