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Drummers and non-drummers, do you have feelings about drum kit piece counts? On the one hand, fewer toms are easier to gig with and enforces some economy of playing, and on the other hand, Permanent Waves.

personally I'm a rack tom/floor tom person, but it's mainly dictated by ergonomics. I like having my hi hats and ride in close and whenever I tried to add toms everything moves uncomfortable far away.

To quote FM Steve: "two is the correct number of tom toms".

Whichever quantity you find is acceptable.

My last band, drummer eventually had two racks and two floor, but he was/is a pretty tom heavy player and were pretty integral to what he does (and he's also really good at drums).

I will admit to having a bias against drummers setup with two rack toms but have definitely tried to get over that. If the person playing slays, then fuck it, slay away with your pile of rack toms!

If it is the 80s-90s, two up one down.

Otherwise, one up one down.

If you are bringing some fucking mayhem, none up one down.

Two floor toms are hard to pull off unless you’re a big band jazz or 70s arena rock star.

I'm not a huge fan of the 5 piece setup that was standard when I started playing (4 piece seems to be more of the norm now). Not for style reasons, but I thought the 2nd tom got in the way of ride placement, plus 12 & 13 toms are too close in tone to be distinguishable in most settings.

2 floor toms look cool as hell, but that far tom is hard to reach most of the time so I don't bother.

I went through a phase with no rack toms at all and most of the time didn't miss it..

For me it's about drum/cymbal ratio as much as quantity. I would way rather see a relatively balanced Neil Peart-scale kit (I am thinking of our FM Neal_oclocker) than someone with a normal four-pc kit but 10 "FX" cymbals that have 1-inch holes all over them.

Irrespective of the taste/needs of whoever the drummer is in a situation, I think:
- You can't have more cymbals than drums (the hi-hats count as one cymbal, so for a 4pc kit you top out at say, hi-hat, two crashes, and big separate ride).
- smaller kits are better for econo/laziness reasons (smaller vehicles, fewer mics and input channels) and therefore imo kind of globally more cool than a huge kit that means more effort and more budget.
The rest is up to taste etc. Some people want double rack toms and the cymbals with the holes in them I guess. Not my problem! I love it, keep it up.

Obviously even these universals are fake and made up too, like anything. We're just having fun on here. And it is in that spirit that I say anyone with more cymbals than drums is lower than a dog to me.

The 2 up/2 down is interesting because it opens up a lot more melody, if you're willing to take advantage of it. But I don't have the space to set up something like that and like I said more drums makes me feel like the "essential" pieces are moving farther away, and things don't feel right.

2 mounted and 2 on the floor. Any more is overkill in most contexts (though tympanis are allowed as bonus percussion).

I've been doing 1 rack and 2 floor for a while and I'm pretty satisfied, but if I had more space I might throw a second rack tom up there. But I definitely gotta have a floor tom on either side of me. It's hubristic to think that you'll never have the need to hit a floor tom while in a position away from the single one you have, and it seems silly to put both on one side. But then I love symmetrical kits, and hate kits that require one to develop lop-sided musculature.