I figure I should share a bit about the local scene... here, most venues provide everything, even drums. I hear in other countries, drummers have to lug their whole kit to wherever they're playing; here most drummers just show up with sticks, while more professional/picky drummers bring their snare, cymbals and maybe pedals. PA is always provided, house amps often provided (whether or not it's actually good is a different story though!). Nobody brings their own amps. I have never ever seen any musician carrying an amp on a subway, I have never seen any musician carry an amp to a gig, whether by foot or by car or by public transport, unless it's some major big-time ticketed gig in a large concert hall, in which case usually they arrange for equipment to be provided. Whenever public gigs/events/etc. are organized, usually the organizers will provide all equipment. Probably less than 10% of the musicians locally own any form of PA, and those who do probably keep it at home for personal use.
I've had a lot of musicians tell me that local musicians are really spoiled, they can just go down to the venue and expect everything to be set up already while overseas this is not the case. I've never played overseas before, so I wouldn't know.
Another case that highlights this well is the abundance of cheap rehearsal studios around here. You can easily get pretty usable equipment in a soundproofed room for something like US$8-15 an hour. My favourite studio which my band often uses is around US$12 an hour for a roughly 10mx6m room with full PA support, a pair of Marshall half stacks, a 1000w Hartke Hydrive, two keyboards on a double deck, very well maintained drumset with double kick pedals and about 8 or 9 turkish cymbals. A friend who moved overseas told me she booked a studio for an afternoon and she and her friends went over... only to find that overseas, studios really meant just studios, without any equipment supplied.
Also a big "no" on drummers who use triggers on their real drums because it turns them into "electronic drums". If metal guitar player want to tune down 3 steps and can still play the instrument...fine. If drummer wants to tune down to have deep/reverberating drums....fine, if they're the real instrument just being played a different way. If they want to have some electronic weird reproduction of what it's supposed to sound like take the place of what it's supposed to sound like, sorry, that's it.
OTOH, have you seen Akira Jimbo? That guy sure knows how to make good use of triggers!
And although electronic drums have only recently gotten to the point where they are a workable performance instrument, the high end stuff does respond and sound quite nice when tweaked and played properly.
I check out the latest stuff whenever they hit the local stores... and it's still not satisfying. The closest is still muffing up an acoustic drum to remove the sound but maintain the feel, then triggering it. Even so, you still can't really get the nuances of different strokes. It's like having to play bass without being able to change the tone by changing where you pluck or how you fret. And they still haven't gotten the feel of cymbals right. They're playable, but still can't compare the acoustic thing, while for guitars, playing an acoustic *feels* like playing an electric, just that the sound is different.
