Tama Imperialstar vs Sonor AQ1

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Tama Imperialstar vs Sonor AQ1So many times in my life I have proven that, “You get what you pay for.”.  On occasion yeah, I have found a super great deal for quality and price.  But most of the times, no.

My very first set of drums was a Slingerland set from a pawn shop somewhere in Detroit and given to me by a friend of my mom.  Sparkle blue and that was my experience in drums.  Never replaced a drum head or learned anything about the drums themselves as I didn’t play them as much as I should have.

Marriage, life and military career came and went and I didn’t own drums but I still played when the opportunity arose.  Which wasn’t often.  Shocked my last wife by playing an MTV Drumscape (no that’s not me in the video) at Busch Gardens Williamsburg.  Until then, she thought my skills were made up.

So it was many, many years since I owned a drum set of my own.  It wasn’t until I decided to take back control of my insanely screwed up life, that I decided to get back into playing drums.

My first purchase of my own kit was a set of Roland TD-11KV with an extra tri-zone cymbal trigger pad.  I did this as I was in an upstairs apartment.  I played the hell out of it when time allowed.

In 2020 I finally bought an acoustic drum kit again.  My Tama Imperialstar.  Sadly because of apartment living, they stayed in their boxes for 18 months.  Until I moved into a house where I finally had my son come over and teach me how to actually setup drums for real.  Fifty-two years old and I finally learn this stuff 😑  But something was off.  Way off.  The snare drum would vibrate like crazy.  Nothing we did would stifle the noise.  The snare and most of the toms would lose tune quickly, which was insanely frustrating.

After a year plus, I realized that the introduction line of Tama drums are, in my opinion, garbage.  Which is sad since my son plays Tama.  Tama has a lot of great artists.  But having a kit that is so poor has put the bad taste in my mouth for their products.  So I researched other drums.  I was going to go with SJC drums.  But their decor for their kits is just not my thing and the cost was more than I could part with for just wanting to be a garage/studio/youtube musician.

Giving it much consideration, I decided to go with Sonor Drums.  German made and when my new AQ1 Stage kit arrived, I was more than blown away with the quality of not only the build of the drums but with the quality of the hardware.  This kit is super solid and heavy duty for being the more affordable line.  It sounds and plays amazingly!

I’m still tweaking them but so far all the problems I’ve had with my Tama are gone with my Sonor.  Problem I still have is time.  I work a lot and share living with someone who sleeps days for working nights.  Combine that and I get maybe 4-5 hours time to practice in a two week period.

Hoping to show off my new kit this summer.

My Kit 2023 Sonor Zildjian Meinl

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Just 15 Pounds to Go!

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Leather JacketIn the past 31 months I have lost 155-156 pounds.  My worst was 360, my lowest was 202.  I’m currently at 204 as of this writing.  My weight loss program is working like a champ and I am in the home stretch!  It’s still a long road ahead as I have lost the fat.  I’m now working at losing the excess skin.  I’ll always be technically overweight even at my goal of 190.  Experts say I should be 175-ish.  Doubt that will ever happen.

To give you an example.  When I lost 100 pounds, to celebrate I bought myself a leather jacket (the one pictured).  It was still 3x in size.  A few months later it was huge on me as I had lost 130 pounds.  So I bought a 2x jacket.  Today I received just an XL size jacket.  This is the size that will likely be the end for my upper body.  I went from a 6x shirt to an XL.  My waist went from 52 inches to a mere 34 as of last week.  I’m so proud of myself and I feel amazing!

My Keto Journey

My Keto Journey

The end is in site, but still seems very far away.  And I know I can see it, I just had cataract surgery and my far vision is excellent now!  So now I’m average size with no glasses!!😁

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The End of 2022

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2023While I had hoped the world would’ve really moved in the direction of justice, humility and good intentions of our fellow man; that is not been the case.  But I’m not here to talk about world issues.  The world is what it is and I am doing my best to not lose myself and my values.  To stay strong.

But before 2022 ends, I have made a lot of changes to various aspects of my expanding Linux and Gaming world.

First up, I’ve moved all my apparel have now been moved to Spring.  With changed and new items.  Such as embroidered hats!  You can get hats for both I Game on Linux! and Dumbasaphobia 🎉  In the following weeks I’ll be expanding categories and products now that I have a great digital artist who has brought Chillin’ Louie to life!

I’m basically down to only 2 games I play now.  Elder Scrolls Online and my old favorite Unreal Tournament (1999 Game of the Year Edition).  Grand Theft Auto V (online) I quit for the 3rd time as I never actually played the game as intended.  I collected cars, planes and boats.  Never did a heist or anything involved.  As much as I like TheDarkMod, I just never seem to have the interest.  Yet I loved the Thief franchise.  Prior to the reboot in 2014.  I keep looking at Steam for new games, but I’m perfectly happy playing ESO.  So I never buy anything new or install anything else I already own.

Having updated to Linux Mint 21.1 Vera was easy and I’m enjoying it thoroughly.  Not a lot more to say on that.  My Linux Life is very much in harmony with almost no disappointments.  Save for I really miss Paint.net.  But I just need to learn GIMP.  That will take time.

In 2023 I think I’m going to move to Sonor drums and use the AQ1 stage set in a 4 piece configuration.  My current 7 piece TAMA is nice, but it’s a basic poplar kit.  The tone of birch sounds more where I want to be.

I hope 2023 is a great year not only for myself, but everyone who happens by my site!

Happy New Year!!

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I’m Still Here

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Theodas WaveI haven’t posted in a while as I recently had both my eyes fixed.  Had the cataracts removed and still healing.  Every day my vision changes a little bit.  So far only need glasses to read.  I hope it stays that way.

Plus I never set out to be the next daily info site for Linux.  But I had hoped to share more adventures.  But it turns out the switch to Linux was so easy I haven’t really had any adventures in figuring things out.  Though if you have issues in your adventure to move to Linux, just give me a holler.  I will do my best to point you in the right direction or give you what helped me (if It isn’t already posted here).

Yeah my website is still new.  Facebook can suck a dick though.  I can’t share links to it.  Says my site has shared misinformation.  Weird. I’ve only owned it a month before I tried.  I tried to contact them about it.  No reply.  Fuck em, I don’t use them anyway as you may have noticed (see bottom of site about my views on privacy).

So…  I’ll try to keep this mostly Linux info, but it will be my personal blog too.  I have more shirts to design and redesign.  Have a 20% off sale going on till Christmas Eve.

I did rebuilt my rig to use ARGB instead of just RGB.  So much nicer 😁

There is more to come and I just posted about my Keto Diet Plan as well as shared some wisdom about God.  Yeah I didn’t mention it, but I am a pastor too 🙏

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