G2 clear vs. coated. Can you hear a difference?

iamjohn

Senior Member
I was at a drum shop yesterday and played a Gretsch 6 ply maple kit with G2 clears on the toms. The kit sounded phenomenal.

I have G2 coated heads on my toms now. My current kit is Birch/Basswood so it's a different deal. I am waiting on a set of Ludwig Classic Maples and I'm trying to decide what heads to put on them.

Without being able to A/B these heads side by side live, I feel like I hear more tone in the clears. On Evans website you can hear a clip of each of their heads. Doing that, I can't hear any difference between the clear and coated heads.

My question is: do these heads sound the same and it's just a matter of aesthetics whether you go with clear vs coated? Or is there really a difference?
 
As a general rule, clear heads have more attack and coated heads have more warmth with less attack.
 
I can hear the coated/clear difference on the evans sight(matches my ears in real life). Coating is a subtle form of muting, that's what it really is.

Snare drums are usually tuned tight(bright) and metal coils(more bright), so coated head tends to bring down that a bit(the bright harshness) and gives it further difference from the snare side head (which helps "contain" the drum a little more), otherwise clear heads would be way more common on snare drums (after all no coating to wear off).
 
There's definitely a difference in sound between clear and coated heads (single or double-ply). The coating often provides a "warmer" sound which is really caused by the attenuation of certain higher frequencies.

Cheers!
 
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