How we (probably) ended up with both rack toms mounted to the bass drum in a typical five-piece kit, and why (if you ask me) it was a dumb idea from the start. (IMO/hot take ahead)

Fair warning: unlike other volumes that I offer as fact-based information, this is pure opinion and speculation based on just a few facts. I won't tell you that everything I'm telling you here is truth - I'm just saying that it sure seems this way to me. And full disclosure: I am speaking here in my capacity as a chapter president and three-decade member of The Offset Toms Galaxy Brain League Of Geniuses, so consider the source:

Mounting more than one rack tom to the kick is a dumb, cheap, un-ergonomic standard that the drum industry saddled us with a lifetime ago, and there has never been any sense in it from day one. And I'll tell you why, while clearly stipulating that a large part of my explanation is IMHO conjecture based on circumstantial evidence from the historical record of our instrument.

First, the observation-based opinion on which this accusation is based:

You may have noticed, no matter how you configure your drums, that when you are seated on the throne with one foot on your kick pedal and the other on your hi-hat or slave kick pedal, your torso doesn't actually naturally align to the front of the kick - you're actually facing straight between the hi-hat and the kick. If you ask me, that's where your rack tom/toms belong, straight ahead in front of you, no matter where the kick is. After all, that's the direction your body is facing regardless, while the kick is actually "off to one side," relative to your body. Refer to this illustration linked in my copypasta setup advice, all of which is based around a simple concept: You don't fit yourself to the drums, you fit the drums to you.

So on a typical two-up/one-down five-piece kit, how did both toms end up mounted to the kick? This is the "conjecture from circumstantial evidence" part:

For many years, the most typical configuration of a drum set was a single mounted rack tom on the bass drum and one floor tom, for a typical one up/one down four-piece setup, with the ride cymbal suspended on a shell-mounted holder on the kick; there were always five-piece kits available, but with two floor toms, not two rack toms. Back in the mid/late 60s and early 70s, when two up/one down five-piece kits kits began to overtake the one-up/one-down four-piece as the "standard," drum companies were (IMO) either too cheap, or too lazy - or both - to put one or both rack toms on a stand instead, or at least, to invent the multiclamp several years early so you could hang at least one from a stand. (Now, that's simply according to me - I might be wrong, and I'm just some dude from the internet, so take it with a grain of salt.) So in their cheapness and/or laziness, they devised various forms of double tom holders instead, and bolted both of them to the kick drum, meaning that the ride was bumped onto its own separate stand.

And that's why 1) the middle tom of a five-piece kit feels weirdly off to the side, because you don't even face that way when you are seated naturally at the kick drum; and also 2) why you can't figure out a good place to put your ride, because since then, there's a damn drum in the way keeping it from going where it had gone for decades; all while 3) you're looking at a big ol' gap between your hats and your smaller rack tom, which starts to look like a bunch of wasted space. Which it is.

Now, I can't confirm that this is why drum companies went this route, but there is very much a precedent, which forms the circumstantial evidence basis of my conjecture: The way 12/13/16 also became the standard size configuration for toms during the first several decades of this type of kit. Ludwig, Slingerland, et.al. already made 12x8 and 13x9 rack toms, and 14x14, 16x16, and 18x16 or 18x18 floor toms, and it was cheaper to offer different combinations of sizes they already made. You could get a two-up/two-down rig back then, but it wouldn't be 10/12/14/16 - it would be 12/13/14/16 or 12/13/16/18, because that's what they already had tooling and materials for.

Since this is the commonly accepted conventional wisdom about how that size configuration became so common, I ask you: Is it so outrageous to presume that the same cheap and/or lazy attitude that led to this configuration also led to the development of the common ways we put two rack toms on the bass drum now? That's my presumption, anyway. And in my anything but humble opinion on this subject, I accuse the drum industry at large of completely torpedoing our ergonomics for the better part of the next half century, out of a combination of sheer laziness, sheer cheapness, or both.

So if you have felt the same way sitting behind both your rack toms hanging from your kick drum, and wondered how it got that way, and wondered what you can do about it, it's simple: depending on what kind of mounting system your kit has, get yourself either something like this, or one of these with the correct diameter rod, clamp it to your left cymbal stand (assuming you're right-handed), hang your smaller rack tom from it, and bump the larger rack tom one position to the left, where the smaller one just was before.

Or, if you would like to go "full offset," a term I just made up (LOL), another quote from my setup advice:

"If you have 7/8" Pearl-type tom arms that both mount to the bass drum bracket, one of these might solve all your problems by its lonesome self. Or, if you have L-rod tom mounts, perhaps something like this, taking care to buy one with the correct diameter rods, of course; there are three common sizes. Or, if both toms mount to a "platform" holder, L-rod type or otherwise, with a single post bass drum mount, guess what? Your double tom holder might even fit straight into one of your cymbal stand tripods, and bingo - double tom stand. You didn't even know you owned a double tom stand, did you? By the way, never forget: Drum hardware is like chrome Legos. Since it only comes in a handful of standard diameters, sometimes different pieces can snap together in lots of interesting, useful, and unexpected ways, even across brands."

Voila - your application to the League Of Geniuses is approved. Now that damn rack tom is out of the way, and the ride can return to its traditional, vastly ergonomically superior location: low and close over the kick drum adjacent to your rack tom/toms. Again, my opinion, but good enough for Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, John Bonham, and even post-1996 Neil Peart 2.0, among many others both before and since, good enough for any-damn-body, myself definitely included. That's why I say that other than the clamps and accessories that allow me to set up my toms in this configuration, this little gem was the best $35 (at 2006 prices) I have ever spent on hardware in my life.

So if you've ever had the same frustration trying to figure out what to do with that damn middle tom, or wondered why it's always in the way of where you really wish your ride could be, or wondered why you have a great big hole between your smaller tom and your hats that neither looks nor feels right, that's why.

Anyways, dat's wat I tink.