TAMA Imperialstar Midnight Blue kit

The TAMA Imperialstar Midnight Blue 5-ply drum kit was one of kits Stewart Copeland played with The Police. He had at least two kits: an "A" kit and a "B" kit.

It is worth noting that even though the drums often look black in a variety of colour photos (especially under stage lights during Police concerts), the shells in fact have a Dark Blue colour.

The "A" kit
This is the first of the Midnight Blue drum kits Stewart had, and the one kit he played for most of his career as drummer of The Police. He bought the Midnight Blue drum kit as early as 15 June 1979 from Summerfield's Musical Instrument Dealer in Sheffield. The Light Blue kit (Stewart's first TAMA set) was showing signs of wear by then, so he replaced it with this one shortly after wrapping up the Outlandos D'Amour tour. It had largely the same drum sizes as the Light Blue, but with an extra 10" tom.

The first time Stewart recorded with this drum kit in the studio was the Reggatta De Blanc album, for sessions during the Summer of 1979. It was previously thought he played the Light Blue kit on the album, which he retired by then.

The Midnight Blue became his main drum kit for UK & European concerts on the Reggatta De Blanc tour, while the TAMA Superstar Mahogany was used for North American concerts. After the Bremen concert on 11 January 1980, he retired the kit from touring for a few months and the Superstar Mahogany took over as his main drum kit for the remainder of the tour for worldwide concert dates.

Eventually, Stewart began to use the Midnight Blue again for live performances on the Zenyatta Mondatta tour, starting on 9 August 1980 when it still had the original Imperialstar bass drum head. However, as photographic evidence shows, the bass drum head was replaced with a newer one, with a hole cut in the centre and a (rather misleading) "TAMA Superstar" logo stuck on it.

For recording Ghost In The Machine and Synchronicity, Stewart Copeland had this Midnight Blue kit (known as the "A" kit by that point) set up in the living/recreation room of the AIR Studios facility on Montserrat, as Hugh Padgham (engineer & co-producer) liked the drum sound in that room. "Demolition Man" was recorded with this drum kit in the main studio when the band

Drum sizes

 * 14" x 22" bass drum
 * 8" x 10" tom
 * 8" x 12" tom
 * 9" x 13" tom
 * 16" x 16" floor tom

Supplementary toms on tour were 8" x 12" and 9" x 13" - these were for triggering the TAMA DS-200 drum synthesizer

The "B" kit
This was the second Midnight Blue Imperialstar kit, referred to as the "B" kit. Stewart ordered this kit from TAMA in 1981 as a backup non-touring kit. It was flown over to Montserrat and set up in the main studio at AIR Studio for Ghost In The Machine in the Summer of 1981. The "B" kit was shipped with Remo CS Black Dot batter heads on the toms, which were kept as they sounded good (and didn't get much playing time) - besides the CS heads, the "B" kit is otherwise identical to the "A" kit.

On Ghost In The Machine, recording-wise the B kit was used for occasional drum overdubs in the studio. And and also recording the drum tracks to "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic". He would have the backup kit set up again for Synchronicity