How tight can you safely tune a skin up?

How tight can you safely tune a skin up? I guess this depends on the skin and the shell, but I am wondering how tight I can safely tune up reso heads on my floor toms. Using a drum dial like guage I currently have them almost as tight as my snare reso skin (wow that's tight) and I am wondering how easy it is to damage my wooden shells. Thanks!

Jesse

Why tune it so high?

Not sure on that one, but if you tune a head up past a certain tension it chokes the sound of the drum which would be before the pressure threshold for the drum for sure, so there'd be literally no point in tuning that high. I have the resonants pretty high on my toms with the batters pitched low, tried it after watching the Jeff Ocheltree video about Bonhams kit on youtube and it works a treat!

Out of curiosity what shells do you have? material, guage, company etc.

Hope all is well,

Kev

Doug Masters said:

Why tune it so high?

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Like Kev mentioned, I too got the idea from a Jeff Ocheltree video... http://www.drummerworld.com/Videos/johnbonhamocheltree1.html and start watching at about the 3:00 mark to see how John Bonham supposedly tuned his reso heads.

As for my kit, I am playing Ludwig Centennials (last years model in green sparkle). They are 6-ply maple shells, except for the bass drum which is 8-ply. I don't know the exact shell thickness though.

A quality shell should be able to hold a tension higher than the tension it takes to choke a drumhead. You have no use for tuning it up that high. It's a non-issue.

don't tune too high or you'll bend your hoops

uniin said:

don't tune too high or you'll bend your hoops

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...or strip out your lug nuts, or snap your tension rods, or break your lug casings, or pull the lug casing screws through the shell, or...

Tuning your drums that high completely takes them out of the shells resonant range.

Now besides maybe damaging your heads because of the extreme pull on the Mylar across the bearing edges from over exertion, you may never get the sound you want out of your drums using those same heads. Mylar does stretch, the hoops that the Mylar is attached to can warp very easily if the tension wasn't exactly the same around the circumference of the head when you tightened them down.

I would, at this point, also check the tightness of the lugs on your shells. The shells can take that pressure, but heads won't because they will try to retain that deformation.

Dennis