Big Fat Snare Drum- Steve's Donut

newoldie

Silver Member
Wow!! I purchased this today at my local GC after watching a Sweetwater video on how to fatten up the snare sounds, with Nick D'Virgilio -4 Ways to Get a Phat Snare Sound
(https://youtu.be/snA6WMTR2lo)

Product web site: https://bigfatsnaredrum.com/collections/big-fat-snare-drum/products/bfsd-steves-donut

While I don't heavily muffle any of my drums, sometimes I'll use a little moon gel on the snare or mount tom when mic'd up or in rehearsal. I have a Yamaha mylar ring that's been used on a bright sounding Premier snare, it did fatten the sound a bit.

After watching how easily the snare sound could be beefed up with this product (including one of Nick's other ways, which is to loosen 3 tension rods on the batter, which I tried and also works great), I wanted to have the quick option on hand so I could modify the snare sounds in the middle of a gig, so Steve's Donut looked like the right item. It has a hole in the middle so you can either play in the center and directly on the batter head, or on the mylar surface of the Donut- some other models have no hole in center.

After making the GC purchase while still in the store, I tried out the Donut on 9 different snares including a Ludwig Black Beauty. I was immediately struck by how the Donut cleaned up over-rings, snare buzz and rendered a clean fat sound. It seemed every snare's sound could be improved by just laying this Donut on top, as bad as the GC demo snares are out of tune.

Back home, I experimented on all my snares, same wonderful effect on each snare-- from wooden to aluminum to steel shells.

Can't wait to use this in group rehearsal and on gigs to mix up the sound for a few songs song or appropriate genre. I know some have made a DIY version cutting up a batter head but I had no spares, so I just anted up- used a $10 GC Gift Card, no regrets.

Anyone else using this product on a regular basis?
 
I've been wanting to fatten up my old Yamaha 6.5 X 14 wood snare for country music. I put a EC 2 with reversed dot on it, and some fat cat snare wires. Today I cut out mylar from a 15" head about 1.5 wide and put on it. It still is not sounding as good as I'd like. I might look into the donuts.
 
I've been wanting to fatten up my old Yamaha 6.5 X 14 wood snare for country music. I put a EC 2 with reversed dot on it, and some fat cat snare wires. Today I cut out mylar from a 15" head about 1.5 wide and put on it. It still is not sounding as good as I'd like. I might look into the donuts.


I noticed the wide diameter of the Donut is what makes the sound really substantial. Compared to the Yamaha mylar ring ( 1" in diameter), which only slightly fattened up/muffled my Premier snare, the Donut is a different sound, no question.
 
I like the Big Fat Snare stuff. I've only used the normal one (not the donut), but liked it a lot! I tend to tune my snares to a medium tension, and found that I liked the sound of the BFS when it was added on top of a snare that was tuned a bit higher.

If I want to keep my snare tuned to the medium tuning I tend towards--and then get a fatter sound--I keep a piece of cloth tied so that it spans three of the lugs (on an 8-lug, 14" snare) on the farthest side away from me. Keeping it tied on the lugs lets me flip it off if I don't want it, and then I just flip it on if I do want it. That's been one of the routes that I've found most convenient and most dynamic, since I can also adjust how much of the cloth is on the snare so I can get different grades of fatness.
 

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I cut the hoop off of a 14 inch snare head so that it fits just under the snare hoop I'm using, so there is no movement, and voila, fat snare sound. No whole in the middle but you can experiment.

I had a sound byte on here at one point but couldn't find it.
 
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I use the regular BFSD on most gigs I do, works really well on 80s stuff and ballads.

I usually play with a wide open snare sound, makes sense to have something you can throw on and off to give you another snare sound, it's like 2 snares in one case.

I have an Evans O-ring which I use do deaden rather than phatten the sound, same with moongels. There's also the trusty old wallet. These only come out if I'm in a really crappy room.

BFSD just makes life easier on stage to change snare sounds without changing snares.
 
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