What choice of heads for Tama Imperialstar

Brando667

Junior Member
Hey guys. I've recently replaced my Roland V-Drums with an acoustic kit. I purchased the Tama Imperialstar, and I'm loving it so far! I will be replacing the stock heads today and i'm having a little bit of trouble choosing which ones to get. I play metal and rock mostly, and I love a clean sounding kit. I am choosing between Remo, Evans, and Aquarian heads. also not sure if I should change the resonant head to a brand other than the stock ones when I change the batter side, too. And yes, this is my first kit, and first post.

I do have a Drum Dial, so if you have any suggestions on which tension to try out with which heads, let me know! Thanks!

The shells are 6 ply, 100% poplar.

Drums: 18"x22" bass drum, 8"x10" & 9"x12" toms, 14"x16" floor tom, 5"x14" snare drum.
 
Hey guys. I've recently replaced my Roland V-Drums with an acoustic kit. I purchased the Tama Imperialstar, and I'm loving it so far! I will be replacing the stock heads today and i'm having a little bit of trouble choosing which ones to get. I play metal and rock mostly, and I love a clean sounding kit. I am choosing between Remo, Evans, and Aquarian heads. also not sure if I should change the resonant head to a brand other than the stock ones when I change the batter side, too. And yes, this is my first kit, and first post.

I do have a Drum Dial, so if you have any suggestions on which tension to try out with which heads, let me know! Thanks!

The shells are 6 ply, 100% poplar.

Drums: 18"x22" bass drum, 8"x10" & 9"x12" toms, 14"x16" floor tom, 5"x14" snare drum.

I have an old Tama Swingstar that was my first kit. I think it's similar to your Imperialstar. It's not a bad kit with the right heads and good tuning.
I swapped out the original heads (all of them) for Aquarians. Response2 heads for the toms with Classic Clears on the reso side and a Super Kick III plus a full Regulator on the bass drum.

Sorry, I'm not that familiar with the Drum Dial. Does it come with any recommended settings in the instructions?
 
G2 coated over clear Genera reso, or Emperors coated over clear Diplomats, Not sure what would be the Aquarian equivalent. You're on your own with the snare drum!
 
I have an old Tama Swingstar that was my first kit. I think it's similar to your Imperialstar. It's not a bad kit with the right heads and good tuning.
I swapped out the original heads (all of them) for Aquarians. Response2 heads for the toms with Classic Clears on the reso side and a Super Kick III plus a full Regulator on the bass drum.

Sorry, I'm not that familiar with the Drum Dial. Does it come with any recommended settings in the instructions?

It does, but they're base on other sizes, mine are not on the chart. i have an evans EMAD batter head on my kick drum right now i forgot to mention, with the thin tama reso. i need to take a pillow out, its sounding quite dead.

Do you tune the reso to the same tension as the batter side on your toms and bass?

G2 coated over clear Genera reso, or Emperors coated over clear Diplomats, Not sure what would be the Aquarian equivalent. You're on your own with the snare drum!

the snare drum seems to be my biggest problem!
I cannot get the snare to sound good. i get too much buzz, or just an off pitch. i am making sure the lugs are the same tension, i just cant seem to find a good sound. It's probably just me, though. Any tips?
Thanks for the suggestion!
 
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Try a Evans Genera Dry on the snare, that might help with some of the wonky overtones.
 
I would do the genera dry with a thick G12 reso. That will tame it a little. You're gonna have tone and a little ring. Make sure your snares are even and not favoring one side or the other. Tune the reso first kinda high, and the batter a little higher with the snares about medium tension. That's how i tune all my snare drums. but I like the ring and tones so i use an ambassador battter and a diplomat reso or equivalent 7 mil head. G12 is single ply but 12 mil thick. I use a genera dry on my old Gretsch snare and it seems better than the ambassador heads for that particular drum. so it really depends on the drum's ccharacter and what you want to get out of it. Experiment.
 
It does, but they're base on other sizes, mine are not on the chart. i have an evans EMAD batter head on my kick drum right now i forgot to mention, with the thin tama reso. i need to take a pillow out, its sounding quite dead.

Do you tune the reso to the same tension as the batter side on your toms and bass?



the snare drum seems to be my biggest problem!
I cannot get the snare to sound good. i get too much buzz, or just an off pitch. i am making sure the lugs are the same tension, i just cant seem to find a good sound. It's probably just me, though. Any tips?
Thanks for the suggestion!

Everyone is a little different. I prefer my resos a little higher than the batter side. Pretty close to each other though.

I never liked the snare on my Swingstar that much either. I used an Aqauarian Focus-X head on it; it has a little muffling ring around the perimeter than got ride of most of the annoying overtones. When I played that kit I usually just took my Supra.
 
I usually tune my resos a bit higher than the batters, however on my Silverstar kit it seemed to work better when they were equal.
 
I have a Tama tension watch. Same thing as the drum dial. The recommendations for my dial are resos 5 higher than batter on all the drums except 16 FT where they recommend both the same. I used to have a pdp x7 poplar kit and used those tuning recommendations with Remo pinstripes and the thin stock resos and the toms sounded really good. I have a brass snare and a Starclassic birch snare and I've had several heads on them and to my ears the Aquarian high energy sounds the best but I don't tune them to a high crack. I like a fatter sound from my snare. I have found that tuning my snare heads the same top and bottom gives me the best sound but you can experiment with that. I have an Aquarian superkick ll on my bass drum which should be similar to the Emad. The dial recommendation for bass is 40 reso and 35 batter and I like that sound a lot. I use a kickport and nothing in the shell for muffling. The Superkick ll provides plenty of muffling.
 
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