Toms mounted on cymbal stands

Jean Marais

Junior Member
Hi everyone. I have recently started mounting my toms on cymbal stands, but have noticed that my batter heads of the toms hanging from the stands respond to a cymbal being hit on the same stand. Have anyone experienced the same and if so, isn't this a big issue in studio? Any advice on how to deal with it?
 
Could it be that the cymbals' tone is too close to the frequency of the toms? Sort of like what happens sometimes to snare wires when the toms are tuned too close to the snare drum frequency. Not sure how feasible that is, but try tuning the tom slightly up or down and see if it works.
 
Haven't ever had this issue with stand mounts but I use l-rod mounts, which are less directly connected to the stand, and isolation mounts. Are your drums mounted directly to the shell?

You could try putting a little bit of padding between the stand clamp & the pipe, like duct tape. Might help.
 
I isolate each piece of my kit with its own designated stand....

My cymbals are on cymbal stands....

My toms are on tom stands....

I always remove the bass drum tom mount, make up a plate from either aluminium or leather and create a "virgin" bass drum....

It creates a larger area of floor space for my kit, but I don't compromise on this....

It makes the kit sound better to me.....
 
Been doing this with one of the kits at school. Don't know about tone, but getting things in the right place is a pain. If the whole point was to make things small and easy I'd probably get a rack.
 
Could it be that the cymbals' tone is too close to the frequency of the toms? Sort of like what happens sometimes to snare wires when the toms are tuned too close to the snare drum frequency. Not sure how feasible that is, but try tuning the tom slightly up or down and see if it works.

Thanks for the very informative advice. I will definitely give that a try. I have experienced that between especially the high tom and the snare, but haven't thought about it being possible between cymbal and tom.
 
Haven't ever had this issue with stand mounts but I use l-rod mounts, which are less directly connected to the stand, and isolation mounts. Are your drums mounted directly to the shell?

You could try putting a little bit of padding between the stand clamp & the pipe, like duct tape. Might help.

Thanks for the great advice. The duck tape sounds like the best possible solution to me at this stage. I am not sure exactly what you mean by mounted directly to the shell, but i think it is the case. It is a Mapex Black Panther Blaster i am playing with the usual Mapex tom holders connecting through the mount on the side of the tom.
 
Drums and cymbals can interact with each other through vibration that is transmitted through stands and mounts or the air. I don't get too worked up about it. I actually like my kit to interact with its components to a certain extent.
I have bass drum mounted cymbals and toms and they do excite each other a bit. Tom and snare tuning can minimize the sympathetic interaction to a large degree.
My bet is that you could tune your tom slightly different to diminish the interaction between the cymbal and the drumheads.
 
I absolutely hate when using a backline kit and the toms are mounted off stands , its a torture to position them, so fiddly, clamps are a pain.
Never understood or heard the benefit of virgin bass drums either, dont get that but each to their own. if it works for you.
 
I am not sure exactly what you mean by mounted directly to the shell, but i think it is the case.

I meant directly onto the shell–no isolation mount involved. Blasters should have an isolation mount.

As was said, a slight tuning difference might help as well?

Unless it's really dramatic, it would be easily remedied in the studio using gates.
 
Back
Top