My new (used & restored) mapex saturn

[keaton_86]

Hi all. After three months of waiting my drums finally arrived at my house in New Zealand today! Heres a little reminder of what I was dealing with:

It had a bunch of stickers on it and the shells had a lot of crap on the wrap. Sticky residue and marks. This is in my house in London before I shipped it back:



Fast forward three months. I got it home and cleaned it again:



Thankfully it didnt smash in transit so thanks to everyone on the PDF that gave me packaging tips. First thing I wanted to do was get rid of the infamous mapex tom mount:



Next up was putting the new aquarian heads on it. I'm quite ocd about the looks of my drums and I wanted the porthole to be at the bottom of the kick reso, so that involved getting rid of the the aquarian logo:

[keaton_86]

Then i tried putting a black mapex logo on it, but it wasn't really visible, so I took it off soon after and replaced it with a white logo



Then I had the rather boring job of reattaching all the lugs and putting the heads on either side.

[keaton_86]

I also decided to take the stickers off the hoops because I felt they clashed a bit with the black chrome.



heres all the components. I didnt have time to do the 10" tom or tune any of the drums.

[keaton_86]

And here are the pictures of it all together. Also included are my new K dark hats and my 6.5 Black panther hammered brass snare. Hope you guys like it. only had a chance to play the 12" a little bit but man it sounded nice and deep. Not sure if its the heads, the saturns in general or what, but I cant wait to tune these guys up tomorrow and have a jam.

















Hope you like them

[Guillaume]

Looks great!

[TomDrummer]

Looks great, Todd!

[scaryguy]

I see a DOTM winner !

Great kit and i bet that snare sounds awesome !

[sticks4drums]

Don't be giving the Aquarian heads too much credit. That is the nice deep fat sound of the Saturn. Looks great, and welcome to the club!

[nik12]

Wow.

The black heads with the black hardware looks great and I love how the snare completely contrasts the kit. Looks just great!

[The Kurgan]

Looks great!!!! Nice choice of heads.

[Johnboy]

Wow, that cleaned up nicely. It's unfathomable how someone put stickers on a Saturn. Looks awesome, you don't see Granite Sparkle with Black Chrome very often.

[keaton_86]

Looks great!

Thanks man!

Looks great, Todd!

Cheers - I'm still gutted I didnt get to catch up with you before I left. Moving countries is a hassle haha.

I see a DOTM winner !

Great kit and i bet that snare sounds awesome !

Yeah from the very little I've played the snare it sounded excellent. I love die cast hoops on snares too.

Don't be giving the Aquarian heads too much credit. That is the nice deep fat sound of the Saturn. Looks great, and welcome to the club!

Thanks man - I think I finally see what you've been trying to tell everyone. Have you heard the newer saturns?

Wow.

The black heads with the black hardware looks great and I love how the snare completely contrasts the kit. Looks just great!

Cheers! Yeah I took a gamble with the black heads but I really like how it turned out. When I got it it had beat up coated white G2's on it and it just looked wrong. The kick also had a white reso on it and it all clashed a bit too much for my liking

Looks great!!!! Nice choice of heads.

Thanks man. The one drum I tuned sounded awesome. It'll be interesting to see how the rest of the kit stacks up

Wow, that cleaned up nicely. It's unfathomable how someone put stickers on a Saturn. Looks awesome, you don't see Granite Sparkle with Black Chrome very often.

Yeah I bought the kit second hand from a musical college in London so it was really beat up. I'd say 90% of it was cosmetic that I've cleaned off but there are a few scratches in the wrap and the batter side kick hoop is a mess. They put those big fuzzy strips on the bass drum to stop students dropping the rack toms on it.

Thanks again everyone

[TWSS3007]

Your kit looks awesome, Saturns are the greatest mate you will enjoy them very much. I've ordered some aquarian response 2's for mine, can't wait to get them on.

[keaton_86]

Cheers man. I'm loving the response 2's so far. They seem to me to be a cross between evans G2's and remo's pinstripes. I'm still getting mine dialed in but they're sounding really good so far.

Also, I think an unexpected surprise is how effing good the Mapex Falcon pedal is. I could never really do heel toe on my elims before, but now with the longer footboard I was doing them straight away! The pedal is really nice and smooth and I think after playing it for about 2 hours today I already like it more than my eliminators, which I absolutely loved with the black cam and belt drive. Now it terrifies me because there are so many other pedals out there for me to try. Who knows how good they get?

[sticks4drums]

Haven't heard the new Saturn's in person yet, but I am sure they sound the same. Same shell make up. I still love my original Saturn mounts. Extremely flexible! If Saturn's were sold for twice the price, they would get a lot more respect. I am just glad the price is what it is.