Snare wire or...snare wire?

Bo Eder

Platinum Member
Have to ask this question after not finding it covered anywhere:

I have a 6.5x14 Tama Mastercraft steel snare from the '80s. Love it. It has the snare rollers under the strainer and the butt to enable a snare wire set that goes all the way across the head. When I got the drum and replaced the snare wires, the only option I could find was a long Pearl set that end-to-end is about 15.5" long. So the welded ends of the snares never come in contact with the bottom head.

Problem: now I seem to get more snare buzz than normal, obviously because it's just snare wire going across the bottom. I don't know if I like that or not.

I'm going to experiment and get a regular length snare wire set and install it on the drum to see if I can get back close to what I experienced when I only played snares that didn't go all the way across the bottom head.

Question: anyone here experience this? Is there a different way of tuning these types of snares to eliminate any errant buzz? Would replacing it with shorter snares be the only way to solve this issue? If I did that to a drum that obviously is designed for snares of this nature, would the resulting sound be acceptable?

You have 12 hours from now to respond. In 12 hours I'm going to a Guitar Center to pick up some 'short' snares.... Thanks everybody!
 

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I had an 80's BellBrass (my avatar) which had the exact stainer and butt end w/ rollers. I always used standard length snares. That's all you need.
but I don't know the depth of your snare bed, that could change things.
 
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Bo where are the original snare wires you took off?
 
The original wires were completely messed up: it was missing a few strands and alot of them were just bent. So I merely measured it and found these Pearls that look exactly like it, then I discarded the old one. The drum does sound nice, and after fiddling with it a little more I'm getting less residual snare buzz, but it just seems like I'm getting too much to begin with simply because I've never dealt with "all-the-way-across" snare wire before. So I was wondering if I need to do something with my tuning that I've never done before.

I hadn't thought about how the snare bed is formed, I should probably look at that. But I think Bigfoot and I have the same drum, just different material, eh?
 
Bo Eder, I wish I still had that drum!

But what's making me think of the shallow snare bed is something I've just discovered on a snare of mine. I just couldn't get this thing to sound good and I had all kinds of extra snare buzz just playing the snare, for get the toms. Until I found out that those snare wires w/ the 1/2 inch space between the wires were for shallow snare beds. So I chopped up a cheap set of snares (take the dremel to the sharp edges) 5 wires - 1/2 space - 5 wires. Sounds awesome now!

This might work for your snare but I really think a regular set snares should work.

Have you seen any old catalogs from Tama that might give a hint to how they were produced?
 
Bo Eder, I wish I still had that drum!

But what's making me think of the shallow snare bed is something I've just discovered on a snare of mine. I just couldn't get this thing to sound good and I had all kinds of extra snare buzz just playing the snare, for get the toms. Until I found out that those snare wires w/ the 1/2 inch space between the wires were for shallow snare beds. So I chopped up a cheap set of snares (take the dremel to the sharp edges) 5 wires - 1/2 space - 5 wires. Sounds awesome now!

This might work for your snare but I really think a regular set snares should work.

Have you seen any old catalogs from Tama that might give a hint to how they were produced?

Well, I have the old .pdfs of the Tama catalogs (among a bunch of others) and they don't show any close up shots of the snare bed. On my actual drum the snare bed looks very slight, almost nonexistent - I think they followed this pattern after the Rogers Dynasonics - those didn't show a bed much either. But I'm hoping it's there, just very slight!
 
I have an early 80's "Artwood" snare drum from that Mastercraft series- basically it's 5 1/2" deep Superstar- it has the same strainer system. I did replace the snares at some point, with whatever I happened to have lying around, but haven't noticed it being especially noisy. You might try Grover snares- they seem to be pretty good for reducing buzz.
 
I have an early 80's "Artwood" snare drum from that Mastercraft series- basically it's 5 1/2" deep Superstar- it has the same strainer system. I did replace the snares at some point, with whatever I happened to have lying around, but haven't noticed it being especially noisy. You might try Grover snares- they seem to be pretty good for reducing buzz.

Methinks it buzzes more because the wire stretches all the way across the bottom head, like the old Rogers Dynasonics. I'm speculating if I put regular snare wire it should cut some buzz. I'm waiting to leave the house. It's 110 degrees here. Maybe in another hour or so I'll chance going outside...
 
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