The drum gives a thoroughly respectable performance. Tweaking the tuning brings about a tight, punchy thud that is destined to have the neighbours banging on the wall. The lugs on the toms and bass drum have been refined since 2007 - they're now a small teardrop shape reminiscent of the Gretsch Catalina lug, rather than the oval tower design of yesteryear. The lugs are a commendable detail worth drawing attention to - where you might expect to find clumsy or weighty shell architecture there are instead rather neat low mass lugs that wouldn't look out of place on kits costing a good deal more. The distribution of lugs is not bad either. The toms are all furnished with six pairs (fine for the 12" and 13" toms, not great for the 16" floor tom) while the snare and bass drum contain eight per head (the snare's double-ended lugs means it technically has only eight as opposed to the bass drum's total of 16).

This concentration on the tuning abilities of the snare and bass drum is quite right, and it is only the 16" floor tom that is underequipped lugwise in any sizeable way. The pressed hoops are par for the course and seem up to their job. Likewise the generic tuning rods worked without complaint when assembling the kit and held tuning while testing it. The felt beater of the bass drum pedal rounded the edges off, leaving a pleasing 'dooosshhh' sound before a small towel, placed against the batter head, focused the bass enormously. We use a few different delivery couriers, depending on the items being sent, your location, and the delivery service you've chosen: Since its introduction a few years ago, the Performance Percussion PP300 5-piece drum kit has been the #1 selling kit in the competitive UK & Eire market of entry level starter kits.As a one-stop drumming shop, the PP300R does very nicely, thank you very much. With all you need to get started, frankly the only other thing they could cram in would be your own personal teacher. Going through the manual we find some amusing Chinese/English translation issues, ie: "Press [DRUM KIT] constantly" which actually means 'Hold down [DRUM KIT] button'. Once you suss these and other anomalies with a little common sense interpretation of your own, using the kit is actually quite intuitive.

Much of the engineering here (including lugs, tuning bolts etc), is to an acceptable standard. However, the least impressive piece is the snare drum throw-off lever. This has been shaped from pressed steel and feels extremely rough to the touch and quite honestly looks like the subject of a failed metalwork project - simply put, it feels cheap and nasty. Hands On The tried-and-tested tom mounts allowed us to get the kit set up with the minimum of hassle, although the depth of the toms could potentially limit adjustment - younger or smaller players may have to tweak it before they get the best set-up. Software or products that include software that needs to be registered are not eligible for this 14 day return period if opened and installed, and due to hygiene reasons we can't accept certain used in-ear headphones, microphones or harmonicas. Faulty items under guaranteeThe floor tom sounded cavernous, and the damping ring on the bass drum took a slight edge off but left it wide open, allowing you to apply your chosen level of damping to get the required sound.