The Mapex Meridian series of drum kits takes the place of the previous year’s Pro M and M BIRCH series drums. The Meridians offer several key improvements over the Pro M and M BIRCH series drums, most notably the new Isolated Tom Mount System and the lower mass lugs. We’ll touch on all of these here shortly.
After getting the tour of the booth from Jeff Ivester of Mapex and going over the ins and outs of all the new products we took a ton of pictures. I expressed some interest in reviewing the new Meridians for Drumrock and Jeff was all for it. In order to facilitate this he suggested I talk with the owner of the best drum shop in the greater Seattle area, Donn Bennett of Donn Bennett Drum Studios. Donn is, as I’ve said, is a great person to work with, a man with a passion for drumming that is boundless, and was more than happy to facilitate getting me some quality time with the new kits.
Mapex introduced the Meridians at winter NAMM and once again walking into the booth I was extremely impressed with what I was seeing. Every year since I’ve started going to NAMM, consistently, I’ve walked out of the Mapex booth impressed by what I’ve seen. This year was no different.
The Meridian Maple and Birch kits come in a variety of prepackaged configurations ranging from a six piece kit down to a 4 piece shell pack. (Note the Meridian Birch drums only come in kit configurations with no listed option for the smaller 4 piece shell pack) Both wood types have a “Go Large” add on pack that includes a 22x18 kick, a 10x8 tom and an 18x16 floor tom.
The maple and birch kit configurations all come with a single B700 boom stand, a single C700 straight cymbal stand, the H700 hi-hat stand, the P700 kick pedal, the S700 snare stand, and the TH676 tom holder. They also include the new ITS mounts for toms.
Those are the common hardware configurations between the two types of Meridian kits.
There are some differences in hardware and options between the two. The maple kits come with 2.3mm Power Hoops where the birch kits are equipped with 1.6mm flanged hoops on all toms. The Meridian Maple floor toms come with spring cushioned legs vs. standard rubber footed floor tom legs on the Meridian Birch Floor toms. The maple kits come with Remo UT Pinstripe heads on all toms where as the birch kits have Remo UT single ply heads. The last major difference between the two lines of these drums is the snares. The Meridian Maple snare drums are 10 lug (split) snares, where the Meridian Birch kits are 8 single lugs.
I spent about three hours or so with two of the display kits from NAMM. The maple kit was the new SRO configuration (five piece) Midnight Steel kit that also included an optional gong bass (note the gong bass was not reviewed here) and the birch kit used was the Studioease configuration (six piece) Cherry Mist finished kit.
For the both maple and birch kits the primary focus was to set it up, tune at least one of the drums through a range and examine the kit itself, including the hardware, the shells themselves, finishes, bearing edges, and playability. Let’s start with the hardware, which is the most common aspect of the two lines within the Meridian series.
The hardware with both the Maple and Birch kits is well built. All stands are dual braced, and feel very solid. Any place on the stands where there is a potential adjustment there is a memory lock to go with it.
The C700 and B700 booms both have a very solid feel – the Super Glide Stepless Tilters are firm and secure well. Once tightened down the cymbals mounted on these stands did not move from the position I put them in throughout playing. The new Multi-Sustain Cymbal Felts can be flipped to a rubber style mounting, without having to scavenge in a hardware bag for a different style felt.
The H700 hat stand is a three legged double braced stand. The legs are not fixed and swivel freely around the base of the stand. The pedal has a solid feel against a standard spring mechanism. The clutch uses the same style Multi-Sustain felt that the cymbal stands use. The chain is single linked, and, though it appears visually a little thin, is very sturdy and stood up to my heavy footed playing very well.
The P700 kick pedal has the same footboard and chain as the H700 stand. The pedal is on par with most pedals in kits in this price range, with somewhat limited adjustability allowing for beater position and spring tension adjustments as needed. It has a solid feel and was surprisingly responsive in my playing and stood up well.
The TH676 tom mount is a unique little tom mount. Aside from using the standard ball socket style mounting system, the TH676 has a built in cymbal boom mount so you can add a boom or straight cymbal stand directly into the mount, allowing you to mount a cymbal up front without a stand or a grabber style cymbal mount. The ball socket mounting system allows for virtually unlimited positioning of the tom so you can fine tune your positioning with ease.
The last common piece of hardware that I want to cover here is the new Isolated Tom Mount System (ITS). This system is one of the better isolation systems I have seen and is a great improvement over the system previously used on the Pro-M/M Birch series. There is zero shell contact. Being familiar with other mounting sytems system I have to draw a comparison here, and I have to say I have to give Mapex some points over the other zero contact mount sytems I've seen. The ITS mounts on the Mapex drums, like others, use the lugs themselves – only the gaskets on the ITS do not completely envelope the lug threads, so there’s no impact here to the tension rods. They mount solidly over two lugs and are a much cleaner looking mount in my opinion.
Getting into the kits themselves - the first kit I worked with was the Meridian Maple in Midnight Steel.
The shells themselves are well constructed with zero flaws to the interior of the shells and the finish was outstanding. The 7 ply maple shells felt solid. The bearing edges of the drums themselves are dual 45 degree and were smooth on both the inner and outer sides of the edges.
The finish, on this kit and every other Meridian I’ve seen was nothing short of gorgeous. I’ve always been fond of Mapex’s finishes, and the Meridians, (both Maple and Birch) don’t disappoint here. The Meridian Maples come standard with 10 different finishes and the Meridian Birch kits come in 8.
The first thing I did before setting up the kit was to pull out a tom and remove both heads to inspect the shells. (see above) Then I went through my tuning “ritual”. After getting the resonant head where I wanted it, I flipped the drum over and put the UT Pinstripe back on and put the hoop on. Finger tightening the tension rods was a breeze, they went right down. Tuning this drum through a range of tones was simple and the drum held it’s tuning from low to high tuning with no noticeable change. I tend to tune on the low end so if a drum loses tuning with me it’s fairly quick to do so if I haven’t dialed it in right. These drums were easy to tune and keep tuned.
Playing out the kit was a blast. I mounted up a few of my Sabian cymbals on the stands and gave the kit a brief run around, which, given my heavy handedness in playing, is, paramount to a torture test. I loved the sound of these drums; they stood up quite well and required no readjustment once I had them dialed in positioning wise throughout the playing time.
Moving on to the Meridian Birch kit, I followed pretty much the same process as I did with the Maple kit.
Pulling the heads off to go through the tuning process, the first thing I looked at was the shell construction. There was no discernable difference in the quality of the shells from the maple kit – with no flaws in the wood and the finish was superb. The 6 ply birch shells are a tad thicker than the 7 ply maple shells and they felt solid.
Running my fingers around the bearing edges of the kit I initially tested I was surprised that they weren’t as smooth as the edges on the Maple kit. Given the impact that an edge can have on the tuning of a drum along with the effect that it could have on a drums tone this surprised me. Tuning the kit up, the roughness of the edges did not seem to have an impact however it is something that needs to be pointed out. I went back to Donn’s shop a couple days later and pulled apart a tom on a second birch kit, this one in Sapphire Fade. the edges were more along the lines of what I would expect.
If you're like me, and looking at purchasing a new kit, (regardless of brand) one of the first things you should check before laying down your hard earned cash are the bearing edges of any kit you buy.
Once I had given the shells the once over, I set about tuning this kit. Finger tightening the tension rods on this kit was more difficult than the Meridian Maple. It took me longer to do this one simple step than any other part of tuning these. We did discover, that the difficulty I had finger tightening the tension rods was consistent on the second Birch kit that I went back to inspect the edges on. In my opinion, the fact that the tension rods run a bit tight equate to these drums being less likely to fall out of tune as fast as a looser feeling tension rod might.
Once I got them to the point where I break out the old drum key, the drums all dialed in perfectly even given the fact that the bearing edges had some roughness to them. The drums sounded superb. I’m not a huge fan of Birch drums however I enjoyed the sound coming out of this kit – I spent about 15 minute longer giving this kit the work up than I did the maple kit. It was fun to play.
The snares on both kits, maple and birch, provided quite a bit of pop and were fairly loud. Tuning each there were no issues and the sound of these snares is on par with most snares of this class. The maple snare has a nice warm tone, where as the birch was bright with a good crack. I didn’t put a lot of time in with the snares short getting the tuning dialed in and playing them. The differences in each as described earlier, 10 split lugs on the maple vs. 8 single lugs on the birch, and the differences in hoops, speak for themselves.
Overall, I have to say Mapex has done an outstanding job with designing and engineering the new Meridian series drums. For the segment they’re shooting for they’ve done an great job.
The one thing I did question with regards to the differences between the Meridian Maple and Meridian Birch kits was the obvious difference in some of the features: hoops, snare lugs, FT legs.
Jeff Ivester, Mapex's Director of Marketing commented, “When developing Meridian, the Mapex R&D team put in thousands of hours in an effort to achieve a perfect balance between the highest possible product specifications while maintaining an extremely competitive price. I think they’ve done an outstanding job. When a customer evaluates the Meridian’s features, its sound quality, its finish and the great hardware, they are going to want a Meridian. They will be even more pleased when they discover that it’s one of the most affordable products in its category.”
Joe Hibbs, representing the R&D side of the Mapex house, chimed in saying, "Along with this, it is rare that any company develops and creates a 100% complete new drum set series. Usually it is simply shuffling around parts and adding some new finishes. Mapex can do this because we are the only drum company that owns and operates its own drum and hardware factory. It is even more rare when all the specifications are improved and the consumer price actually goes down."
I can’t draw any playability comparisons with other drum manufacturer’s kits in this price range (yet) but I can say that from what I’ve seen with initial pricing that these kits are well priced in the segment they’re shooting for and offer a ton of value – you get a lot here with your money. These drums are built extremely well, the hardware is solid and the sound quality is simply outstanding.
If you’re in the market for a new kit, and are working with a budget, whether it’s the Meridian Maple, or the Meridian Birch, you won’t go wrong with either of these kit choices. I like them so much that I’m seriously considering one for myself.
I’d like to thank Jeff Ivester and Joe Hibbs at Mapex for working with us on this – Mapex is the first major drum maker to give us this opportunity and they presented us with a great product.
I would also like to thank Donn Bennett of Donn Bennett Drum Studios, in Bellevue, WA for letting me use his theater to set these kits up and give them the once over. Donn is a cornerstone of the Seattle drumming scene and his help and input is appreciated ten-fold. If you live in this area or visit, get over to Donn’s shop – you won’t regret it!