Hard Rock and Metal Heads

joeydrums

Junior Member
Hi everyone I'm new to drumming and picked up a Tama Imperial Star drum kit today. The stock heads on it have an extreme amount of ring. When I play some rock and metal songs on them it basically sounds like a latin festival. I have been looking a lot at Evans heads and would like to get some of them. I was wondering what type of Evans heads would be good for me. Thanks
 
Look at Evans EC2, they will give you a more controlled sound. Not sure if they are available in the 360 version yet.
 
Well, the heads that come with the Imperialstar are garbage. But you can't just get new heads and expect them to sound good. You need to know how to tune, a topic that has been discussed to death here (use the search function to see :) ) and numerous other places on the internet. If you are just starting out tuning then I think you might benefit from the relative ease of tuning pre-muffled heads (like Pinstripes, EC2s, etc.). However, make sure you get new resonant side (the bottom side) heads for all of your drums too! They are arguably more important to good tone than batter heads.

Since you requested Evans, and it's 1 am here, I'll just give you a table of a very general purpose set of Evans heads with EC2s. Don't forget Remo and Aquarian though!

Snare: Coated G1 (average), Coated Power Center Reverse Dot (more 'pop'), Coated G2 (thicker), or EC Reverse Dot (thickest) batter head with a Hazy 300 resonant side

Toms: Clear EC2 batter heads with Clear G1 resonant

Kick: Clear EMAD (very easy to tune but very limited in options as well, for more versatility, get an EQ4) or Clear EQ4 batter side with a black EQ3 Resonant resonant head

Hope this helps.
 
I have a feeling that the sound you're looking for out of your toms will be found with Aquarian Performance 2 clear batter Tom heads. Very dampinged, very easy to tune. I would only recommend these for very hard Rock and/or metal. A lot of people would consider them to have too much of a dead thuddy sound, but in my mind, that's perfect for metal. If you wanted to go with something not quite as dead sounding, the Aquarian Super 2 clear batter heads with built in studio X-ring would be an ideal choice.

Also, thinner reso heads for the bottom of your toms will make the drums more punchy with less ringing and less resonance IMO.

If your local drum store doesn't carry these heads, you can always order them online( musiciansfriend, amazon, ebay, etc...).
 
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