Welcome to Ginger Baker's Gear Page

Ginger's DW kit

Status Cymbal

Ginger Baker Air Force

Ginger Baker's early years

Ginger playing his DW

Ginger's Perspex Ludwig

Ginger plays Ludwig drums

GInger Baker with Cream

Ginger Baker in Oakland

Ginger Baker plays a Drum Workshop kit with Zildjian cymbals.

Ginger's current kit

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

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:

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!

Percussion

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."