Ginger Baker plays a Drum Workshop kit with Zildjian cymbals.

Ginger's current kit

• 10"x 8",12" x 9" ,13" x 10" ,14" x 12", Toms on front rack stands
• 20"x 14" & 22" x 14" Bass drums
• 13" Edge Snare drum Snare
• 14" Leedy Snare (Spare)
• DW 5000 Accelerator Bass Drum Pedals
• 4 DW cymbal stands
• 1 DW 5000 HiHat Stand
• 1 DW Snare Stand
• Zildjian Ginger Baker 7a sticks

From 1966 to 1968, Ginger played a Ludwig Silver Sparkle:

• 20"x 11" Bass (right foot)
• 22"x 11" Bass (left foot)
• 12x8" & 13x9" top toms
• 14x14" & 16x14" floor toms
• Ludwig Fleetfoot pedals with leather straps
• Ludwig sticks

Snare: 1940's 6.5" x 14" black finished Leedy Broadway, wood
Fittings: Rogers, some Ludwigs, some customised

Snare tuned high, toms and bass tuned low.

Ginger gave his silver sparkle kit to a roadie. Lucky roadie!

In May 1968 Ginger purchased a new Ludwig kit:

• 20"x14" & 22"x14" bass drums
• 14"x5" toms
• 14"x5" metal Super-Sensitive snare

Cymbals

In 1963 Ginger purchased his first Zildjian cymbals - he still uses them today.

Ginger looks after his cymbals - the 22" rivet ride cymbal and the 14" hi-hats he currently uses are the same ones he used on the Cream tours in 1968!

• 17" crash left upper
• 16" crash left lower
• 14" hi-hats left
• 16" crash right front lower
• 17" ride right front upper
• 22" rivet crash/ride right back upper
• 18" crash right back lower
• 8" what Ginger once called a "joke effect" splash right of middle

Percussion

• 16" K Dark Thin Crash
• 14" A New Beat Hi Hats
• 8" A Splash
• 8" A Fast Splash
• 10" A Splash
• 8" A Splash
• 13" Top Hat
• 22" A Series Medium Ride Rivet Ride
• 18" China
• 18" A Medium Crash
• Cow bells front right

What Ginger has to say...

"So I made my first kit out of biscuit tins - a toy kit. Then I'd only been playing three months, but I got an audition with a trad band, quite a good one, actually - and told 'em I'd been playing three years. So I showed up with me tin drums - told 'em my regular drums were broken - and they were incredulous. But I got the gig."............"me Mum..lent me fifty quid and I bought a good drum kit. All calf skins in those days....used to down 'em with a teaspoon......" Speaking in 1987

"when I got home [from John Finch's party that he first sat on a kit at], I started looking for a drum kit straight away.....I told my Mum I wanted to buy a kit and she said, 'you haven't finished paying for your bloody bike yet!'
[which had gone under a taxi in London] She didn't agree at all that this was a good idea; it was something quite insane to her. However, I was pretty determined & managed to get hold of a toy drum kit for three quid (£3). It had only one head on the bass drum, so I cut up my tent to make another one & painted a design on it. The tom tom was very thin, so I got a biscuit tin and I ade it deeper so it sounded a bit better. The tighteners were just on the top head with wing nuts, but I had a kit of sorts." (Hellraiser)

"I got offered a job with the Terry Lightfoot Jazzmen............I got Vic O'Brien to make me up an all-white matching drum kit to replace my previous one, which had been made up of bits & pieces." (Hellraiser)

How Ginger switched to DW...

"....did a gig at the Iridium in New York with djq2o. Ludwig wouldn't provide a kit...DW did...was so impressed with the drums they built me - my present kit."