Brass snare wires obs.

Larry

"Uncle Larry"
I've been using them now for over a year, Puresound 20 strand, on all my snares.

Today I was messing around and playing a few of my snares. My walnut segmented wasn't doing it for me like I remember. So I decided to try changing the wires to what I had in stock, Blasters or Customs, that's what I buy, that's what the drum came with. I wish they would mark which model it is on the solder plate, I'm not sure which I used.

It improved the walnut snare to my ear. It's now like I remember, a beast. So I thought, hmmm, if I liked the old wires better on my walnut, I should like them on my other snares too right?

Wrong. I tried the old Blaster or Custom wires on my newest maple segmented (which I adore) and changed back to brass wires for that drum after 2 hits. The brass really brings out the sweetness of that drum.

I have a special order 8 lug brass Pork Pie snare I had Bill make me and I changed the stock wires to brass wires right away. That drum never really did it for me. So today I changed the wires. Oddly enough, the brass drum sounded better with non brass wires to my ear. Now I like it MUCH better. I still have a few snares to experiment with but I'm surprised to find out that just because I think I like a set of wires...that doesn't mean that those wires will bring the best out of a drum.

I find it curious that I like brass wires on the maple drum but find them lacking on the walnut and brass drums. I have yet to test my other maple snare, along with the ash, padauk and iron snares
 
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It's an interesting dynamic, isn't it? I've had great results with Puresound wires on most of, if not all, of my wood snares. But over just the course of 2019, I've found that I prefer standard chrome wires on my Pearl Session 6.5x14. On the other end of the spectrum, my Acrolite didn't sound good at all with the Puresound 20's. It sounds great, however, with cheap Taiwanese 20 strand chome wires. So much so, I'm considering going with chome wires on my Pearl Aluminum Sensitone, which has Pearl's brass wires on it, which I think are too dry combined with an aluminum shell. I could be wrong, but, I can only try and hear what it sounds like. We all hear sounds the same way. It's how we process them in our head that differs.
 
Yea, as I get on with this journey, I am noticing more nuance. I never really understood how much wires color the sound. I knew it, but now I understand it. Match wires to the drum by taste. A new way to play with my snare drums.

I would always just put Puresounds on my snares and be done with it. When I learned of the brass wires, I got them for all my snares. Brass is more musical, right? Wrong. They are what they are. It's good to experiment with a blank slate.
 
I've been using the brass 24 stand wires on a few drums. I like them on wood drums more than metal. My purple heart snare didn't sound snarey enough but the brass wires gave it a much better response. I'll try three or four sets of wires on some drums. Gotta go with what sounds pleasing to you. I usually use the same heads and tune in the same general range so the wires become the variable. I'll mess with straps too.
 
Larry brings up an interesting issue. How long do snare wires last?
If the wires are all straight and even when not under tension, it is really hard to know when snare wires are no longer good.

Recently I have been liking the sound of Fat Cat Snappy Snares wires on my snare drums.

.
 
I use Grover cable snares on almost all of my drums. They’re drier, darker, and more sensitive than wire snares. I mainly like them because they lack the really high frequencies that can be ear-piercing up close in a quiet acoustic gig, plus the fact that they’re so sensitive. Almost all of my gigs are very low-volume
 
Larry brings up an interesting issue. How long do snare wires last?
If the wires are all straight and even when not under tension, it is really hard to know when snare wires are no longer good.

Recently I have been liking the sound of Fat Cat Snappy Snares wires on my snare drums.

.
It's interesting to hear the subtle differences in snare wires. I went with a set of Puresound EQs on my maple Noble and Cooley in place of the OEM Taiwanese wires, and they were drier, but not overly so. I was thinking of trying the Fat Cats on it figuring they would fall in between the OEMs and the EQs. Again, an interesting topic that doesn't seem to have hard and fast rules.
 
Agreed. Another experiment is to increase/reduce snare strand count.
For example:
When I swapped a set of 24 down to 16 strand it altered the balance of shell and snare wire sound of one particular drum I have.
It enhanced the character of that snare drum's tone to my ears.
 
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Larry brings up an interesting issue. How long do snare wires last?
If the wires are all straight and even when not under tension, it is really hard to know when snare wires are no longer good.

Recently I have been liking the sound of Fat Cat Snappy Snares wires on my snare drums.

I'd bet my Gurus that the same snare wires will sound the same 100 years from now if they never left my studio.
 
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