speed cobra and bass drum setup, adjustement for best results?

Azathoth1981

Junior Member
Hi everyone

Here is the deal...I know everybody like different feel and different settings... I bought my first drum set and pedal maybe a month ago and I'm not very happy with the feel and response I'm getting. My pedal and bass drum are in a corner and hard to access so I'll continue doing some tests and tweaks but I'd like to know what work for you guys. I'm looking for a setup that would be optimal for death metal songs with lots of long double bass periods.

So currently

Tama silverstar 20 x 18 bass drum with original heads, batter side is rather loose and resonant side is a bit looser

On the speed cobra:
Spring tension is pretty hight

Cobra coil is about in the middle position

my beaters about at 2 o'clock and I have about 1 cm space between the end of the beater and the pedal (with a small bass drum should i leave more to hit more the middle of the drum...)

My seat, I'm a relativelly high with an angle for my that more than 90 degree. I tend to play heel up and have my ankles and toes do the job. My toes touches ruffly the middle of the board.

...Again, I'll keep toying with everything but any pointers or were to start will help. I haven't found anything super efficient / confortable yet :/
 
From what I have read death metal double bass is all about speed which mean very high speed tension , very high head tension , pillows in the drums and trigger. They don't really care about the drum sound by itself , the trigger/module does that part.
It also sounds like your 1cm between beater head and pedal is way too short. Put the thing in the middle of the head and go from there
 
No hard and fast rules on settings. If you're finding things aren't working at higher tension, try a lower tension! Give your pedals a bit more time before you junk them as well. Try out different settings for longer periods of time, don't just play for 10 minutes and keep switching around, or you'll never get used to any feeling.
 
I played death metal. My batter head was fairly tight for rebound, my reso head was rather loose so as not to be so boomy. No pillows or such, but I did put duct tape on the batter and more with a cotton ball on the reso. The spring tension on my pedals were as high as they would go, my seat height put my thighs pretty much parallel to the ground. I would say 75% of the time I was running my feet, changing speeds and going from 16ths to triplets quite regularly.

This is what worked for me. It took a lot of playing and experimenting to find my ideal settings. Once you find your ideal settings, practice is the key to long and fast double kick runs. No setting will do this for you.
 
With my Speedcobras double, I have the spring tension pretty high, almost maxed. The Cobra Coil is at the highest setting, and I have replaced the chain-drive of the pedal with nylon straps. The footboards themselves aren't on a shallow angle, but nor are they very high; that is too detrimental to fast bass patterns. My beaters are set to hit the ~middle of the bass head, with the tension being neither low nor high. My reso head is fairly loose, ported and with a Kickport. As for muffling, I have a relatively large pillow in my 18 x 22 Tama Starclassic Maple bass drum.

With all that in mind, I play mostly rock and hard rock, and get a wonderful rebound while still retaining some of the bass drum's tone (read: almost no tone).

Perfect for me.
 
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