What is your spring tension?

hvymtlmike

Senior Member
Call it curiousity, but I am interested to hear what tension you prefer for your pedals. Do you like it tight to feel more pushback? Loose for flow? Just want to see what kind of tension you guys use and why. I flirt with my pedal tension all the time playing metalcore. I started off liking it tight for the easier upstroke, but have since softened it up slightly. I find it interesting finding out what tension gets people the quick strokes. So what type of tension do you prefer and why? Thanks. :)
 
I like a little resistance, just enough so the footboard sticks to my foot and doesn't get away from me. That way, if my foot can do it, the pedal will follow.

Bermuda
 
I like a little resistance, just enough so the footboard sticks to my foot and doesn't get away from me. That way, if my foot can do it, the pedal will follow.

Bermuda

I also like it to stick to my shoe. I've only owned a few bass drum pedals, but all of them had to be tightened almost all the way to get that to happen. I guess I like it tight...
 
I have a Tama Iron Cobra that's probably almost 10 years old now and it's been at its max spring tension since I first set it up.

I have a friend who likes ridiculously tight. He has to wind the spring in through the little hole to get the tension past standard max! As much as I like tight, I can't use his pedal.
 
I play heel down by most peoples standards but I thought I was heel-up. I do not bury the beater in the skin. I go for rebound. So I like a medium tension on an Iron cobra any more and I lose feel. I like feel. Feel is good.

Davo
 
I have to say I have never gone to the extreme on either really tight or really loose....basically I have gone just tighter than the manufacturer default and loosened just a little under.
 
Medium tension. Works both for singles and doubles. Have stopped experimenting with spring tension. (Double) pedal is a dw2002 with slightly lowered footboard angle.
 
Max tension, Axis X longboards. I started at medium, and just kept inching it up, because it always ended up feeling too floppy and slow, ended up as tight as it goes.
 
When i got my speed cobras in Dec. I just started playing them as-is without any tweaking; they felt great. Since then I've tightened the tension a few turns.
 
I like my bass drum pedals to follow my foot without any sloppiness. Anything more than that is a waste in energy, lol. So to answer your question, on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being as tight as the spring will go, they're about at a 3.

Dennis
 
I like my bass drum pedals to follow my foot without any sloppiness. Anything more than that is a waste in energy, lol. So to answer your question, on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being as tight as the spring will go, they're about at a 3.

Dennis

Good idea to scale from 1 to 10, mine is about 6 or 7.
 
I adjust my tension as loose as I can get it without the springs drooping. I like effortlessness of just setting my foot down and sending the beater to the head. I just feel like I get a more solid kick note - I play with cheaper pedals, so even with the tension that loose I can feel the pedal under my foot.

It doesn't do worth a flip for speed, but I'd rather compensate the slack with technique than to tighten up the pedal and loose the feel I'm comfortable with. It's not like I'm playing 32nd kick notes everywhere anyway, so speed isn't a big issue.
 
Rule of thumb -- as loose as it'll go while still responding as quickly as you need.
 
Mine are quite tight, probably at about 75%, anything less than that and the foot board comes back up too slow and I find my foot comes off the board when doing fast doubles and triples.
 
70%-90%

My over developed calf muscles feel comfortable around that tension.

When I want to work on bass drum sensitivity I like to lossen 'em up then gradually bring them back up.

I get a very fast return on ghost hits with tension that high...(When I dont want to rely on rebound from the head to return the pedal)
 
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