1982 Tour Kit
In 1982, Van Halen released their next album, ‘Diver Down’ and the ‘Hide Your Sheep’ tour soon followed. Alex put together yet another unique new kit in a similar fashion as the last. This time he went back to wooden shells in a black wrap. The two joined pairs of main bass drums however had different lengths and diameters of tube, with the outer ends cut at an angle, projecting out of the front of them. The gaps around the tubes at the front of the drums were filled in with what looks like black rubber. The extra two single bass drums are again attached to the main ones via ‘accordion’ style tubes in white, and with clear CS Black Dot front heads on them. To the left of the kit are a pair of timbale type concert toms. The Pearl Vari-Pitch toms also returned and were set up as was done previously, above the floor toms. The drum sizes appear to be one pair of 26″x14″ bass drums (right foot) and one pair of 24″x14″ bass drums joined together, 12″, 13″ & 14″ toms in standard depths with the bottom heads and rims removed, 18″x16″ and 20″x18″ floor toms. The two outer smaller bass drums look to be smaller than the previous tour, likely 20″ or 22″.
Regarding the “church organ” style bass drums, Alex had this to say about the experiment:
“In ’82, I wanted to try something different, so what we did was take different lengths of tube which projected from each kick drum along the lines of church organ pipes. Each different length would accentuate a different frequency and we isolated the ones that we liked and pumped those out front. We also miked the batter head so there would be a balance between what comes out the front of the drum and the actual impact of the pedal hitting the head. I use wooden beaters, and to keep them from going through the head, I put a little pad of leather on it so it gets the same attack. You don’t lose any punch and the heads don’t break.”
The pipes were likely just white PVC pipe with the outsides painted black.
'Diver Down' Album Recording Speculations
Like the previous album, there are unfortunately no photos of the studio sessions of ‘Diver Down’ once again. From the pitches of the toms, it seems he had standardized a simple 2-up, 2-down tom setup, 2 bass drums, etc. To my ears, it sounds like the studio toms have both heads based on the tuning and resonance. The album is definitely pretty straightforward classic AVH; just well tuned drums with a great player and great engineer.
This album was recorded at Amigo Studios which was a deviation from the previous. The album was quite rushed which didn’t leave for much experimenting with sounds and new drums, though many Roth-era fans will say that Diver Down is their favorite drum sound of the catalog. Unfortunately, Alex despised the album because of the song choices; most of them being covers and songs they pulled from their early days in the mid 70s.