Something I’ve been hearing a lot lately is “I want to record acoustic drums, but I don’t have the budget.”

Not everyone can go out and buy a $6,000 DW kit, but I’m sure a lot of you could save up for a $600 kit!

I have a Di Mavery DS-600 5 piece kit here that retails for about $630 USD that we’re going to shootout against my $6000 DW Kit.

To make it interesting we used the same crashes and ride from Sabian (they’re freaking awesome). We used the same mics (the Earthworks DK7 Kit) the same mic preamps (Great River & API as well as Audient stuff) and I also used the same software to record & mix the tracks.

I mixed both of these tracks to the best of my ability just to see what would happen if we put a super top end kit up against something affordable.

I know you might not have the budget for the Earthworks mics, however this whole shootout is to see if you can bring an affordable kit into a studio with great gear and to see what happens when you put it up against a kit that’s worth 10x as much!

We’re going to run two tests: 1. In a full mix and 2. Just the drums.

I want to know what you think!

Do you think one kit is really worth 10x as much as the other? If you want to try mixing it yourself, you can download the multitracks here.