Crush Sublime Birch

[MDK]

Have had this kit for a month now and have played 4 gigs with her and am really impressed with the sound of all 3 drums. I was looking for a nice birch kit under $1k, in a sparkle finish with a bass drum other than 22x18, and a FT other than 16x16, that I could gig with and BINGO!!! Here she is!

Specs:
100% North American Birch
22 x 16 BD Virgin
12 x 8 Rack Tom
16 x 14 Floor tom w/legs
Toms: 6-ply shells and double 45º bearing edges w/ slightly rounded outer edge
Bass drums: 6-ply shells with a double 45º bearing edge on the batter side and a fully rounded bearing edge on the resonant side.

Color is Blue Sparkle with a Natural stripe and lacquered over. Very nice, especially in person
Total price OTD with S&H for 3pc kit $850. Which is about $250 cheaper than advertised everywhere. They cannot post it so if your interested in buying one pm me and I will give you the contact info.
Heads seem to be Remo coated ambassadors with a crush logo.
All toms have 2.0mm Hoops.
Lugs have a very nice look to them, although I had to tighten the screws inside the shells about a full turn or 2 on 80% of them.


The BD claw lugs are all rubber lined and have protruding rubber with the crush name in them so when changing heads and such you don’t scratch the lugs. Very nice feature


THE CONS::::
Everything seems well built except the floor tom legs are thin, short and cheesy. Kind of remind me of the legs on my friends ludwig beginner kit. I swapped the floor toms legs with the ones from my Mapex 14” floor tom to get the crush tom as high as my snare.
Although having memory locks on the ft legs and BD is great the ones on the BD make it impossible to fold the legs towards the BD when packing it, which means you have to remove the legs and pack separately. Normally not a big deal but with lots of gigging it is only a matter of time before one is misplaced.
I don’t like that Crush does not sell a mount you can buy that would allow for attaching the rack tom to the BD.

Also there is no way to contact crush customer service at all. This is a big pet peeve of mine and I am kind of surprised that got by me before purchasing. Normally that is one of the 1st things I check when buying a new kit but for some reason I just assumed they were good. To me this is just a piss poor, lazy way to run a business.
Not sure but I am pretty certain the resale value is kind of low on crush drums but not a big deal under $1k IMO.

Now for the Sound,
These sound very very good for birch. Even the stock heads were good but I ended up putting remo pinstripes on it for live gigs just to keep it somewhat subdued a little as we play a lot of small rooms. I don’t know if the bearing edges being slightly rounded has something to do with it or if North American birch is better than Asian birch like Maple but these sound much fuller and present than my Sonor essential force did. No drum stands out more from another they are all equally fantastic.

If you can get by the piss poor customer service I highly recommend this kit to anyone shopping around for a sub $1k really great sounding birch kit.

Here are some pics, I am looking to possibly add a sublime Maple snare to the mix as it comes in an almost matching beautiful sparkle blue and a nice 13 x 7 size.

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floor tom legs, 2" shorter than my Saturns
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