Making your kit sound good

Locking my self out or sticking to what I know I like? I don't want to go blowing money on other stuff when I don't know if I like it more when I am using something I have become to really like. See what I mean? It's more than name, it's experience with the company and I happen to like Remo, I have no quarrel with Evans I think every company has great heads they make, they sure get the job done a lot better than I ever could. So why switch when I'm not having any problems? Now let's add the scenario that I am just starting to have major problems with the company and I was getting faulty heads constantly, I would certainly switch, but to my next choice, Aquarian. Same thing with them if they became as you would say "inconsistent" I would then eventually try Evans. Make sense?

I take it you don't have much of an income. I say that because I can go out and buy a few drumheads to try and it won't break me. I spent a whole $79 on 5 new drumheads. Big deal. In fact, all drumheads eventually wear out and they get replaced. If nothing else, it's an experience thing. If you are happy with one brand, stay there. Just don't rule out something else...because of a name or never having tried them. I never would have discovered how much better I like evans if I stuck with the inconsistent remo, or the diffuse sounding aquarian. But those are good reasons to move on and try new things.
 
I take it you don't have much of an income. I say that because I can go out and buy a few drumheads to try and it won't break me. I spent a whole $79 on 5 new drumheads. Big deal. In fact, all drumheads eventually wear out and they get replaced. If nothing else, it's an experience thing. If you are happy with one brand, stay there. Just don't rule out something else...because of a name or never having tried them. I never would have discovered how much better I like evans if I stuck with the inconsistent remo, or the diffuse sounding aquarian. But those are good reasons to move on and try new things.

When did I rule Evans out, all I said was I won't use them because of the name. I stated I have tried and liked them before I thought they were good, how is that ruling them out. Now I don't use them regularly because I tried and liked remo more, but maybe this has to do with my bass drum projection problem. I will have to test out another brand of bass drum head to try and achieve projection, and about income, I blow money on heads all of the time, but I have 6 toms a snare and 2 bass drums so it does get a bit pricey when I am trying to keep up with all of my other gear that I am upgrading. I just replaced all of my reso heads and now I am at the experimental part, now that I have completely decked my kit out with new heads, each time 1 of them breaks I try a different one. I am just in the early stages of experimentation though. I have only been playing for a year and a half so I think my research and experiments has been remarkable for the time being.
 
I take it you don't have much of an income. I say that because I can go out and buy a few drumheads to try and it won't break me. I spent a whole $79 on 5 new drumheads. Big deal. In fact, all drumheads eventually wear out and they get replaced. If nothing else, it's an experience thing. If you are happy with one brand, stay there. Just don't rule out something else...because of a name or never having tried them. I never would have discovered how much better I like evans if I stuck with the inconsistent remo, or the diffuse sounding aquarian. But those are good reasons to move on and try new things.


I understand what you are saying. You don't know if you dont try!

But, if you spend 79 dollars on heads then don't like them it is sort of a drag.
 
When did I rule Evans out, all I said was I won't use them because of the name. I stated I have tried and liked them before I thought they were good, how is that ruling them out. Now I don't use them regularly because I tried and liked remo more, but maybe this has to do with my bass drum projection problem. I will have to test out another brand of bass drum head to try and achieve projection, and about income, I blow money on heads all of the time, but I have 6 toms a snare and 2 bass drums so it does get a bit pricey when I am trying to keep up with all of my other gear that I am upgrading. I just replaced all of my reso heads and now I am at the experimental part, now that I have completely decked my kit out with new heads, each time 1 of them breaks I try a different one. I am just in the early stages of experimentation though. I have only been playing for a year and a half so I think my research and experiments has been remarkable for the time being.

Ok... no need to justify, if you like aquarian, more power to you. Staying with what works is just fine.
 
I understand what you are saying. You don't know if you dont try!

But, if you spend 79 dollars on heads then don't like them it is sort of a drag.

I suppose, but I have spent more money on gas, dinner and a movie that sucked and a date that turned out to be a psycho.

At least I can re-sell the drumheads on consignment or something.

Again... $79, I have a job. I can afford that once in a while. I am not talking a weekly event here.

$79... Noooo!!!!! Now I can't afford my mortgage!!!!

Big deal.
 
When I get the itch to try new heads, I boil it down to 2 or 3 candidates and buy one head of each for just one drum, say, a 12". Try them out one after the other and you'll see how they sound on your drums and get a pretty good idea of what a set of them would sound like without spending a fortune.

I only play a 4-piece, but my kid plays a friggin' 7-piece kit--I'm not going to "try out" a full kit of heads I may end up not liking. ;-)
 
When I get the itch to try new heads, I boil it down to 2 or 3 candidates and buy one head of each for just one drum, say, a 12". Try them out one after the other and you'll see how they sound on your drums and get a pretty good idea of what a set of them would sound like without spending a fortune.

I only play a 4-piece, but my kid plays a friggin' 7-piece kit--I'm not going to "try out" a full kit of heads I may end up not liking. ;-)

Good point :D, btw I think it is so cool that you have a kid that plays too. My dad is a string player, went to school to learn how to play strings and such, and it is so cool to be his son and get to jam with him, I bet it is really awesome to have a kid who plays the same instrument though. Getting to teach them everything you know and them actually being interested. To me that is one of the greatest things I think a parent could ask for (imagining I had a kid). I don't know if I actually want a kid, but if I did that would be so awesome if he liked to do what I do, and want to learn what I know.
 
if you cant seem to get your toms to sound right. stop changing your batter head but instead change the resonant head. my toms refused to sound how i wanted until i finally bought some coated g1's and threw em on there. sound like a dream now

Quick question, when you replace your batter heads, can you move the old ones to the bottom and use them as resonant heads? Or is that considered a no-no?
 
I did try the g-plus coated. two words: epic fail.

I got two recommendations from another Trick endorser.

g2 coated over resonant glass. (Brings out low end)
g1 coated over resonant glass (balanced/more open sound)

I am going with the g2 coated.
 
mmmmmmmmmm Re: Heads and Sticks

Tune first then muffle if needed. Playing drums wide open has helped develop my ear for tuning.
Replacing reso heads more often.
Tune a little higher than you think you should. Un mic'd and live it makes a difference.
Change what sticks you use regularly. I like to alternate between beefy and light sticks.

Overall kit stuff to get a unique sound:

Often I will use a sizzle on my ride. Sometimes a chain rattler, sometimes an inverted cymbal on an x-hat under the ride.

Popcorn snare. On many songs it works and I like it also for intros and funky beats.

Oversize hi-hat cymbals. 16 rock crash with a medium crash on top.

Jingle ring on hats or mounted tambourine on bass drum that rattles when everything gets a movin'
 
Has anyone here used the DrumDial tuner? Saw tons of glowing user reviews on three different sites. Slightly pricey, but thinking about picking one up based on what I'm reading.
 
Has anyone here used the DrumDial tuner? Saw tons of glowing user reviews on three different sites. Slightly pricey, but thinking about picking one up based on what I'm reading.

I have one, utter waste of cash. A better investment would be buying the two dvd's:
Bob Gatzen drum tuning
Jeff Ocheltree Trust your ears.

If you have been playing more than 2 years, you should be able to ear tune...period.
 
Ya drum dial sounds like a rip off, but I never tried one so I can't say for sure. Anyway this last weekend I tried something with my snare. So I replaced the reso a few weeks ago with a remo diplo and that is the really thin one by the way, but I was scared to crank it up because of the thinness of it. So this weekend I grew some balls and cranked it up a couple full turns on each lug, and omg did it sound amazing. So I learned something, don't underestimate the durability of a thin head, it may create a beautiful sound when tuned right. Another thing I would like to bring up, while I was tuning my toms I found that yet all 6 of my toms were in tune with each other, like as a note principle, individually they did not sound the best. So I kept retuning and messing with each one individually and I figured out that if you tune the reso and the batter to certain notes, they will come to a balance. This reminded me of tuning a guitar by ear, if you have experience with a guitar say your tuning to drop D, which is just tuning the low E to a D, you can just pluck the D and the low E until they have the same resonating sound. While your trying to get them to the same sound you will notice you can hear the notes kind of wobbling like a wave like WoowWoowWoWoWoWWW
until you get it spot on with the other string. So tuning the reso and batter reminded me of this, if your ear is good enough to hear the 2 different tones you can figure out why you get a bad overtone and fix it easily. Keep in mind that each drum individually has a "sweet spot", which imo is the warmest and highest volume sounding spot you can get out of the drum. So try to tune your drums by using notes that sound good with each other, you can figure these notes out by using a keyboard, piano, guitar or anything with scales you can refer to, probably most instruments. So hope that benefits someone.


P.S. I also found a good use for the clear muting rings people like to use when they can't tune properly. I stopped using them for a while, but I noticed one of my heads getting warn out so I looked at it and it was starting to deform in the middle, like get overly stretched and became wavy. So I threw one of those rings on it and it was like a miracle cure, I was getting a weird overtone/dead sound out of the spot I was hitting, and the ring seemed to repair the sound and make it warm again, but I would still recommend replacing it asap, the ring is what I like to call a quick fix. :D
 
Y

P.S. I also found a good use for the clear muting rings people like to use when they can't tune properly. I stopped using them for a while, but I noticed one of my heads getting warn out so I looked at it and it was starting to deform in the middle, like get overly stretched and became wavy. So I threw one of those rings on it and it was like a miracle cure, I was getting a weird overtone/dead sound out of the spot I was hitting, and the ring seemed to repair the sound and make it warm again, but I would still recommend replacing it asap, the ring is what I like to call a quick fix. :D

I use a studio ring on my snare(s) if I am searching for a drier, and staccato sound, not for tone. Sometimes, ya gotta just open er up....no rings, moongel, etc...
 
I use a studio ring on my snare(s) if I am searching for a drier, and staccato sound, not for tone. Sometimes, ya gotta just open er up....no rings, moongel, etc...

huh? I was saying I used it to kill the weird sound I was getting from my damaged head, I don't usually use them for anything, but I found it was a good use for that.
 
huh? I was saying I used it to kill the weird sound I was getting from my damaged head, I don't usually use them for anything, but I found it was a good use for that.

HUH? why the confusion? I just stated what I use them for.
 
When did I rule Evans out, all I said was I won't use them because of the name. I stated I have tried and liked them before I thought they were good, how is that ruling them out.

I think I get it... you're saying "I won't choose Evans heads solely on the fact that they're named Evans", right? Not "Because they're named Evans, I refuse to try them." That would be saying you rule them out because you don't like the name Evans.

Incidentally, my last name's Evans, but that has no bearing on my reply, nor of my choice of heads. I've actually used Remo more but I've liked some Evans heads. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the G-Plus (single 12 mil) and EC-1 (single 14 mil!)... Everyone I've asked is saying that the G-Plus heads sound more dead & tubby than the EC-1's, which are thicker...?!? I think I need to hear a pair of identical toms each with 1 of these heads, tuned identically, and hear for myself. Evans needs to get some sound samples up on their website!!
 
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