Emperor Weight too much?

[Cymbalrider]

Well, I still will need new heads in the near future and I'm pretty much sure I want to take another chance with Remo. Perhaps I already found all the defective ones. Anyway, I was thinking either Coated Ambasadors for everything but then I got to playing on my college's kit (a Rogers relic from the 70s or so with clear Emperor heads and a g2 coated snare) and now I'm thinking about Coated Emperors for the toms and bass. I wouldn't do a 2 ply on the snare though. My toms are 10x8, 12x10, 14x11, 16x13 and I'm just curious what coated emperors would sound like on them. I figured they could keep them from being too high pitched and bright sounding like the Ambassadors would do. Or would these toms be too small for such a heavy head? The bass is 22x18 and I was thinking of a Coated Emperor over a Coated Ambassador (The Fiberskyn powerstroke heads I have now are too controlled). The thought of Emperor heads just came into my head today...

[fourstringdrums]

The emperor, or any 2 ply head will be fine on those sizes. You'll get a rounder, more focused tone with less overtones. You may want to stick with an ambassador on the 10" in order to have more even tone. A 10" can sometimes sound unbalanced with a 2 ply head.

[harryconway]

Emperor over Ambassador is a classic combo. If you liked the sound of the 70 Rogers kit (Keller made shells, I think) with clear heads, why not give clear heads a try? I've gone with clear Remo heads for some 28 years. Another good combo. is Controlled Sound over Ambassador.

[Cymbalrider]

The clear heads have too much plastic attack for me though. The old Rogers kit doesn't even have a head or rim on the bottom of the tom and the 16" has a diplomat for a res. It has a Yamaha smooth white res head for the bass and I believe a marching bass batter head with a falam patch on it. Strange kit here. The mounts on it are left handed or the whole thing is backwards as the mount for a cymbal arm is on the left and the tom plate is on the right. However there is a post mount w/ a plate in the middle of the drum with a pearl tom mount holding the tom so some work has been done over the years. I just notice the deeper sound coming from those toms and I figure those emperor heads are behind it. That 22x14 has more of a boom than my 22x18 so I must learn why. I figure its the heads pretty much leaving it wide open except it has one of those muffling foam/plastic ring things inside.

[Skitch]

Well, I still will need new heads in the near future and I'm pretty much sure I want to take another chance with Remo. Perhaps I already found all the defective ones. Anyway, I was thinking either Coated Ambasadors for everything but then I got to playing on my college's kit (a Rogers relic from the 70s or so with clear Emperor heads and a g2 coated snare) and now I'm thinking about Coated Emperors for the toms and bass. I wouldn't do a 2 ply on the snare though. My toms are 10x8, 12x10, 14x11, 16x13 and I'm just curious what coated emperors would sound like on them. I figured they could keep them from being too high pitched and bright sounding like the Ambassadors would do. Or would these toms be too small for such a heavy head? The bass is 22x18 and I was thinking of a Coated Emperor over a Coated Ambassador (The Fiberskyn powerstroke heads I have now are too controlled). The thought of Emperor heads just came into my head today...

Quite a few of the touring rock drummers (Bryan Hitt - smooth white, Tris Imboden - coated) are using the Emperors right now. Why not try an Emperor on just one tom, not the snare and see what you think?

Mike

http://www.mikemccraw.com
http://www.dominoretroplate.com

http://www.youtube.com/drummermikemccraw
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[harryconway]

What kind of kit do you play?

[fijjibo]

The Emperors should be fine for those sizes.

Just tune them carefully so they dont choke up.

Maybe tune the Reso a bit higher than the batter to be safe.

[Cymbalrider]

The kit is a Mapex Pro M so the maple doesn't have any weird tones really, the small sizes are still a bit weird though. I have Fiberskyn Ambassdors on there now and the warmth is nice but the attack is gone. I thought about Renaissance heads too but from what I can remember of seeing them on snares, concert basses, tympani, etc is that they ring a lot but don't have much attack either. They need to make those Vintage A heads in other sizes. They are two-ply but one ply is only 3mil instead of two 7mil plies. They probably won't do it though.

[tommapex]

I don't want to throw a monkey wrench into the gears, but here I go anyway. I have the same kit in the same sizes. I'm using Aquarian Super-2 coated heads (2 ply) on the tom batters with Aquarian Classic Clear resos. They have a nice warm rounded sound with moderate sustain and very little overtones. IMHO the stick response is nice when tuned between low to moderate tension. I have the batter and reso tuned the same. They are my favorite heads to date.

[Cymbalrider]

I haven't had a good experience with Aquarian heads. The first one I got was a Modern Vintage medium which I put on my maple snare. Great head very durable, nice sound although it wasn't anything special other than just another coated head but it was twice the price. I tried the texture coated heads, all of which did not have a good sound and all shed their coating in a few weeks. This was the weirdest thing too, the Aquarian page says that the Satin finish coating is not supposed to chip off but that is exactly what it did. I have never seen coated heads actually start flaking apart before these. I've seen Remo heads wear down but never just start having the coating come off in white dust every time you played. Aquarian heads cost more than Remo and I have yet to see any reason why. Their guaranteed coating is the only coated heads I've seen that actually chipped away and this happened on 5 heads. I have one on my Acrolite snare which had an Ambassador on it for several years and now it sounds bad. Evans has the best heads quality wise but I still prefer the sound of Remos so I'm still thinking Emperor heads for toms and bass and Ambassador for snare. They are also pretty easy to find should I need a replacement in a hurry, unlike the exotic Fiberskyns and so on.

[tommapex]

I haven't had a good experience with Aquarian heads. The first one I got was a Modern Vintage medium which I put on my maple snare. Great head very durable, nice sound although it wasn't anything special other than just another coated head but it was twice the price. I tried the texture coated heads, all of which did not have a good sound and all shed their coating in a few weeks. This was the weirdest thing too, the Aquarian page says that the Satin finish coating is not supposed to chip off but that is exactly what it did. I have never seen coated heads actually start flaking apart before these. I've seen Remo heads wear down but never just start having the coating come off in white dust every time you played. Aquarian heads cost more than Remo and I have yet to see any reason why. Their guaranteed coating is the only coated heads I've seen that actually chipped away and this happened on 5 heads. I have one on my Acrolite snare which had an Ambassador on it for several years and now it sounds bad. Evans has the best heads quality wise but I still prefer the sound of Remos so I'm still thinking Emperor heads for toms and bass and Ambassador for snare. They are also pretty easy to find should I need a replacement in a hurry, unlike the exotic Fiberskyns and so on.

That's interesting. I've had the exact opposite experience. I've never had an Aquarian coated head chip or flake, but I've have many Remo coated heads do both. The latest was a Remo PS3 that I had on my snare before I switched to an Aquarian Focus-X. The PS3 started flaking in less than a week.

[drumbuddy105133]

i play a yamaha stage custom at my lesson in fusion sizes with coated emperor heads. they sound great to me. it makes the 14 x 11 sound much deeper. i dont think the 10" tom sounds unbalanced with an emperor head on, it sounds awesome. maybe its just the kit, i dont know. anyway they sound great.

[Cymbalrider]

I keep reading more anti-Remo stuff, and it's bothering me again. Oh well, I've got nothing else to turn to. I've had Evans g2s and they sounded bad and felt bad but were very durable I must say. I've tried Aquarian and 5 of 5 heads were defective or something since they are supposed to last and sound great. I've tried Remo and got a few great sounding heads and several defective shaped ones that still sounded ok. So Remo is the better of the choices really...or is it?

[ThroneAmbition]

I play similar size drums, 10x8, 12x10, 14x14, 16x16, 22x18. I have Coated Emperors over Coated Ambassadors on all except the snare, Coated Ambassador over Hazy Ambassador. They sound great and, so far, no problems with the coating flaking. I do use 12 oz. of Polyester Fiberfill in the bass for dampening purposes.