Did you buy some of those White Filmed Ambassadors? They have a TD or something like that after the model number.
I have a little coating wear on one 16" CA, and it looks milky like usual. The head isn't that old--bought it few months ago (3 mos. maybe).
Is the head you are talking about newer than that?
Emps might still be a clear film under the coating. I haven't gotten one of them in a long time for the toms, but my Coated Emp with top dot snare heads are still clear under the coating.
Well I didn't buy the white filmed ambassador on purpose. Normally I don't buy coated ambassadors, as I don't prefer that head on any of my drums. This one was in my head stash, and had to be a year old at least. It was in almost new shape, I bought it for my BB, because I wasn't happy with the tone of it. I am still trying to get my 14 x 6.5 Brass on Brass Black Beauty to get the sound I like. It's just not ringy enough for me. So I took off the bottom die cast hoop and replaced it with a brass 2.3 mm hoop. I also changed the batter head from a coated emp to the coated ambassador I had in my stash. It helped, but a coated amb is too thin sounding to my ear on a snare.
That's when I noticed that the wear mark in the coating on the ambassador revealed what looked like white hazy (and not very see through) film as opposed to clear hazy film on my emperors. (which I can see through, sort of.) I probably manually removed the coating in the middle with an abrasive, to get the head to open up a little when I first got it. Sometimes new heads sound choked to me, from all the brand new coating that hasn't been beat down yet.
My 6.5" deep Black Beauty is a very controlled sounding drum and I tried everything I could to wake it up but guess that's just the nature of that particular drum. I tried 2.3 mm hoops, top and bottom, with both coated emperor and coated ambassador heads as batters, I tried Ludwig snare side heads and Ludwig snare wires....I just can't get this thing to ring out like I prefer. Normally, I run die cast on the batter side with a coated emp or G2. I don't need die cast on the snare side, but my 5" black beauty (Brass on Brass, same drum) does just fine with die casts top and bottom and a coated emp on the batter. It even has Ludwig wires and a Ludwig snare side head and the thing just sounds mahvelous dahling.
Seriously thinking of unloading my 6.5 BB. Bronze is my fav snare drum metal. The only other brass drum I've had (Sensitone 6.5) just never really did it for me either. That got stolen, um I mean donated to the criminal community, when my van got taken from me at a gig on Mother's Day 2011.
I should be able to get 400 easy for my "gigged one time" brass on brass BB. It's in perfect shape, it's just not my cup of darjeeling dahling.