DRUMMER CAFE

I've played traditional for several years. Experiment, my setup is with the bass straight in front. My snare is between my legs with the hat about 9:30. As far a my tom goes they're usually about an inch above the bass. But the location may vary as to which set I use. A couple Mapex sets has tom mounts off the center of the bass, as does my old Slingerland set. But my DW set has tom mounts from my two main cymbal stands as I use two 21" rides. In all cases I've had to make my rides a little higher, and tilt my cymbals a little more. Mainly because playing traditional I tend to tilt my snare a little more away from me to achieve the accents and drive I like from my left hand. Thus my hat is more to my left than many guys. I tend to like my snare just high enough so my leg doesn't hit the snare while playing. My hat just a little higher than my snare. I've tried tilting my snare down on the front, but hated it playing traditional. Old school, but works for me.  

In my case the bass is in front. With two toms centered over the bass. Snare between my legs with the high hat to the left of the snare. Two floor toms to the right of me. As I'm playing my body is pointed left, but I'm facing forward looking over my bass and toms. My two rides about shoulder heigth. Small crash to my left, and big crash to my right. I suppose it may depend on what you call "centered". This is the way I learned to play traditional method. It's also the way the Army band wanted us to play a set. Bass drum pointed towards the audience.

yea. When i  play trad grip on toms I usually have to turn my hand slightly to adjust the angle. It usuallly is more of an arm rotation than a wrist rotation, but it depends on how you come down on your toms. When i play trad i use some serious moeller technique, so it usually works. But yea, small adjustments to the snare positioning *may* help.

I never used moeller when I played matched, but I find myself using it quite a bit now.

I had the same problem.  Then I realized why a lot of old time drummers had the rack tom tilted at an angle, from side to side. (Do a google image search for Gene Krupa.)

With that set up, the butt end of my trad grip stick is up in the air, over my high hat.

It works better if the snare is also set at a similar angle, but I prefer to keep mine fairly flat.

I've been working on trad grip for quite a while and I still don't have it anywhere near my matched grip.

I use matched grip when I'm playing with musicians, but use trad grip for solo practice because, for some reason, I'm a lot more relaxed and fluid with trad grip.  With matched, there's always a tendency to "mucscle through" difficult stuff.  With trad, as soon as I tense up I can't do much of anything.