Good Drums -- Bad Sound

I went to see a band last night at one of the clubs in town -- I had not seen them in quite a while....................good players.
They have a new bassman...............he was running direct with a 6-string bass guitar.............different, but he had good sound and good stuff.

The drummer was playing some PDP shells..............WMP -- to me it looked like 10/14/22.
Good shells and good drummer..............but his sound was average, at best.
Old heads on the toms and everything tuned high...........like soprano/alto.
And a PP squealer 4X12 popcorn snare drum that was "no balls" at all.............very "tinny".
The bass drum sounded really good and I was glad that one drum was normal.

I've always enjoyed the smaller tom sizes tuned low............they have better tone to me.
And................I would have never used a "side" snare as my main axe.............for me, it didn't work.

At least the "standard", 22" sounded good, but then, it's 22". I'd think the 10" and 14" would be too small for a BIG sound...

Of course, what sounds "good" is in the ears of the beholder. That said, I prefer the lower tones as well. That's why my batter head journey went from the single ply clear, to coated single play, to 2 ply, to EC2 heads. I love my sound now.

I think a lot of it depends on the heads and tuning. I've gigged with a 8/13 combo and a 10/13 combo. If you tune the 13"FT about as low as you can get it...just on the edge of that "flappy" sound...it actually works pretty well as a FT. The 8" up tom sounds cool, but just not quite enough volume or sustain by nature. When I went to my 10/13 Bop kit, it was a big improvement. The 10" up tom, if tuned low/medium, works good and fits well with the 13"FT. If you hang a mic over the kit, it's more than enough for most every place we play.

end of the day was it a cover band ?..they probably didnt care

also i have played many great kits with terrible heads ..what is the point of all this? ..so embarrassing to play any broken kit