Snare drum dampener broke, sounds bad

[laxation]

My snare drum had a dampener that pressed against the underside of the batter head, which broke 2 weeks ago. Since then, the drum has had a ring that echoes and is annoying as all heck.

I have tried tape on the top and bottom, and tried replicating the dampener by taping some paper towel where the dampener used to be.

Does anyone have any ideas how to fix this echo? Would Moongel work?

[audiotech]

What type of snare, wood or metal? What heads do you have on it now?

Dennis

[MikeM]

First off, you'd be hard pressed to find any snare drum these days that have those internal mufflers like the one you describe. There are a lot of different ways you can get the ring under control.

Ritchie Rings are a 1" (roughly) ring of drumhead material that lays right on top of your batter head around the circumference. They're not expensive and you could actually make your own using an old head and just cut it yourself (try a google search to see what they look like).

Evans makes a head called a Genera Dry (or Extra Dry) that saps all the overtones (or ring, or whatever you want to call it) right out.

Moongels also are pretty effective at drying out the batter head and are pretty similar to the internal muffler.

Also, if you have a drum shop near you (probably not a Guitar Center type store) they'll probably have an old internal muffler you could pick up to replace your broken one.

Lastly, there's the notion that you don't have to muffle your snare at all (I don't, and most of the recording engineers I've worked with prefer an unmuffled snare). With some careful tuning, you can use that ring to your advantage since having some there can be quite pleasing to the ear and actually improves the attack and character of the snare.

Good luck.