Tomas Acosta (Moxiebeat – drums)
SPB: Tell our readers about your kit and how it’s put together?
Acosta: I’ve been playing ‘70-‘80s Ludwig kits of for the past 15 years or so. Usually they can be found pretty cheap on Craigslist/Offerup. I’ve had about 10 Ludwig kits pass thru my hands. My buying and selling has become quite a problem over the years. You can find a good kit, usually cheap. The pandemic has surged prices. Sometimes they are in decent shape to be played very hard with a touring punk band… if you’re lucky.
The kit I’m using now (a ‘70s Ludwig Vistalite) I bought a few weeks before covid really hit in the US around mid-March. I bought the kit in a big lot of Ludwig stuff. I got such a good deal on the lot, I don’t even want to say! At the same time I was furloughed from work for 2 months. Selling that big lot of extra drums actually really helped me out in a tough financial time. The best part about it was I kept this version of the kit as three-piece! 22,18, & 14. It just sucks I didn’t get to play it for a year in the pandemic.
Acrylic kits can be a little tricky in the studio, but man do they look good on stage. They are loud visually and audibly. The latter which really helps out on un-mic’d DIY gigs and in a band setting like MOXIEBEAT. I have to compete with very loud guitar and bass. The drums are used and older than me. So sometimes reliability is an issue in the live setting. But they’ve been thrown in a van, dropped, and they keep going. That’s really all I can ask for to be perfectly honest.
