Octavaridrums / Siamese Twin

I signed off the last instalment of my Mike Portnoy drum history with a hint at what was to come for the recording of Octavarium and the subsequent tour. I also mentioned that the full US version of the Siamese Monster had been used in the recording along with the Hammer Of The Gods kit which was stood opposite the SM when the band set up at the Hit Factory.

Just to take a step back for a moment, Mike had already decided prior to the recording that he was going to change the colour and the configuration of the kit for the next tour and Tama were already aware of this before the band entered the studio in the autumn of 2004 – as always, Mike is well ahead of things in his thinking!

As things turned out, the right side of the SM was not used at all during the recording of Octavarium, with Mike favouring the HOTG kit for around 50% of the tracks. As an aside, a few days after I got hold of Octavarium, I thought I’d try to work out which kit were used on which tracks, I then emailed Mike to check how well I did and I only slightly failed on one track – the full run down was:

Root Of All Evil–HOTG (with added China cymbal)

The Answer Lies Within–HOTG

These Walls–SM (left)

I Walk Beside You–HOTG (with added tambourine and splash cymbal)

Panic Attack–SM (left)

Never Enough–HOTG

Sacrificed Sons–HOTG And SM (left)!

Octavarium–SM (left)

The one I got wrong was track 1 – but Mike confirmed that he originally constructed his parts for the left kit, but then switched to the HOTG kit to get more into a Dave Grohl/Muse groove approach. So you can see how Mike was feeling at this point: wherever he could he was opting for a simpler set-up for the more straight ahead songs.

Additionally, Mike used a second snare (the 12” Melody Master) on These Walls and the title track, so he managed to incorporate both his signature snares in lieu of using the right side of the kit. This was the first time in a DT recording he has used two snares on one song (as regards placement, the 12” MM snare replaced the 16” floor tom to the left of the hi-hat on the left kit in the two songs in which it was featured).

I spent the day with the DT crew on Monday October 24th, 2005 at Hammersmith in London with my buddy Robbie (who took lots of pics) and picked up some snippets about the new kit as well as watching it being set up from scratch. The configuration changes to the new kit are as follows – everything else remains as it was with the original SM (I’ve also listed a couple of other changes not directly linked to the new kit but still relevant):

The colour changed to white with silver Majesty symbol graphics (the colour change even extended to the two Melody Master MP signature snares, which are “normally” only available in black finish). The new kit was thus christened “The Albino Monster”!

New Octavarium kick drum heads (designed by Scott Hansen) – more about these later...

The right side of kit now consists of (drums) 14” x 6.5” brass shell snare (PBS265), 26” x 14” kick drum, 14” rack tom and 16” and 18” floor toms. The toms and kick drums all have Remo CS Black Dot heads just like John Bonham used, while the snare uses Mike’s regular choice of CS reverse dot. Cymbal-wise left to right Mike has 15” Prototype hi-hats, 16” Vault crash, 11” Max Splash, 24” Prototype ride, 18” AAX Stage crash, 19” Vault crash, and a 20” HH china.

Changes to the left side of the kit are that the 12” Melody Master replaces the LP timbalito and the 8” High Max Stax is positioned to Mike’s left just after the 4th Octoban. Both of the Octoban holders are now multiangle (on the original SM just the first pair had this adjustment, the second pair using the standard Tama “slip-on” holder, which has less adjustment potential). NB: when the kit was being photographed for some Tama adverts titled “A new monster is taking shape...” the full spec wasn’t quite finished. The Octoban holder in the main picture was a single tom arm and the 8” Max Stax wasn’t in position. There were other little differences like the left hi-hat centre rod not having been cut to size. :-)

To Mike’s right on the left side of the kit, the 10” custom “Tymp Tom” (Mike has always referred to it as such – it’s basically a double headed version of Tama’s single headed Tymp Tom) has been replaced with a 14” version and an “X-Hat” replaces the hi-hat which was part of the right side of the original SM (cymbal sizes remain the same at 13”). Everyone keeping up so far?!! The new 14” Tymp Tom (again double headed custom drum) has a Remo Emperor head like the rest of the toms on the left side kit (the old 10” drum used to have a thicker Pinstripe head to effect a deeper sound from such a small drum). This drum now has the Starcast mounting system, which I don’t think the 10” drum had.

The cymbals on the left side of the kit remain as they were on the original Siamese Monster (apart from the X-Hat to the right side). A change made after the Gigantour dates to the right side of the left kit was that the china to Mike’s right now sits above the two crashes either side of it – it used to be underneath.

The tambourines are now white instead of black and the right one has changed position from Mike’s right front, to his left on the HOTG kit, just under the hi-hat.

The frame for holding the gong behind MP and 4” ‘Holz’ front kick drum ports are now white and not chrome. The kick drum orientation has changed from the ToT hears in that the right kick drum has its Holz port on the right as you look at it and the left kick has its port on the left, so that they are both ‘central’ as you look at the kit. This was the way the Six Degrees heads were done, but for ToT the Holz were both on the left as you looked at the kit from the front!

The festival dates played during Summer 2005 in Europe saw Mike use the original Euro version of the Siamese Monster complete with ToT kick drum front heads on the first few dates – these were replaced for the last handful of shows with the original versions of the Octavarium heads, the reason being that these had initially been held up at Swedish customs and then basically followed the band around until eventually they both came together and the new heads were fitted!

The SlickNut cymbal tops are acrylic versions rather than the previous black (and look much better in my opinion) – incidentally, SlickNut sold the original ‘black’ version idea to the stick company ‘Vater’ but retained the acrylic version, hence this is the one MP uses as he is endorsed by SlickNut, but (obviously) not by Vater!

The 420N Pro-Mark sticks for this tour were custom produced (like the ToT versions before them), have black graphics and say ‘Octavarium World Tour 2005/2006’ on them.

A new drinks table replaces the ‘Infinity symbol table’ (which was originally made by Mike’s (then) tech Jose Baraquio – this one was made by one of the guys at the Drum Pad in Chicago and looks supercool in the octagon shape with white edging and a red base with white Majesty symbol. Incidentally, the ‘old’ drinks table is now used to support the keyboard that James uses in Octavarium.

In addition to Jordan’s keyboard racking/pipe work and JP’s two ‘footrest’ boxes, Mike also has a piece of gear made by Patrick Slaats from Holland. He has a tubular stick holder which sits between the two sides of the kit – this was actually present on the later incarnations of the Siamese Monster, but as I only spotted it this time around I thought it worth a mention! (Not so Eagle-eyed then Al?! Ed.)

One important thing to say is that up to and including the European leg of the Octavarium world tour, there was only one Albino Monster in existence – the kit debuted on the ‘Gigantour’ leg and this same kit (which was built in the US) was flown over to Europe for the European leg – previous kits have generally tended to have had their duplicates (i.e. a US version, a Euro version and a Japan version) all ready before the band hit that particular territory, but as the AM was only just completed prior to rehearsals for ‘Gigantour’, there was no time to construct any duplicates.

The drums would have been manufactured already, but the big difference is the rack system – this had to be significantly altered for the AM, particularly on the right (HOTG) side where completely new tubing had to be created. There isn’t much of the rack system that is ‘straight out of the box’ – much of it had to be cut to length, as did many of the boom arms (partly for weight saving but also to make the kit more aesthetically pleasing). Having seen the racking close up I can confirm that it is a work of genius – many hours well spent in getting everything mounted so neatly and securely (particularly the hi-hat stand for the HOTG side which has no legs and is neatly integrated into the rack system – very ingenious!).

On completion of the European leg, the rack was shipped to Japan where an identical version was to be built ready for the Asian leg of the tour – the drums would also be incorporated at the same time and another complete kit built. This time slot presented itself because for the South American dates, Mike would be using a scaled down version of the original Siamese Monster while the Albino kit was used as a template for the subsequent US/Japan version. (NB: there will only be two versions of this kit produced, not three as was the case with the original SM.)

The scaled down kit for the South American leg (though it may well get used for ‘one-off’s’ as well) was based around the US version of the SM and was christened ‘The Mini-Monster’! Mike sent me a picture of the setup in November 2005 shortly after it had been created. The kit was largely the left side of the SM, but with only two Octobans, and the 12” MM snare mounted to the left of the 16” floor tom (as with the Albino kit) and one tambourine and a set of chimes mounted over these two drums. The Gong bass drum from the right side of the SM now moved in close next to the 10” Tymp Tom. Cymbal-wise, the 8” High Stax come first in line after the Octo ban’s (again as per the AM) followed by the usual two splashes and Mid Stax (on the pic I have as I write, the Radia cup chime is missing from above the Mid Stax, bur by the first show, this should have re-appeared!). Mike has crash/china/crash to his left/front with three crashes and two Chinas to his right as well as the 22” ride, 13” hi-hats and the Low Stax. The racking had to be re-jigged too, and it looks a superb ‘diet’ version of the SM!

Items that were pensioned off with the introduction of the new version of the right side of the kit are the right side set of bar chimes, the granite blocks, the Sabian ‘triple-hat’ the 12” Ice Bell and the custom Max Splash 8” ‘cymballed’ hi-hat, the 7” Max Splash, the two longest Octobans and the Gong Bass drum – (some cymbals changed too as mentioned elsewhere). Some other items remained but changed position, namely the tambourine and the 8” Max Stax. The LP timbalito also disappeared from the left side of the kit.

Mike uses a double pedal (Iron Cobra Powerglide) on the tour kit (right side), whereas he used a single pedal in the studio).

The numbers that you may have noticed on some of the drumheads from the ‘behind the kit’ shots had us stumped until it was revealed (actually Tom Manning informed me) that they were the ‘significant numbers’ which appear in various different circumstances featured in the TV series Lost – again something Mike slipped in just to get people thinking!

Mike now has a new full-time tech – Eric Disrude. Eric’s first shows were the three Italian dates in July 2004 and he then continued onto the “Yes” tour, more festival dates in Europe, Gigantour and most recently (as I write) completing the European leg. I spent a great day with him on October 24th with my trusty assistant Robbie – Eric was very accommodating and I managed a quite lengthy interview with him, which will hopefully appear in a future edition of New Voice – he’s a very cool guy, with a lot of responsibility! Incidentally, Eric took the photograph of Mike, Max and Melody that appeared on MP.COM, surrounded by MP’s drums when everything was shipped to Mike’s new house for storage – Eric was on hand to do some heavy lifting!! The version of the Siamese Monster in the shots is the Japan version which, as it had been used so little (compared to the other two) was in pretty excellent condition!

Finally, for the OSI2 sessions (for which Mike did the drums over the weekend of 20th-21st November 2005), he used possibly his smallest kit ever (well certainly since Yellow Matter Custard!) The kit consisted of the 20x18 kick drum (custom made for the July 2001 G3 shows kit) a 12” MM snare (actually the one from Max’s kit!!), 1 LP Timbalito and the 13” tom from the Red Monster as a floor tom. Cymbal-wise, he had 13” HHX hats (also from Max’s kit), 22” HH Rock Ride, 18” HHX China, 18” HHX Studio Crash, 17” HH Thin Crash, 16” HHXtreme Crash, 1 set Low Max Stax and a 9” Max splash – so pretty minimal for this session!

So that’s about it for now – as usual, my thanks go to Mike for organising our time with Eric, Eric for being so accommodating and spending so much time with us, Robbie for general assistance and ALL of the photography on Oct 24th, DT band and crew for being so hospitable and finally Kerry, Rich and Tom for giving me the chance to get all of this stuff out to you good people!

Until next time, keep ‘em peeled!