Tama = Crap

As I was telling Maryanne once, in a Yahoo Group called "Rock and Roll McDonald's" I got in a discussion with another member, Vickie, regarding drums and drumming equipment. It all started when Vickie talked about her daughter's boyfriend, whose name is Chris. Chris plays drums, quite well according to Vickie, and his hero is Mike Portnoy (of Dream Theater). I started joking that the only unfortunate thing was that he played a Tama drum set. Things escalated from there.

It turns out Chris is quite proud of his Tama drum set, and debated me a bit through Vickie, before posting to my Guest Book:

Hey,
You obviously know my girlfriends mom Vickie. You talk to her on the yahoo groups or whatever that is so we found your website. So what I have heard is that you HATE tame drums. lol. And i also heard that you wouldnt have respect for me if i play for vic firth. Yes everybody has there own opionions thats just crazy. There just drumstick. There wood and they break. lol. As simple so eggs. And i play on the greatest tama set. you play a pearl. ha!!! pearl. You weakest name in drums. Now tama says in clearly. (The strongest name in drums). There are the greatest drummers that play for tama and thats that. Me and you are gonna have a good coverstation sometime. Yea I play on promark and zildjian cymbals, and i play pretty good from what i hear. So dude dont be hatting man. I know your just expressing but i wouldnt go off and say that i would not have respect for you if u played on something. you play on what you play on. That is how it goes.
Thanks
Chris Honey

Ignoring the terrible punctuation, grammar, spelling, and so forth, it seems that Chris thinks Tama is the strongest name in drums (their slogan), while Pearl is the worst.

I don't know what he based his opinion on, but I based mine on my experience with not only Tama and Pearl, but percussion equipment from other manufacturers such as Ludwig, Musser, Yamaha, LP, Gretsch, Slingerland, Sonor, Remo, Zildjian, Sabian, Paiste, and Deagan. I stated my preferences for Pro-Mark drumsticks. This was based on breaking a stick in each of two pair of Vic Firth (let's call that 100% failure), while only breaking one Pro-Mark stick from a total of eight pairs (let's call that 12% failure). I also prefer Remo heads, again, from experience.

I've actually played on Tama equipment, and was very unimpressed by the quality. I'm still unimpressed after looking at Tama's website. Now, I can respect that Chris wants to use Tama drums; they are quite affordable (read: cheap), after all. But unless he's actually played on Pearl equipment, he has no basis for his claims.