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
Stewart received a TAMA Imperialstar Midnight Blue kit shortly after recording Zenyatta Mondatta. This kit was played during the Zenyatta Mondatta, Ghost In The Machine and Synchronicity tours with The Police, from 9 August 1980 to 4 March 1984. Although photos from the Zenyatta tour show a Superstar bass drum head.

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.

According to Jeff Seitz, for Ghost this kit was originally set up in the main studio, where the band recorded "Demolition Man" on the first day of tracking. But was then moved to the dining room at (engineer & co-producer) Hugh Padgham's request, due to the drums sounding relatively dead.

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

1979-1980 kit
This kit is another TAMA Imperialstar Midnight Blue drum kit - one of the drum kits Stewart played during the Reggatta De Blanc era. It took over from the light blue kit.

It was previously thought to be an Imperialstar Jet Black kit, but drum tech Jeff Seitz insists Stewart never had any black Imperialstar kits to begin with. Like with the other two aforementioned kits, the drum shells on this kit appear black in the majority of photos, to further confuse matters - given the "A" kit was one newly received by Copeland in August 1980 (from Jeff Seitz' memory). But in a few photos, convincingly the drum shells for this kit reflect a slight dark blue, thus leading to the conclusion this is likely another Midnight Blue Imperialstar.

According to The PoliceWiki, Stewart Copeland bought this kit on 15 June 1979 from Summerfield's musical instrument dealers in Sheffield. Its first appearance was in the "Can't Stand Losing You" music video (shot two days later).

This was the drum kit he took to Surrey Sound in the Summer of 1979 for recording the Reggatta De Blanc album. Stewart also had it on the Reggatta De Blanc tour: photographic evidence shows he mainly performed with it on UK & European tour legs in August-September 1979, and December 1979-January 1980. While the Mahogany Superstar kit was played during the North American leg. The last known live appearance was the Bremen concert on 11 January 1980, after which Stewart retired the kit from touring and switched over to the Mahogany for the remainder of the tour.

Note: even though the drums look identical (including the extra 10" rack tom seen in a few 1979-1980 photos), there is little evidence to say whether this kit is the exact same as the one used on subsequent tours (the "A" kit; see above). Hence the separate entry here. And if this was a separate kit, then it is unclear what happened to it.