On drums...

Hope all is well as April gives way to May.

So this video of Bernard Perdie showed up on the VSFB page and I was taken by a few things. First, never seen him sing before. The snare sounds great. I can't tell what it is. Love the rack tom setup with big on the left and small on the right.

So he is using the stock mounts and not all the way at the end either. The tubes look stuck in their pretty far. His toms do not sound choked to me. A great player getting a great sound.

So why do so many folks over the years say that this type of mount found on Phonics, Lites and Sigs should have a RIMS mount cause it kills the tom? Does not seem to maker enough difference for most pro players of the era on those kits to go to the trouble of changing out the stock mounts.

Thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-U04wFe_8Q

Hey, Francis. Thoughts? Well yes.

Sustain consciousness got started some time when I was not paying attention, but when it happened, everyone got on board. For the most part, is has been a solution to a problem that never existed but one that, once implemented, required a lot of damping to solve the solution.

I'm not saying that no drum has ever been helped by the addition of isolation from its mounts. Perhaps the particular frequencies of hardware and tuning have ganged up on the tone of some equipment. But in general, drums worked for years without needing such things, and the greatest recordings of drums - in my opinion those done in the 50s and 60s – were all accomplished without special mountings.

But you know how it is. Once an analytical guy starts proclaiming how necessary acoustical suspension is to a drum kit, next thing you know, drummers everywhere are putting together kits with rubber in between everything.

The fact remains, however, that much of this has proven too much of a good thing. Creating an idol of sustain, other interesting aspects of drum sound have taken a hit. Modern drums are designed to come on strong and then decay in a linear fashion, like hitting a chime. Lite era and earlier drums were not designed that way - assuming the sound was designed at all. It is more likely that pleasant characteristics were achieved and thought well of.

In retrospect, the qualities of older drums - at least of those I have been playing - is that they have three sound - the initial hit, then the opening of the drum to its full tone, and then the decay as elements in the drum and tuning start to work against itself, as it were. The shells, of course, were involved in the sound, because they vibrated in their own way. Hardware had an effect. That complex matrix of curves created a kind of musical magic, which drum makers then got to work on eviscerating in the 1980s.

Not saying that modern drums don't sound good, either. But of one thing I am fairly convinced - they don't sound better than older drums in any objective sense, unless better means more percussive attack, louder tone, and longer and linear sustain. For me, those qualities are a little boring by comparison, but each to his own.

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Gregory

If you hold a tom by its rim and strike it you'll notice it has a big full sound with a strong fundamental.
Many 'thru shell' mounts CAN inhibit that sound, making them sound thinner, kinda pokey, some may say choked.
However, they don't necessarily effect the sound in that way, but they might. Whether that effect makes the drum sound worse or not is purely an opinion, as the choking may also give drum more attack, which may be desired.

The subtle differences are much more noticeable from the drivers seat, so to speak. So assessing its effect from a video, or out front is not really possible.
Adding other instruments to the mix make the differences less noticeable, but most importantly, if you haven't heard both A and B, you cannot genuinely compare.

Another interesting point is that these differences are much less noticeable at higher tunings, as the drum will naturally choke a little at higher tunings. :twisted. So these mounts are designed more for rock players than Jazz guys.

Many older mounts held the shell in a much more buoyant fashion, and had less impact on their sound as far as my above points are concerned.
Once the mounting systems reached a state where they held the drum in a fashion that it was rock solid and didn't move, the choking issue became noticeable, and led the way for a quest to allow for the best of both worlds. Solidity and Buoyancy.

Ofcourse this is just my opinion, and I expect there to be flames about my 'higher tuning' claim. My opinions are based on personal experience of selling new and secondhand (including vintage) drums for a living 40hrs (sometimes 50hrs + ) a week for 20yrs.

But, I'm from Australia, and quite obviously I have no idea.

_________________
Jeff
Gots ta luv da Beech
Australia

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Cliff

River City Trio

What if we did all have the same opinions?

Gentlemen,

Thanks for your insight.

Gregory I have admired your VSFB comments from afar and I just picked up a 308 Teardrop that should be coming next week. More to follow one day on that.

"Solution to a problem that never existed" is a concept I am familiar with. Fully agree with the observation around old gear. I feel the same way about the whole vertical vs. horizontal debate. Rich, Roach, Blakey, Jones x3 (Rufus, Papa Jo, and Elvin... the Jones boys), Krupa, and Bellson never played vertical grain, iso mounts, or rubber in between every metal part; and you know what... sounds pretty good. I use those drummers as the reference for how drums should sound; without tons of individually miked everything, compression, limiters, or any post EQ on the final product and is found on everything from the late 60s onward IMHO.

Isn't it interesting that the thing that gets the most coverage in the new SQ1 is the new mount? Isn't it interesting that after we achieve sustain nirvana with the mounts, drummers put moon gel on everything and sound engineers want a controlled sound that they can now manipulate in the mix? They would prefer less sound from the drummer so they can add more of their unique embellishments. I love my older kits, but still have much love for the 80s Phonic and Lites as well. The right instrument for the right style of music.

Jeff your collection is nothing short of amazing so I won't hold it against you that your toilets flush backwards and my least favorite sister in-law lives in Queensland. I totally see your point about "sticking though the shell" hence the wisdom of putting the tom all the way on the end. Old school rail mounts also don't penetrate the shell either and are as you describe it as "buoyant." Never heard that term used in a drum conversation, but it works.

Cliff, I much prefer the old school miking techniques of treating the whole kit as the instrument and capturing its complete sound in total. I never much cared for the modern mike everything in close, top and bottom or even inside the drum. When you have all those channels I guess you gotta use them and thats how the sound engineers can ear their money with over complexity. Agree about the drivers seat position. Dave Tough, Chick Webb, Zutty Singleton, and Big Sid Catlett played with only the benefit of hearing how it sounded every night from the drivers seat and they made the entire instrument sing. I think that we have not heard an unaltered drum sound on a popular recording since the iso mount phenomenon came on the scene if not earlier.

So I asked this question cause I picked up a set of RIMS with Force 3000 mounts last year, but have not taken them out of the box. Was going to put them on my Lites, but when I see Perdie sound so good; part of me says why bother. The smarter part of me says that I should practice more to sound better and not think that various gear makes me sound better. I love the opening scene with Rich and Kermit. He makes a table and chair sound like Buddy Rich.

"Who needs a band? Who needs drums? When I play a theater, I play the theater."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwArmlJJcnc

All that talent and a Grade A a$$hole to boot. Oh well. No iso mounts to be found anywhere on that Ludwig.

Cheers

Francis

Hey Francis,

I was with you all the way up to the end where you took a left turn and concluded that the Purdie sound in the original post clip, heard through the close micing and processing eschewed, supports a comparison of mounting systems.

Like you, I own and play enough different kits to appreciate the differences, and what they each do. The differences between a Signature kit and a Designer kit of identical sizes are real and immense, particularly in sustain, and as intended, in the tonal variation that are available in the Designers vs. the fundamental oriented Signatures.

Sure, more than mounts make the difference, but as Greg alluded to, it is the sum of the parts that we hear and choose.

More interesting to me than the debate over what shell, hardware, head, etc., causes what, is your observation of how often, after pursuing all the ‘current thinking’ about sustain, a drummer then flattens it all with moon gel, and never sees the irony.

Myself, other than what may be inherent to the particular head(s) used, I do not use any damping of any kind, with an occasional exception for use of an external snare batter damper, lightly applied.

I think that sustain works wonderfully for drums that are well tuned, but magnifies the effect of poor tuning (which also kills sustain).

String these together, and I think that many of the players you mentioned lived in an era where calf heads clearly required attention to tuning maintenance, and they simply became better tuners of their instruments.

I do agree that technology often becomes a solution looking for a problem, and in fact becomes a problem if over-used and/or misapplied. That said, I do still find great value in close micing, used to augment primary reliance on overheads, for both soundstage placement and matching the mic to the sound source.

…and talking about excessive close micing, how about those guitar players? Some of those guys are using 2-3 mics on each string!

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Cliff

River City Trio

What if we did all have the same opinions?

Cliff

Left turn not intended. The comparison of mounting systems, to drum builds, to miking techniques was more of examples of the old way things used to be as opposed to how things are routinely done today. I was not implying that the closed miking of Pudie's Lites on the clip had anything to do with iso mounts vs the original mounts. I tend to meander in my thought process sometimes. My apolgies.

In fact, for todays modern electronic music in large venues; the closed miking system is almost a must. As for the feeling toward closed miking, that has more to do with the studio then in a live situation; especially a loud electric one. I like Glyn Johns very simple and straight forward 3 mike approach. I just favor the old school simpler way of capturing the kit. Kind of hijacking my own thread. Sorry old man scatter brain.

Wiki - "Johns developed a unique approach to the recording of drums, sometimes referred to as the "Glyn Johns Method", that rarely employs more than two or three microphones, and which usually keeps one mike hoisted several feet overhead to achieve natural perspective of the whole kit, as well as one off to the side (not far from the floor tom tom), and one near to the bass drum. The key to the method is to keep both the overhead mike and the side-mike equidistant from (and pointed at) the centre of the snare, aimed in such a way of forming a triangular pattern (with the three corners being the snare, the side-mike, and the overhead mic).[9] Johns prefers not to close-mike the individual drums, except occasionally the snare drum."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fyy55ALu18Y

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Cliff

River City Trio

What if we did all have the same opinions?

Miking is a separate issue (until one has to do it.) For better or worse, I have not had to mic my drums for several years now, and so I am closely attuned to the sound the drums make in a room - which two things are inseparable.

The Glyn Johns method is an interesting case in point. I have no pretensions to being a sound engineer (short of tuning my drums the way I like them), but I have tried imitating the GJ method in our studio and the effect was terrible. So possibly I imitated the mic positioning poorly, or I was not tuned as GJ imagined it, or the method really depends on the room. Who knows, but I don't love recording, I don't love tuning rooms, and I don't love tuning drums, so we will never know. The big room sound that we get, supported by close miking for articulation works well enough.

Since I am playing small rooms, my thoughts are entirely focussed on the acoustic properties. We're playing a mix of Motown, blues, rockabilly, rock n roll, and country, played with a jazz sensibility and lots of dynamics. We are a guitar and drums duo w/singer, so I have to provide a lot of bass, and the room has to do a lot of the work to meld the sounds together. Since the room is working, the drums cannot "sing" endlessly. They need to open up at all dynamic levels, they need to create enough sustain and tone to span the beat, and they need to begin to close down before the room starts to create mud.

My Designers would be tough to play in that setting. The 18 bass is too restrained, and the 20 is balls-to-the-wall, and the toms don't die back any time before Christmas.

The teardrop bass is on at all dynamic levels, and it is very sensitive to beater pressure, both for volume and for applied damping. Its sound curve -my ideal as described above - is perfect for the music. It opens up to a very large, round sound and then closes rather quickly with a shudder (I can't describe that any better, but it is a wonderful sound). A great deal of though goes into my foot, since it controls the bass frequencies in the room.

The 13 rack is a small marvel. When struck lightly, it has everything I would expect and a very pleasant and cutting ring, but what is surprising is that the harder it's hit, a deeper, ballsier sound develops, so it goes from jazz to rock ability on demand.

And so forth. I don't want to bore you singing the praises of this kit, but since it does not have a 14 floor, I use my Designer 14. No one would know it's a different line, but I have to be far more careful with it than with the tears because it can so easily overcook the room. When called for, I ride it very lightly on its edges rather than use centered strikes, to avoid too much build up.

Francis, I don't know what a 308 Teardrop is.

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Gregory

I don't get it