snare beds

M

mandrew

Gold Member
I am building a retro 14x12 marching snare and want to put cable snares on it. Should the snare bed be deeper with cable snares? Ronn Dunnett says he uses a deep snare bed on his drums. I cannot find any info on what is considered "deep". How deep is deep?
 
ttt....... I was going to ask this same question. What is considered a deep snare bed and what is a shallow bed? What difference does a deep bed vs a shallow bed have on the drums sound and performance??..... Terry
 
None I guess.... :) Terry
 
At one time I had a dedicated bed for my snares. Now days, they just sleep on the big bed with me.
 
Dr_Watso said:
At one time I had a dedicated bed for my snares. Now days, they just sleep on the big bed with me.
Click to expand...

Ahhhhh it is all starting to make sense now..... LOL..... I'm not even going to stoop to the level of asking you about head preference...... Terry
 
I think it's generally considered that a deeper snare bed will be a dryer sound AFA snare sound...So, dryer for deep beds and "livelier" for shallower ones...The dryer snare sound is more the classic, "vintage" sound...
 
In my experience its not just depth, but depth to width ratio. The larger the depth:width ratio of your snare bed, the drier more "vintage-y" the tone. This is also largely dependent on your edges too.
 
So a 4:1 width to depth snare groove will have a drier sound than a 2:1?

With respect to bearing edge I would guess the more contact the drier the sound as well. i,e a 45 degree rounded edge would be drier than a 65 degree edge, correct?

Thanks for the replies........ Terry
 
I tried a while back to find some hard numbers and standard practice when it came to snare beds. I didn't find anything. Mostly because they really isn't any. There are as many snare bed designs as there are drum builders. We know the basics, but that's about it. On Drum Foundry's snare bed tutorial, they give dimensions for their standard snare bed, and give a limit for what is too deep. But that's probably the best you're going to find.

The best advice is to go with no snare bed. Test the sound, gradually sand down, rehead, retest, etc, until you find what you like. But that's really time consuming.

http://www.drumfoundry.com/t-making_a_snare_bed.aspx
 
I just got some trusted answers . . .

Generally, a snare bed is about 1/8" deep, and usually covers the distance from one lug to the next. I checked an Acorolite, which is 8 lugs. This seems to bear out the statement. It is about the distance of one lug span, and about 1/8" at its steepest point. The 1/8" is about 3" to 3.5" long before it tapers out.
 
mandrew said:
I just got some trusted answers . . .

Generally, a snare bed is about 1/8" deep, and usually covers the distance from one lug to the next. I checked an Acorolite, which is 8 lugs. This seems to bear out the statement. It is about the distance of one lug span, and about 1/8" at its steepest point. The 1/8" is about 3" to 3.5" long before it tapers out.
Click to expand...

Yea, the snare beds on the supa shells (Acros included) have really wide snare beds. Including the taper, they goes span almost almost the entire way around. A lot of people do lug to lug, but there can be lots of variance between builders.
 
Mandrew...... Did you get any info on what the full range of shallow to deep is? Is the 1/8"considered shallow?...... Terry
 
For modern wire snare setups, 1/8" seems standard nowadays. Again, it seems to depend on the wire set. I am building a marching snare, 14"x12", and want a early 1930s to 1960s sound. I am going with a cable type snare wire setup, so I may go to 3/16" deep, but not real wide. It would be similar to a rope drum set up. It seems that 3/16" is considered deep. It also depends on the reso head. I will use an emperor weight reso, wich works OK with a deeper bed and "gut" type set up.
 
Thanks Mandrew......

Watso....... My snare beds still aren't coming out quite right. Do you have any tips for getting rid of snare bed bugs? ...... Terry
 
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