weird vibrating sound from toms...?

Z

zafrothunder

Senior Member
my friends kit (that i have been playing on for a while) has this weird problem. When i hit the small tom, it has this really annoying vibrating sound, but no other tom does it.

He says its because of the snare, but I dont get what he's talking. He took it to a shop because he thought the shells were uneven or something, but they werent.

What could the problem be, and how can i prevent it from happening on my kit (which i dont have yet)?
 
zafrothunder said:
my friends kit (that i have been playing on for a while) has this weird problem. When i hit the small tom, it has this really annoying vibrating sound, but no other tom does it.

He says its because of the snare, but I dont get what he's talking. He took it to a shop because he thought the shells were uneven or something, but they werent.

What could the problem be, and how can i prevent it from happening on my kit (which i dont have yet)?
Click to expand...


if the vibration comes from the small tom, it might be some screw that is not tight .. it happens to me sometimes..
or if the tome is touching something... it will make a vibrating sound..
or if the suspension system (if it has a suspension system) can be that too..

if it isn't from the tom.. i don't know.

good luck with that ;)
 
If it really bothers you try to isolate the tom. Play it soft, medium, loud with a single stroke to the center of the head. When you hear the noise try to see where it is coming from.

You may have a lug with a loose internal screw. See if there is any hardware floating around in the drum. Check the suspension system. Try tapping the shell itself with your palm or a mallet. Its almost garunteed to be a hardware issue.
 
My first obvious question is, "It there a muffler in the drum?" Is there a knob you turn or flip to engage a muting device within the shell? If so, those things are notorious for rattling. You'd have to take a head off to tighten it so it doesn't rattle, but sometimes that doesn't work, so you'd have to take the whole part out.

Or, could be a less-than-obvious answer. Might also be a spring inside a lug casing that got out of place. Same thing happened to me on my first kit. I didn't know what it was for YEARS!

If you play the tom by itself (in a different room as the other drums, not on a mount), and it still has the "vibrating" issue, it's either the heads (bad tuning or uneven bearing edges), the hardware (loose screw, cracked something-or-other, dislodged spring, loose tension rod), or a loose wrap seam. If it sounds fine be itself, it could be the way it's mounted, what it's mounted to, or just sympathetic vibration from another drum. Try to locate exactly what's rattling by following your ear, and fix it from there.

Good luck!
 
Had this once with a student- turned out to be a lug box screw and washer that fixes the box to the drum on the inside of the drum...it must have been dropped or knocked and the box had been depressed into the shell not by much but enough to make the box and the screw loose, once tightened it was sorted.
Take one head off and tap the side to see where the noise is coming from, hold each screw in turn to see when the noise stops- or just put a quarter turn on all the screws inside the drum. I hope that helps!
 
now that i think of it, it started after he replaced the stock heads with these, in my opinion, shitty remo weatherkings. Could it be that he put it on wrong? The small tom is the tom that i use the most, so it is really annoying. I dont think there is a muffler or muter or whatever. I wouldnt know though, because its not my kit. I just play on it.
 
What kind of drums are they? My old kit was a Pearl Masters Custom and the metal air hole rings on all of the drums were vibrating because they had come loose. I would take of the top or bottom head and retighten all of the screws holding the lugs and any other hardware that is mounted on the drum.
 
Is it mounted to a stand? or is it a bass drum mount? Check all the screws and memory locks on your hardware and anything that is attached to the same stand or mount. If it isn't a buzzing sound it probably isn't hardware. If it's a vibration like a wah wah wah wah, not a buzz sound, it's probably tuning, or like your friend said, it could be resonation through another drum that's tuned around the same pitch. I had a weird buzz going on when I hit my 12" tom and I looked and listened and looked and listened and it turned out to be my bass drum pedal....it was craaaazy....
 
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