The Pearl Export shells are pretty much everything a beginner to intermediate players need. I have played on beginner level Tamas and PDP and these drums blew those away. I used them for 2 years and barely ever had any problems with the set. They sound amazing, offer good hardware packages and are good looking too. I had a black set of the Exports and I had a 12”, 13” and 16” tom with a 14” snare and 20” kick, with Evans and Remo heads on the drums. The toms sound deep and are flexible to nearly any style of tuning. I added a Piccolo snare to my set up eventually just to add a little bit of depth to the other snare, but that is not necessary. Under fine tuning, these drums can be gigged on or recorded decently easy. These shells are very good, in fact, a drum tech at a show we played at said that I would never need to upgrade, but only want to. I upgraded over time, but only because I wanted an all maple set, and I wanted to play Gretsch. These drums can take a beating without chipping or scatching, and the hardware is built very sturdy, for the heavy hitting players. The only problem I ever really had was that the screws holding the tom arm and brackets in came out, but that was no big deal. I would definitely suggest getting these drums over the Tama and PDP, but other companies may have something along the lines of these. Gretsch starting kits are very good, also Mapex is also very good if you like the looks of those more, but these drums will serve you just fine. I would definitely make the decision to buy these again over other entry level sets. Pearl is a good manufacturer of drum equipment, so it isn’t like First Act stuff.