DW tom tuning help.

Hello,

Ok so I have a collector's series DW kit. Snare and bass drum are great and I am happy with them. But...I am not happy with my 12x9 tom and 14x12 floor tom. To be honest I wasn't happy with the sound of these toms when they came straight out of the box from the factory. They are boingy, boomy with loads of resonance and echo and overtones etc...

I have heard lovely sounding dw toms on video and ok they might be mic'd up and compressed but mine sound nothing like that. I would like and expect them to sound like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGDcHzX2Co0&feature=related

Those drums sound awesome and they are the same as mine.
I have tried tuning the resonant head high and the batter low, vice versa and the same pitch tuning for both heads.

How do I find the sweet spot, ok the toms sound alright with a band but what about on their own, just me and the drums.

Please help and many thanks in advance.

im kind of having the same problem. but my 14x14 and 16x16 floor toms are fine. the 12x10 not so. has some strange overtones but ive not had the chance to adjust it yet. also the factory tuning the tuning rods have come loose so soon im going to have to take the heads off and start again ( i hate tuning) i also need some new heads already dented my 12" gunna get some EC2s. look forward to seeing some answers to get the most of my new drums

Invaluable resource.
And the toms in the video are miced & eq'd. Yours are not going to sound the same.

Robby you have beautiful drums. Those DW's can sound amazing. You can get literally hundreds of different tones from your drums, depending on the head selection and tuning.
Believe me when I tell you that it's not the drums.
DW's are a little harder to tune IMO because of the thinness of the shell. The shell will flex more than with say a Pearl Shell so it's even more important to get a totally even tension all the way around. Add the triple flange hoops which flex compared to die cast and it's like a Ferrari, finicky, but awesome. Tune slow. Slow, meaning no more than 1/8th of a turn at a time and very evenly until you get it up to tension. Definitely tap near the lugs and make sure they all sing the same note. Ear tune to finish.
Maybe you prefer a thick shelled die cast sound. They sure do tune up easier. The DW's require good tuning skills, but the results are worth it. The spaciousness and depth of sound, even unmiced is noticeable. The more wild overtones coming out of your drum, the cooler that thing sounds from like 15 feet away. You complain about all the resonance. I'll take it! Resonance is one of the most important qualities when selecting good drums. Would you prefer dead?

Also, have someone play your kit just as it is now, stand in the next room, and notice the difference in the tone. It is more homogenous and well defined than when you are right on top of it with freshly produced overtones jumping off the head. You're the only one who hears those frequencies, and at a higher volume than everyone else I might add. They lose bite fairly quick. Learn to love those overtones, and understand that they give your drums personality, to the listener.

So it's not the drums, unless you prefer a thicker (7.5 mm and up) shelled sound. Then it is the drums.

I find that my DW's are fairly easy to tune. When I put new heads on, I start low, go up slow until I find the spot I like which is fairly low but not as low as the drums on the video. I use coated Ambassadors but have also used Emperors that also sound great. I have experimented tuning them way up and thought they sounded pretty good even though DW's have a reputation of sounding better at lower tunings. My drums are 10 year old Keller shells with reenforcement hoops which may make a difference.

First of all, I wouldn't trust any drum's tuning when taken directly out of their boxes. Heads stretch, the shell vibrate from shipping and who ever coarsely tuned the drums might not have the same tuning preference that you do. DW drums are just like most other high end drums to tune, it's between you and the drums to get the sound out of them that you require. If it was me, I would start from scratch with each drum to get them where I wanted them.

Dennis

That is why I sold mine. They sounded great when in tune. Took too much time to get them there. They had to be tuned every gig or they sounded like crap. Life is too short to spend it tuning.

Robby - experiment with them, after a while you'll get it. I've had two DW kits, and they were very easy to tune. Switch the top heads to Evans clear or coated G2s. The stock heads are not happenin'... New heads will make a huge difference.

I don't have DW's but my PDP's came with those same stock heads as far as I can tell. They were a bear to tune. It was a lot easier once I replaced them. YMMV

Thanks for all the great sound advice everyone. I really don't like the stock heads. Ok they might look fancy and different but I think the road to success might be new heads. On saying that though the stock heads are only two months old and they haven't taken a real hammering. Might try the clear Evans heads. Will let you know how I get on...

I have a set of DW 10"-12"-16" & 22"x18" with a Pork Pie Little Squealer 13"x7" snare.

I had the stock DW heads on the toms for about 4 months (ok sound but tough to stay in tune), went to Aquarian Studio X and lugs w/ the nylon inserts. I got a great sound initially but after 3-4 months of gigging (I play lots of R&B and funk so I don't really beat them up) the sound got dull so I just put on a set of Evans EC1s (single ply as DW recommends) and so far so good. I took about 2 hours tuning and matching the batter & resonant heads and got the more "open" sound without any nasty overtones. I don't use muffling anywhere on the kit but the toms have a nice balanced sound to them now.

You need to find each drum's sweet spot. Do this with all your toms:

Bring both heads down to finger-tight. Add 1/4 turn to every tension rod, use two keys on opposite rods and a star pattern.

Keep adding 1/4 turn all around until you get a usable tone when striking the batter in the center of the head. Make the pitch of the batter and reso the same and touch up the lug-to-lug tuning.

This is the lowest note this drum will play with these heads.

Keep adding 1/4 turn all around, keep the batter and reso at the same pitch, and keep the lug-to-lug tuning decent. Strike the drum after each round of tension.

Pretty soon you'll reach a zone where the drum becomes louder, punchier, and has more sustain. This is the sweet spot. When you go above this point the drum begins to choke. Go back to the sweet spot. Done, now do the rest of your toms.

For the purposes of the experiment you keep the pitch of both heads the same, but once done you can fool around with raising the reso to taste.

This process puts each drum in its most resonant zone, making them louder overall and making each of your toms match the others in volume and sustain. The "sweet spot" is usually pretty narrow, maybe two or three semitones, but you do have some room to tweak the drums so they have a pleasing pitch relationship.

Good news.

Today I brought my 12x9 tom and 14x12 floor tom back to the drum shop where I ordered and bought my collectors series from. Decided to have some new heads fitted as I was not happy with the DW stock heads. Went for a set of Evans G2 batter heads which the shop tuned up free of charge for me. They sounded great in the shop and I was happy.

Went straight to a band practise and experimented by placing some moon gel on the new heads and they sounded brilliant. Happy now with the DW toms and just shows that those single ply DW stock heads may look good but sound pretty rubbish.

Robby77 said:

Good news.

Today I brought my 12x9 tom and 14x12 floor tom back to the drum shop where I ordered and bought my collectors series from. Decided to have some new heads fitted as I was not happy with the DW stock heads. Went for a set of Evans G2 batter heads which the shop tuned up free of charge for me. They sounded great in the shop and I was happy.

Went straight to a band practise and experimented by placing some moon gel on the new heads and they sounded brilliant. Happy now with the DW toms and just shows that those single ply DW stock heads may look good but sound pretty rubbish.

Click to expand...

Glad you found your sound man. DW's are amazing drums, I even saw a PDP Platinum set at Guitar Center once with those same stock heads you were talking about and they sounded huge and really deep. Maybe they just didn't quite hold the sound you were going for. Anyway, G2's are great heads, If you decide to replace the reso's, G1 is a popular choice paired with G2 batters or Genera Resonants are good for more resonance. I'd off those Moongel puppies. Unless the overtones are just absolutely WAY overbearing, you shouldn't need them as they will kill a lot of the resonance and life out of the drum. As I believe larryace or someone mentioned above, you're really the only one who's going to be able to hear said overtones, the audience will just hear a nice full drum tone. I play PDP Platinums currently with coated Ambassadors over the stock DW resos, no muffling whatsoever. They sound great. But yeah don't be afraid to experiment until you're 100% satisfied with your sound.

I recently got my DW drums as well as of last Friday. I only have a Mini-Pro kit (Made in Ensenada) and being that I live 68 miles from DW Drum, they were shipped to Guitar Center from DW in Oxnard and I picked them up from the Guitar Center.

I like how they drums were tuned from the factory. Would using a chromatic tuner and tapping the sound of all the drums (toms, bass, snare) to get the pitch of the drum work?