New Snare..

[B.R.O. THER ?]

I'm looking for a snare drum with that "Gospel" sound...any suggestions?

[GRUNTERSDAD]

You are going to have to describe the "gospel sound"!!!

[punkdrummer1]

I'm geussing something "fat" sounding?

[Les Ismore]

Praise the lord!

What needs to be remembered in the drum scriptures is that any drum can be made to sound like any other. This is not to say that "All drums are created equal" or "Thou shall not covet thy neighbors snare drum sound".

I see it more like "Yee shall not take the sound of your snare drum in vain". With the right heads and tuning you can perform miracles, any snare drum should be able to produce (or come heavenly close to) any sound you want.

Piccolo's can sound 'FAT' and 8 inchers can sound 'poppy', its all in the tuning and the heads on-toppy. Don't give up on what you got if you don't need to, is basically what I'm preaching here. With the right tuning and head combo, any snare should be able to 'walk on water'.

Seek tuning and pursue it. It is easier for a camel to tune a snare drum than it is for a rich man to buy the right snare drum sound.

Peace.

[The Ploughman]

Praise the lord!

What needs to be remembered in the drum scriptures is that any drum can be made to sound like any other. This is not to say that "All drums are created equal" or "Thou shall not covet thy neighbors snare drum sound".

I see it more like "Yee shall not take the sound of your snare drum in vain". With the right heads and tuning you can perform miracles, any snare drum should be able to produce (or come heavenly close to) any sound you want.

Piccolo's can sound 'FAT' and 8 inchers can sound 'poppy', its all in the tuning and the heads on-toppy. Don't give up on what you got if you don't need to, is basically what I'm preaching here. With the right tuning and head combo, any snare should be able to 'walk on water'.

Seek tuning and pursue it. It is easier for a camel to tune a snare drum than it is for a rich man to buy the right snare drum sound.

Peace.

THAT post was genuinely original and rich. Loved it!!

[hyperdrummer]

With the right heads and tuning you can perform miracles, any snare drum should be able to produce (or come heavenly close to) any sound you want.



I agree that something, a least close to miracles can be produced, but not to the point of getting any sound out of any drum. Not on a snare drum anyway. Either that, or my ears are much more sensitive than yours. A snare drum will usually reveal how much quality a drum set is made from long before the toms will, providing it's a truly "matching" snare drum. It will be difficult, if possible to get a similar sound from a 6ply/7.5mm, (1.25mm thick sheets,) 14x5.5 poplar snare with 3/16 deep beds will sound nothing like a 10ply/7.9mm, (1/32 thick sheets,) 14x5.5 American maple snare with 3/32 deep beds. Yeah, you will be able to tell they are both snare drums, but the tone will always be noticeably different between these two.

No offense.

To the original question, You will have to elaborate on what you mean by "gospel sound." Describe some bands or music you have in mind, and we'll try to take it from there. Let me know what you're doing and I'll try to help. Me being a Christian myself, I try to help out Churches, praise bands, etc. I can probably put you something together cheaper than you can go out and by it for, providing it's an apples/apples comparison. I even donated a brand new custom 15ply snare recently. I guess it's the holid,,,,,or uh, Christmas spirit.

[The Ploughman]

I think before this thread is done, coolaid will be served.


.

[B.R.O. THER ?]

Thank you for the suggestions everyone! Much appreciated.

I'm looking for something with the sound of Eric Moore's snare, Thomas Pridgen or something of that nature. If you haven't heard them (which I'm sure most of you have) look them up on youtube. My Tama Birch Starclassic snare chokes when I tune it really tight with an Evans Coated G2..

[The Ploughman]

Here is what I suggest for your Starclassic. What did it come factory equipped with? What type of heads, top and bottom, snare wires, and hoops? Return to that, not necessarily factory logo replacement heads, but the production equals or something very similar. And for tuning.......... the key word in your post is "tight" and "choked" Im thinkin youve got it cranked up to the point of stress and its not really tuned at all. And Im assuming your throw is cranked up to the point you have to force it to engage. Loosen that puppy up and let it sing. Bring it back to somewhere within its design specs. It will produce the sound you want. The answer mostly is going to rest with you, and getting it worked out with your drum. But "tight" and "choked" are good indications youve passed the place you will ever find your sound.

[Les Ismore]

Thank you for the suggestions everyone! Much appreciated.

I'm looking for something with the sound of Eric Moore's snare, Thomas Pridgen or something of that nature. If you haven't heard them (which I'm sure most of you have) look them up on youtube. My Tama Birch Starclassic snare chokes when I tune it really tight with an Evans Coated G2..

Have faith Brother, resist temptation to be led astray. With the proper heads an tuning, your Starclassic birch can easily match the sounds you hear coming from Eric and Thomas' drums. Your Starclassic is not lacking in any way, shape or form, unless its damaged. "As to thy snare drum, the leopard can change his spots".

Drummers who hear/see Eric play for example don't know (if they don't know) what ply his snare drum is, they don't know how the edges/beds are cut, however they do know to a great degree as to how the heads are tuned. In the case of both the drummers mentioned, its a 'tight' tuning and it should be easy to copy their sounds as such.

With You Tube vid I saw of Eric, I would say he's got very close to a 'choked' sound going on. Don't forget, you might sit behind Eric's set and not like his snare drum sound at all, even to the point of walking away and thinking your snare sounds better. There's somewhat of an 'audiological illusion' going on when you hear recorded drum sounds, a little like looking at the sun in a glass and thinking you see the sun itself.

My first post would have been more correctly worded as "any drum can be made to sound like any other sound you hear." Drawing again from the scriptures, when it comes to sound, it could easily be said that 90% is born of tuning/heads and 10% is begotten from the drum shell.

"How agree the meatal and wood shell together"? It is also quite easy to make a cheap drum with proper heads and tuning sound better than a high-end drum without. We're not talking here about 'all things being equal', because they're usually not, and in the case of matching some drum sounds, they shouldn't be. "As a man hear in his head, so should his snare drum be."

[tomk]

I believe that "Gospel" sound, that tight, poppy sound in reality, can be attributed to 13'' snare drums, or very shallow 14'' snare drums, tuned very tightly. Atleast that's with my experience with those type of drums.

[danander11]

Thank you for the suggestions everyone! Much appreciated.

I'm looking for something with the sound of Eric Moore's snare, Thomas Pridgen or something of that nature. If you haven't heard them (which I'm sure most of you have) look them up on youtube. My Tama Birch Starclassic snare chokes when I tune it really tight with an Evans Coated G2..

OK, IF I understand (correctly that is), what you are looking for.. my suggestion would be get a 5x12 DW Collectors series snare and crank it up... Light snare side head, and a Remo Renaissance RA batter head. (the RA stands for Renaissance Ambassador). I use this drum for a side-snare and it absolutely rocks at a lot of different tunings, but I love it tight and dry, and still sounding like a drum. I like the 12 because it doesn't have that "thin" sound of a piccolo, but has body to it whilst being tuned high...

A lot of what you end up with will depend on head selection and tuning, but this is a great shell to work with. One thing I might add is to look closely at your snare bed relief on the bottom bearing edge. If it's too shallow, the drum will choke. Then again, if it's too deep, you'll go through heads like they were free... Get the shell.. Have a good drum builder go over it and check things for you.

I think this will get you what you want.

Merry Christmas...

[danander11]

I believe that "Gospel" sound, that tight, poppy sound in reality, can be attributed to 13'' snare drums, or very shallow 14'' snare drums, tuned very tightly. Atleast that's with my experience with those type of drums.

I dunno about that.. the 13" edge I use as a main snare sounds really fat and big... but it's also 6" deep... Height x diameter, head selection, tuning.. most drums can get a few different sounds out of them just by changing the variables.. Shell depth is a biggie in terms of sound. (at least in my experience).

Merry Christmas!

[hyperdrummer]

If Eric Moore uses a 14" snare, ( which he does for the most part,) and he likes that sound, wouldn't make sense to encourage him to use a 14" drum too?

Man, people believe too many myths around here.

[danander11]

If Eric Moore uses a 14" snare, ( which he does for the most part,) and he likes that sound, wouldn't make sense to encourage him to use a 14" drum too?

Man, people believe too many myths around here.

You mean like Santa? Someone told me he's not real... but I know better.

To answer the first part, he's looking for a sound.. I would imagine that if somone wanted to just copy someone elses gear, they would do so.

Merry Christmas!

[hyperdrummer]

I would imagine that if somone wanted to just copy someone elses gear, they would do so.

The gear in this case produces the sound. Copying gear would be a good starting point. People that want a Bonham sound get a Bonham kit and so-on. You won't find someone in the Bonham category down sizing to a bee-bop kit or regular 10-12-14-20 fusion set with clear G2's trying to achieve this classic Ludwig tone.

I'm not trying to be offensive, but I just took trip to GC to tap on a few different drums. I do this quite often to see how my drums par up to the competition. And I think I heard some of the most distinct tones coming from different drums than ever before. There where two OCP snares there, and they truly sounded so much different than other snares of similar size and wood type. The OCP snares sounded so choked and well, to be plain about it, terrible. I always was under the impression they used Keller shells, but if they are Keller, then it's got to be some of their rejects. I highly doubt they are Keller. The shells where of poor quality just by looking at them, some of the the core plys didn't remain the same color the entire circumference of the shell revealing possible heart-wood and/or knots, and the sound reflected the selection of wood. I hope this is not typical of OCP. And how many drummers would look at the Trick strainer/butt, die-cast hoops, unique lugs, the other oos and ahhs, and then come to the conclusion it's a good drum? But all in all it doesn't fulfill it's original purpose..... Good sound.

But I said all that to say this; Gear type will make a noticeable impact on the sound you're after. You can't separate the two. I'm not saying there's no two that sound alike, but there are much more that don't sound alike than do. And if we are looking for an Eric Moore type sound, then it would be a good idea to start looking at his type of drum gear I think.

Take this with good intentions, Merry Christmas to you guys too, and God bless you all this coming year!