1980 Tour Kit

In 1980, Van Halen released their third album, ‘Woman And Children First’ and embarked on the ‘World Invasion’ tour in support of it. Alex put together a new heavily customized white finish Ludwig drum set for the tour. This time around, he went a step further by joining two pairs of bass drums together, using accordion style large rubber type tubing to adjust the depth as well as angle of the resonant sides. The right foot bass drum is 26″ in diameter and the left 24″. Toms are 12″x8″, 13″x9″, 14″x10″ with 18″x16″ and 20″x18″ floor toms. Snare is a 6.5″x14″ Supraphonic with a Die-cast batter hoop.

 

The insides of all the drum shells were painted black and Alex also added a large Paiste Symphonic 50″ gong mounted on a black and white striped Paiste gong stand. Paiste 2002 cymbals and a cowbell mounted off a stand next to the hi-hat, once again. Clear Silver Dot batter heads on the toms with all the bottom/resonant heads and rims removed. Front bass drums heads were cut out (partially to still display the Ludwig logo). A new feature to his kit was the Pearl Vari-pitch toms to his right, over the floor toms. 

 

The drums were again mic’d from the inside for better isolation.

 

This kit was on display at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio until being sold in 2020

A fantastic photo from the Reverb.com listing in 2020. Click the link to see more photos from this listing…

A look at how they kept the bass drum cannons together. Ludwig tom mounts with metal bars to connect them...
Pearl Vari-pitch toms. Essentially a Roto-tom with a floating shell to deepen their sound.

Glimpses of the 1980 Tour Kit are possibly seen in the studio photos, taken at the very end of the Women and Children First studio sessions. A white rack tom pictured on the left photo, and white Pearl Vari-Pitch toms pictured on the right… To what extent was the tour kit used in the studio? We may never know!

 

One thing is for sure, the rack toms were mic’d from the inside on the album recording. This was the first time that happened on a Van Halen recording. There is very distinct “basketball-like” sound when you record toms from the inside. Unfortunately there are no public mic diagrams of these sessions, but from the pictures above, it seems that Donn Landee stuck to a similar setup as the previous albums aside from the new addition of the underside-mic’d toms. The toms and kick sound on this album were much more representative of their live sound, and a turning point for these drums for the subsequent albums…