Although most bands today will have a more elaborate setup for their drum kit compared to the basic setup, you will find that you really won t need such an elaborate and expensive drum setup when you are learning how to play the drums. As you start improving your drumming skills, this is the time where you will start buying more drum kit pieces. For the cymbals, look for brands like Zildjian. Lastly, always take a look at the condition of the drum heads. This is one of the expensive parts to replace and if they are not in good condition, try to tell the seller to lower the price even more or get them to buy a new set of drum heads. These are the tips that you need to remember whenever you are in the market for drum sets. Today, thanks to the internet, there are numerous websites that will tell you all about the different kinds of cymbals. In fact, you can even visit video sharing websites and see people doing a demo on different kinds of cymbals. Most of the popular cymbal manufacturers can provide you with listing of all the cymbal types and what kind of music genre each cymbal is best suited for. For example, if you live in an apartment or you live in a house where it is close to your neighbor s house, practicing playing the drums will produce a lot of noise, which can potentially make you a nuisance or annoyance to the neighbors as well as the people who live with you in the house. In addition to that, you may even have a busy schedule which makes you unavailable to practice in playing the drums, and would only allow you to do so at night. And, unlike traditional acoustic drum sets, you will be able to control the volume coming out of the speakers when you hit the drum pads. In fact, you can hook it up with headsets, which will make your drum playing silent to the point where you are the only one who will be able to hear what you are playing on the drums. And, when it comes to brands, you should go for Percussion Plus, Pearl, Ludwig, Pulse, Yamaha, and Tama just to name a few good drum manufacturers. The cymbals and hardware often comes with the starter sets. But, they are not really of good quality. However, if you get a good quality set with good quality cymbals, you can always upgrade later on with the cymbals along with the other hardware that was included in the starter set.