Not happened to me, & I'm sorry it's happened to you. TBH, from my personal POV, the snare you have, as a drum with wide application appeal, has alarm bells ringing all over, & that's without me ever playing one. When you put low resonance high mass components together, expect your sound to come only from the heads, but with a lot of reflection from the shell. Your picture shows a fairly dampened head too, I suspect you put that on to reduce excessive edge overtones. Die cast hoops only add to the focus & dampening in this scenario. That snare is a crack monster, pure & simple. My guess is that it would work best with a G1 coated batter cranked medium to high, & embrace the highs & overtones. Should be fairly articulate too.
Larry's Zelkova is another example of a snare with a specialist flavour. Hollow log can be the ultimate in shell tone delivery, but it can also be the reverse. This time, it's up to mother nature, as she decides the sonic properties of that shell to some extent.
The plain truth is this, snare drums with a distinct character are great, IMO, much more interesting & individual that the mainstream, but the risk of a player not liking the sound is increased considerably. If you want to be reasonably sure the sound will be right for you, then shooting for the middle ground, the tried & tested, is almost certainly the way to go. It may never light your fires, but it's unlikely to disappoint either.
I know what the standard (most valid btw) advice will be, try before you buy, but sometimes, that's just not practical. Even if you can try the drum, the room has such a big affect on the sound, it may still not be representative, but it's better than not trying, that's for sure. Outside of that, look for manufacturers who have the balls to offer honest audio examples of their drums. Difficult to find, I know, as even those that give the impression of a simple recording, are often not.
Then there's the other side of the coin, the drummer in a candy store affect. We regularly get requests to build drums, especially snare drums, that we know will sound like crap. We spend some time trying to advise such customers, & steer them towards something we know will deliver, but sometimes we have to refuse the build, as the customer is so insistent on his/her specification.
Again, sorry it hasn't worked out for you, but if you want the sound I described, a change of head should mostly get you there.
Good luck
