Larry
"Uncle Larry"
Hey all, I did an experiment the other day and wanted to share. I've always had die cast rims on all my toms. I got my first set of DW's in June, they come with regular rims and I was always curious to see how the die casts would affect things. So I performed an experiment. First I got the Drum Dial and got the bottom head of my 10 x 9 tom at 80 at all lugs, then I tensioned the top head to 72. I then recorded about 1 minute of me hitting the tom using a Rode NT1A mic (condenser) from a distance of about 3 feet.
Then I changed the batter hoop only to the die cast, tensioned the same head to 72 again, and recorded another minute on a different track.
Then I listened through a pair of Mackie SRM450's, A/Bing between the 2 tracks.
On a scale of 1 - 10, to my ears the difference was a 1
I had to really listen hard for any differences, but basically, they sounded the same.
On the tom hits that I let sustain, I felt that the regular rims had slightly more shell overtones than the die cast, but again it was hard to discern.
I didn't change the reso hoop for the experiment.
I thought for sure I would hear a noticeable difference, but I couldn't. This finding surprised me, I thought I would notice a big difference, but I didn't.
I wonder if I changed the reso hoop to a die cast if that would have changed anything dramatically. I'm doubting it.
Then I changed the batter hoop only to the die cast, tensioned the same head to 72 again, and recorded another minute on a different track.
Then I listened through a pair of Mackie SRM450's, A/Bing between the 2 tracks.
On a scale of 1 - 10, to my ears the difference was a 1
I had to really listen hard for any differences, but basically, they sounded the same.
On the tom hits that I let sustain, I felt that the regular rims had slightly more shell overtones than the die cast, but again it was hard to discern.
I didn't change the reso hoop for the experiment.
I thought for sure I would hear a noticeable difference, but I couldn't. This finding surprised me, I thought I would notice a big difference, but I didn't.
I wonder if I changed the reso hoop to a die cast if that would have changed anything dramatically. I'm doubting it.