After a mattress fundraiser put on by the fine arts department earlier in Dec. earned over 5,000 dollars, the band used the money they received to buy a new drum set. Being that the previous drum kit was more than 30 years old, the instrument was something band students and band director Greg Bergman looked forward to purchasing. Juniors Seth Bontrager and Daniel Buller, two band students who use the drum set regularly, take pride in the new kit.

“[With previous fundraisers] you’d get some things that you’d maybe spend on repairs for instruments, but this year we actually got enough money to buy a brand new drum set which is awesome,” junior Seth Bontrager said.

The head replacements that drum kits occasionally need were starting to take a toll on the set. The rims around the heads were getting bent which created difficulty for replacing and tuning. When a family contacted Bergman, claiming they were currently selling a drum set, Bergman decided to buy the instrument from them. He believed it was the perfect opportunity with the money raised and the condition the previous drum set was in.

“The one we have, that we use for basketball games and for one of the jazz bands, it’s pretty old, some of it just wasn’t holding up.” Bergman said. “We’ve talked for a long time about ‘if we have some money, one of these days we will use it on a drum set.’”

The drum set that was purchased came with hardware like stands, cymbals and a drum throne. Students and Bergman examined the conditions of hardware from the previous set and were able to salvage some parts to combine with the new kit.

“We kept some parts of the old one,” junior Daniel Buller said. “The snare drum from the old one, it wasn’t as old. It’s pretty nice and it sounded good so we kept that. The cymbals from the old set were good enough.”

Since the drum set is used for Jazz Ensemble II, pep band and to practice during seminar or after school, the instrument gets a lot of use. Due to the hard work at the fundraiser and the work put into every performance, the new drum set was something many band students were happy to earn. Overall, the new instrument and the new features it has, is expected to benefit the band considerably.

“It has more bells and whistles on it and it’s perfect for the rock n roll stuff for pep band,” Bergman said. “It actually has two additional drums compared to our jazz setup. Plus it looks really nice, the students are very proud of it and it’s even our school colors.”