It's great to go thinner on your snare side, but don't go too thin. The thinner you go, the easier it is for the snare side to vibrate due to other drums, this will cause unwanted buzzing from the snare wires.
It's great to go thinner on your snare side, but don't go too thin. The thinner you go, the easier it is for the snare side to vibrate due to other drums, this will cause unwanted buzzing from the snare wires.
Sorry but diplomats are always thinner and ambassador are a medium weight with emperors being a heaver weight thats the way it's been forever at REMO.I wanted to point out something that I was confused about for awhile. I also want to make sure we are all on the same page when giving recommendations.
Remo makes a thin batter called an Ambassador that comes in a few different finishes (Coated white, Clear, Black Suede). They also make a medium weight batter called a Diplomat that comes in several finishes (Hazy, coated, etc).
Here's the tricky part and IMHO, a marketing mistake as it is confusing:
Remo makes a clear snare side Ambassador and a clear snare side Diplomat. These heads are made for only being used for the underside of a snare. These should not be confused with using a clear Ambassador batter head or a clear Diplomat batter head - as a reso (resonant) head on toms or even bass drums.
The Amb and Dip snare side heads are significantly thinner than their batter brothers but different in thickness relative to each other. This is different from using heads on toms because a tom reso is always just a batter head, usually thinner or of the same thickness as the batter head.
From the current thread, I believe some might be thinking that a reference to using an Ambassador or Diplomat as a snare side head, means using a batter version of these 'models'. I would agree that an Ambassador batter or really - any batter head - would be too thick.
Now I must say that I have heard of people using a clear Ambassador batter as a snare side head but I never thought of that as a truly musical solution.
I think Evans has the right way of keeping things straight by branding their snare side heads by totally different means. A G1 is batter (or tom reso). Period. A Hazy 200 or 300 is a snare side head. Period. No confusion over batter or snare side.
My fav heads are Aquarian and they are a bit guilty of snare side confusion. There is a Classic Clear batter/reso for toms and a Classic Clear Snare Side head for underneath a snare drum. They only have two snare side head models, the other being the Hi Performance model. So it's a bit less confusing than the Remo issue but still can cause some head scratching especially amongst newer players.
This whole schmiel used to confuse me until I started seeing catalogs listing the different models along with the company's model # (ex. BA114). Then it became clearer. I'd suggest doing the same online. Go to Musicians Friend and enter 'diplomat' as a search word and you can see what I am talking (errr...typing) about.
HTH
Jim
For Remo, the clear heads are batter heads and the hazy heads are snare-side heads.
Clear Ambassador - 10 mil thickness.
Clear Diplomat - 7.5 mil thickness.
Hazy Ambassador - 3 mil thickness.
Hazy Diplomat - 2 mil thickness.
Sorry but diplomats are always thinner and ambassador are a medium weight with emperors being a heaver weight thats the way it's been forever at REMO.
Bonzolead
One way I always can tell is too take the head out of the box snare side heads are always paper like, really thin you almost think you can poke your finger threw it and yes I almost made that mistake you talked about that's why I always take them out of the box before hand.You're right about the weights, but he was saying the confusion can come in with the Ambasador (or Diplomat or Emp) having a batter, AND a snare side with the same name.
The Emp snare side is .5 mm and Bart gave the other weights.
There's also a Low Collar Ambassador snare side that has Clear, not hazy film.
Same weight as the standard Amb SS, just a real low collar.
It's similar to Ludwigs SS head.
Pretty dry sound from it too.
Unless you look at the box when you pull out a head, or the store counter person just pulls out a head, you could get the wrong thing depending on what you asked for (batter or snare side), and I'm sure it's happened.
There's a color code on the boxes now too....now all they need are pictures and arrows and a paragraph on the back.....sorry....
Hazy Diplomats have always been my favs for the snare side-very sensitive.Ambassadors do not make good snare-side heads in my opinion. They are much too thick and don't resonate well.
On that note, I'd look into the Hazy Diplomat snare-side head instead of a straight Diplomat. The Hazy is about 1/4 the thickness of a normal Diplomat - perfect for the snare side.
Whenever I tune a new head I put it on the shell with the rim off and stretch it out first.I seems to tune easier just my 2 cents.I bought a Hazy Diplomat a while back, but it must have been a defective head or somthing. When I put it on the snare, the head stretched out way too much. It stretched to the point that the hoop was almost even with the bearing edge, and the tension rods only had a few threads left before bottoming out. I was tuning it pretty high (around 90 with a drumdial), but this should have never happened. I hope to get another hazy diplomat soon and try again. This has never happened to me before with any other head.
Has anyone ever had this happen before with the hazy diplomats?
And Steady Freddy, keep us posted on how you like the ambassador/hazy diplomat combo on the deeper shelled snare. I think thats exactly what I'm gonna go with on my 6.5x14 snare next.