Kit

Drummer must have carpet large enough to place the entire drum kit on, but no bigger than that [unless you like the ‘loungy’ feel and rolled up carpets climbing the walls]! This is critical when you’re expected to play on a bare floor, and can be used as a basic template around which all your back-line gear can be arranged.

Once cabling is taken care of the drummer should set up centre-stage [yes, he should].

If playing in a corner [often happens] and the kit sound is bouncing around [messy], try to pad the area around the kit with speaker covers, guitar cases etc. Can make a huge difference.

On small stages never mike the whole kit up, mike only the kick drum and perhaps snare / hats - the vox mikes will pick up the kit and amplify it through the PA. [This presupposes you have a reasonable kit sound to start with. If you don’t it might be a good idea to mike it so you can at least tweak the EQ some, but perhaps the long view is that you should look into learning something about kit sound ?! See the Kit Sound page!]