How often do you change your bottom heads?

You're supposed to change the bottom heads? Now you tell me.
 
Rarely on the toms...............every three to four years unless something crazy happens or I just want to change a head combo to see if it sounds better

On my main snare, about once a year at the most.
 
TColumbia37 said:
In my playing, there are always those couple tension rods that will come loose under regular playing. When they come loose, I just tighten them back up, but if that doesn't sound right, I'll tune the drum. Otherwise, I tune before each gig, which for me can be anywhere from once every few days to once every month depending on the current schedule.

Ever since I got a Tune Bot, drum tuning has been an absolute breeze, so it takes almost no time to check over the tuning and fix it before I put the drum in the bag when I'm packing up for a gig.
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Great advice. Ya, I just never really think about the reso heads too much. I guess because it's not the business end of the drum (so-to-speak), it's easy to forget about, but I should check them more often, and especially before gigs. Thanks.
 
Evans once advertised a good rule of thumb on tom resonants: Every four changes of batter heads. Which really means I should have changed my resos a very long time ago, but never got around to it. I finally put some coated Ambassadors on the bottoms of my birch Masters and it was a huge help from those six-year-old stock clear Ambassadors. Now I have to get some coated Ambassadors for the tops...

Billy Ward once suggested in Modern Drummer to change snare-side heads once a year. I haven't been religious about it, but I tend to go roughly a year between snare-side exchanges.
 
I try to do it twice a year minimum. More if the drums have been transported to gigs on a regular basis. I've found that resos will definitely lose their plasticity and become more brittle if the drums have spent time outside in cold temperatures, even briefly. Once that happens, they might look perfectly fine, but you'll lose all the low end out of them.
 
I got 18 years on my resonant tom heads. I'm starting to have tuning issues, so I'm thinking of swapping them out (clear G1s).

Also have an 18 year old factory front head that I cut a port out (6" off-center). Do you think it would make much difference if I replaced it too?

Snare side gets swapped out once a year.
 
I finally tuned up my bottom heads. They were already tuned a little higher, but I went about a half turn higher and then matched pitches around the edge at the rods. You know, a normal tuning job. I am surprised how much difference that made in my tom sound. It sounds so much better. I like these Tama power toms more than ever now!

These heads are almost a year old. From what I can tell, they are still in perfect shape. I couldn't imagine changing them out just because they are a year old. That would be silly. Even though it's under tension, I seriously doubt that Mylar can degrade that quickly. Not after what I just heard. No, these bottom heads (Genera reso) are doing just fine.
 
Midnite Zephyr said:
These heads are almost a year old. From what I can tell, they are still in perfect shape. I couldn't imagine changing them out just because they are a year old. That would be silly. Even though it's under tension, I seriously doubt that Mylar can degrade that quickly. Not after what I just heard. No, these bottom heads (Genera reso) are doing just fine.
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Yeah, it really depends on the situation. Sometime's they'll last quite some time. Mine aren't so fortunate; living in the midwest and gigging pretty frequently, they're subject to lots of sudden climate change and they're tossed around a lot.
 
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