Andy
Honorary Member
All very good & valid points gained from years of building superb quality drums. I love your drums, & I know Dean thinks very highly of you. My post was in reply to Larry's specific question, & I'm referring more to toms than snare drums. I notice the biggest difference on toms.Dear Andy,
That has been very informative. Please allow me to add some builder non scientific infos to that.
I've tried very thin shell, and this is what I discover. With very thin shell, what I was hearing was not tonal wood sound more than a fragile structure ready to vibrate to anything that hit it. What also happen is that when hitting the snare hard, I was hearing the tom and bass drum humming. To my interpretation, it was a lack of isolation structure between the shells due to their soft resistence to vibration. Also, when the shell were lathed very thin (3/16" and under) when hitting the bare shell, no tone was produce, just an uneven vibration flow, tone is very important to sound and just for fun I've comparde 2 shells 12" x 8", one was 3/8" and the other 1/8" thick , I found that the 3/8" was far more nervous than the 1/8". If you take a violon, or an acoustic guitar, no matter how thin it is, it has a tone and a safe structure. That should also be applied to drum to what I understand now.
Ford drum using isolation mount has lot of sense and is not related totally to shell tickness.The most important would be to avoid the cymbal stand to vibrate with the tom installed on them and make everything vibrate togheter.
Now to the reel question: free floating vs lugged drums. There's a difference for sure, but even with free floating all the metal will vibrate in par with the shell and heads because all these parts are linked and connected togheter somehow, thinner the shell is, stronger the vibration will be.
I may be wrong here as I mention, it's no scientific fact just observation made by a passion builder. so much factors can be importants, heads, drums stick, room, music type, the player...
On the subject of very thin shells, yes, I agree, on their own, they have little tone to them when struck. However, when mounted into a more substantial bearing edge structure, they add a great deal to the tone. I can't explain why, but they do. In general however, I do agree that an ultra thin shell is very restricting in terms of delivering a wide tuning range & projection, that's why the new project I'm currently working on with Dean, uses both steam bent & stave shells around 6mm (1/4" thick) for toms, & around 9mm (3/8" thick) for floor toms 16" and bigger + bass drums.