1981 Tour Kit

 

In 1981, Van Halen released their fourth album, ‘Fair Warning’ and embarked on their fourth tour. Alex, once again had two pairs of bass drums joined together but this time took it another step further and added two additional single bass drums with each ‘connected’ to the left and right main ones (via holes cut out of the shell) with accordion style black tubes. This kit’s shells were a custom, striped vistalite shell. In development, Alex tested the drums for strength by standing on them (something Dave would do often), which caused them to break. He would then have the insides of all of the drums coated with fiberglass for strength, hence the solid white color inside the shells. 

 

Double 26″ and 24″ bass drums, both being fed to single 24″ bass drums. 8″, 10″, 12″, 13″, 14″ rack toms, with 18″ and 20″ floor toms. Above those floor toms are 13″, 14″ and 16″ power toms. Two 8″ octobans on Michael Anthony’s side of the stage, with another two out in front of the kit (16″ and 18″ long). All of the cymbal stands and hardware were Tama Titan and Ludwig Hercules.

All clear Black Dot batter heads with the bottom heads and rims removed. All Paiste 2002 cymbals, Paiste 50″ gong and a cowbell next to the hi-hat. Alex had also started using a Tama Rosewood 6.5″x14″ snare, a mainstay in his studio and live kits all the way into the 90s.

Despite Alex using large marching drum sticks, he always had some extras in case they broke!
Tama Rosewood snare - Alex's favorite snare starting in 1981 all the way into the mid-to-late 90s
Alex's signature gaff-taping on top of the snare head. This allowed him to have a high tuning while keeping a medium pitch. It also adds durability to the head, and muffles it of course, creating that signature woody sound that he loved.
The kit was eventually put on display at the Guitar Center in Hollywood, California.

Check out avhfan1981 on Instagram for a really cool 1981 replica kit/fanpage!

'Fair Warning' Album Recording Speculations

Unfortunately, there are no photos inside the studio during the sessions for ‘Fair Warning’, although we do have some vague insight to how it was recorded. Friend of the band Doug Messenger claimed to have visited the studio during the album recorded and basically recalled the setup to be as we have seen multiple times now, meaning that the drum setup probably wasn’t all that different either. It’s unclear what drums were used during the sessions, but we know for sure that the brand new Tama Rosewood snare was the primary snare during the recording. For at least one track, ‘So This Is Love’, Alex clearly used a metal snare (likely Supraphonic or Supersensitive) with no muffling on it. The album’s snare sound was a step into the future, although the kick sound was definitely a downgrade from the previous album’s direction. Alex vaguely claimed that he used both heads on the toms primarily in the studio because it was more of a controlled space than the live situation. His normal 2-up, 2-down tom setup, with Vari-pitch toms above the floor toms (one of them possibly heard at approximately 3:00 in “Push Comes To Shove”, although this could be smaller toms above the rack toms like his stage setup…). 

On “Push Comes To Shove” you can hear what sounds like a Simmons electronic tom, but being that they might not have been available yet, it was likely a Synare or Syndrums (predecessors of Simmons drum synthesizers). 

 

‘Fair Warning’ seems to be one of the first times that the bottom snare mic was left out of the mix, being that it didn’t lend itself to alex’s woody sound that he was going for.