Coatings, revisited

Stroman

Diamond Member
For all those concerned about whose coating is best or most durable, I thought I'd put this picture up. This is an Evans G14 that I used for one 3-hour rehearsal. You can clearly see holes already wearing in the coating, and it is smoother to the touch in the center.

Now, I don't intend to bash ANY company, because my opinion is that coatings are going to wear, it is a natural thing, and that is the experience I've had with Remo, Evans, and Aquarian. I have read on this site countless times about how lousy Remo's coatings are, and how an Evans head would still look brand new, etc. And I just wanted to share that this NOT my experience. I tend to think that those who strongly tout one brand or another tend to have a bit of fanboy-ism going on. (Just kidding. Sort of...) I know we all have preferences and I'm cool with that. My point is, choose the sound you like and don't worry what someone else says about coatings.

For the record, the head sounds great, and I'm totally satisfied with it. I wanted to try a single ply alternative to the Emperor, and thought I'd give the Evans a whirl.
 

Attachments

  • 005a.jpg
    005a.jpg
    32.1 KB · Views: 256
That's the experience I had with Evans' coating: bizarrely, the coating on a G1 chipped off when hit with a drum key while the Coated Ambassador showed no signs of it.

Off the original topic, how do you like the G14? I recently bought an X14 and I can't find a use for it.
 
How do you tune your drums? Low tunings are much more prone to damage like that.

Also why does anyone care whether their coating is there or not. Unless you are playing brushes the coating still sounds good when worn off. And how often does anyone play brushes on the toms?
 
For my purposes, the G14 is fine. It is slightly less bright than a 10mil head, of course, but I'm using it at medium tuning on a Musashi for a blues gig. It is plenty responsive and gives a nice fat backbeat.
 
How do you tune your drums? Low tunings are much more prone to damage like that.

Also why does anyone care whether their coating is there or not. Unless you are playing brushes the coating still sounds good when worn off. And how often does anyone play brushes on the toms?

It's on a snare, so it is at what I consider a medium tuning for snare. It would be in the ridiculously tight range for a tom.

Yes, sweeps with brushes are the one area where the integrity of the coating is important, IMO.
 
Ah yes I see the 8 lugs now. Medium snare tuning shouldn't have damage that bad, maybe you got one of those defective coating heads they had awhile back?
Piece of advice for playing brushes, keep a separate snare for it that you don't hit hard, everyone's coating gets beaten off if you hit hard.
 
I use heads presently from all the Big 3 head manufacturers. Here's my take from over the years.

General robustness in regards to coating in terms of longevity:

1) Aquarian
2) Evans
3) Remo

A few comments about these ratings
The first is that sound preferences don't always line up with how robust the coating is. All of the different brands have different sounding heads all things being the same (i.e. Remo Ambassador vs. Evans G1 vs Aquarian Satin Texture Coat). Even if you get better wear out of a drum head, you may or may not like the sound the head gives in general. That's a personal preference. The only exception to this might be drum corp heads where as far as I can tell, the closer a snare sounds to a table top, the better. The overall judge of quality is whether a head can be torqued up incredibly high with little resonance if any. (Sorry DCI guys if I'm off on this. Just my opinion.)

The second is that I have had personal experience with both Aquarian and Evans heads that were defective or part of a bad run.
Aquarian has been super responsive with personal calls from Roy Burns as soon as he was aware of a problem. Replacement heads were shipped very quickly directly from Aquarian.
Evans has been good about it as well although it has taken a little longer. My recent experience was when I had coating come of a brand new Power Center Reverse Dot (new Level 360) when I removed gaffer tape after recording. Took a few days and a couple of communications to get a response but once I did, they got a replacement to me very quickly.
No problems with any of the replacement heads.
I haven't had a bad experience with Remo in regards to a drum head losing coating quickly but I have read plenty of posts about it. I did have an issue with one of their hi hat clutches which got replaced. IMHO, the service rep was not enthusiastic about doing it but I did get it resolved with no issues.

That's my experiences. In the case of Aquarian and Evans, it felt like these heads were totally exceptions to their normal quality heads. I know this because all of the heads I've had issues with had been used before (with only normal wear progressing)and then used after the incident (with only normal wear progressing).

For the OP: If the head wears quickly down to clear, let Evans know and I'll bet they send a replacement.

HTH

Jim
 
For the OP: If the head wears quickly down to clear, let Evans know and I'll bet they send a replacement. HTH

Jim

Thanks for your detailed post.

I am quite sure Evans would take care of any issues, but that wasn't really the point of my post. I merely wanted to offer another point of view for those who rabidly insist that one brand is far superior to another. I believe they are DIFFERENT, but neither superior nor inferior. That's all.
 
It's my experience too that Aquarian has the most durable coating, at least compared to Remo. I changed both the heads of my main snare and my Sidesnare at the same time. The side snare had an Remo head (Ambassador I believe) and the main a Satin Aquarian.

The Ambassador lost it's coating WAY earlier than the Aquarian, not to mention the side snare wasn't being played as intensively as the main. Both sound great though.
 
It's my experience too that Aquarian has the most durable coating, at least compared to Remo. I changed both the heads of my main snare and my Sidesnare at the same time. The side snare had an Remo head (Ambassador I believe) and the main a Satin Aquarian.

The Ambassador lost it's coating WAY earlier than the Aquarian, not to mention the side snare wasn't being played as intensively as the main. Both sound great though.

Aquarian's coating is insane. My Super-2 tom heads show no coating wear at all at the 4 month mark, and I play a lot.
 
Aquarian coatings are unbelievable. I have Aquarian heads that are several years old and the coating is still perfect.
 
Back
Top