On drums...

Continued from Snarewire:

Ron said...
I've never considered switching out strainers...I was thinking rather of how parallel action designs such as Premier or Sonor... or extended wire designs such as Radio King or Leedy Broadway... affect response.
At least into the 60s, Gretsch offered a choice of 16 or 20 strand wire sets. Even the dreaded 42 strand set was available, as it still is.
In re head choice, when one is dealing with pre-1960 drums, which would have originally come with calf, unless one commits to the expense and inconvenience... to some... of calf, no matter what the choice, from so many possibilities, it will produce a response more or less different from calf.
I'm certainly not motivated to switch out the factory mounted coated Amb batter or Amb reso on my Phonics reissue... I can't imagine improving that drum... but it's the only (virtually) new snare drum I've acquired in 45 years.
In re resos, going from Dip to Amb to Emp produces a dramatic difference in timbre. A thicker reso produces a darker tone and reduces the sharpness of snare response.
I have Emp resos on my two 4" snares and a Dip reso on my 8" Premier.
All of my other drums have Amb resos.
This gets back to the idea of going for the ideal sound in one's head, even though each drum still remains unique.
Than there are the issues of ambient acoustics, musical context, how the snare blends with the set... all these can and should influence one's choices...

MARCH 7, 2010 10:47 AM
Salty said...
I have often wondered how parallel strainers really affect a snare differently. Less than I would have hoped, I think, and apparently most manufacturers think it is greater expense than it is worth.

Your reso choices certainly bear up the impulse to make all snares pursue the single ideal sound!

My latest 8 deep Sonor Desinger snare came with Puresound wires mounted, and I really like those compared to the Sonor wires mounted on the 6.5 deep Designer snare.

Calf is a luxury. I used to be the sort of person who would own tube type stereos, vinyl disks rather than CDs, and so forth, but at some point I switched, because who has time to be fooling with tubes, taking them in for testing, trying to find a supply of no longer produced ones, and who can be bothered to clean vinyl, and flip it over in the middle of a work?

Calf has got to be a labor of love, one entirely worth the time, mind you, but I don't want to discover how nice a calf head might sound. No, I don't !

_________________
Gregory

Not all calf is equal. You can get lucky... or not!
This is the response from the seller of my recently acquired 3 ply Gretsch 'Progressive Jazz' set upon my expressing my gratitude for the quality of the calf heads:

Hi Ron, thank you for the message, this means a lot to me because they were hard to let go of, but that is a necessary part of life sometimes. I think the secret to the calf heads is seating them properly. You may have your own method; here is the way I do it: Fill up your bathtub with a few inches of warm water. Set the head in the water upside down. Do not let the hoop get wet. If you do the tuck will tend to loosen around the hoop and the head won't be right. Alternatively you can wet the head using a washcloth. wet it inside and out, but don't let the hoop or the tuck get wet. The object here is to render the skin pliable. Watch the head for a few minutes until it has absorbed moisture and has become soft and pliable, like the skin that it is. Again keep the hoop and tuck dry. Only the part which is inside the diameter of the wrap should be pliable. Set the head aside for a few more minutes to let the moisture equalize -no big rush to the process, in fact taking time is better. Then, (this is my original idea) take some wax paper and place it over the bearing edges, (if you are doing a bass you will need to overlap 2 pieces.) The wax paper keeps the moisture out of the plys. Gently place the softened head on the drum and press it down gently. Then set the rim on and install the bolts to finger tight. Judge by eye or by measuring if you have the rim on evenly. You are essentially creating a custom formed head, so judge where you want it to be, minus a little for the tensioning that you will do later. Only do one head at a time in order to let the moisture out of the drum. Leave the head off the other side while the wet side drys. (humidity inside drum =very bad). Set the drum aside for a day or two. (Patience is required.) You can tear a circle out of the wax paper inside of the drum to let the moisture out of the underside of the wet head. After the head is dry and hard again make a little pencil mark on the hoop above some landmark such as the mute knob, so you can take off the head if you need to and it will still be fitted properly. When tuning a drum I like to tap it to find the shell's natural frequency and then tune to that. I often like the resonant head about a major 3rd above the batter. However it seems everybody has their own way, for their own sound. Thank you for the nice message! Best regards, -Michael

Interestingly, essentially the same set, though with a legendary provenance, was recently sold by Steve Maxwell for $45,000!
A drummer friend who had played it, said of the calf heads, "They're untunable... they sound awful!"
Btw, we both know the consignor.
http://www.maxwelldrums.com/worlds-rare ... -1076.html

Ron

_________________
Cliff

River City Trio

What if we did all have the same opinions?