Depressed

Copeland

Member
Grew up drumming as a child and teenager. Switched to bass guitar around 16. Played in many bands as a bassist. Deep down wanted to go back to drums but shrugged it off for years.

Now...finally dropped a grand on a new drum set. First I have ever owned. Loved the tone and the kit but kept second guessing the tuning. Kept adjusting and adjusting. One day I'm satisfied, next day I'm adjusting again because I saw a video on YouTube. Wash, rinse, repeat. Adjust some more.

Now my brand new drum set has three stripped lug nuts and I'm convinced I've ruined two of my drum heads because now they have dead spots that I cant seem to tune away. On top of all this, my family is wondering where the hell I went all day and night tinkering with this sh$% instead of with them. So now I feel guilty, have a pissed off wife, stripped drums. After all that money. I dont even want to look at the drums. But I was so excited three weeks ago.

WTF. You guys enjoy your life. I'm get drunk and watch Godfather
 
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Stripped lug nuts can be fixed easily for pretty cheap. The threaded insert is called a swivel nut. You can buy them in packs. To get to the swivel nut, you take off the lug by undoing the 2 screws inside the drum. Inside the lug is a spring, a small foam insert, and a swivel nut. Take out the spring and the swivel nut falls right out. Reassembly is reverse. The whole thing takes like 5 minutes.

Dont get discouraged. Being mad doesn't help anything. Just start over. Undo all the heads and try again. If you like the sound, leave it for a while. Small movements with tuning. I'm not sure how to dead spot a head. Either the head is good or bad. Stock heads are usually crappy anyhow and need replacing.

Does your family know you bought drums? You should tell them. They may be perfectly understanding, even interested. Mine is totally cool with it.
 
Loved the tone and the kit but kept second guessing the tuning. Kept adjusting and adjusting. One day I'm satisfied, next day I'm adjusting again because I saw a video on YouTube. Wash, rinse, repeat. Adjust some more.

This is a rampant problem among today's drummers. Too often, tinkering takes the place of drumming. YouTube and similar contrivances of distraction can spawn confusion and discontentment. You end up pulled in fifty directions, incessantly searching for a better way of doing things when there was nothing wrong with what you were doing in the first place. Just turn off the hype, and play your drums. You don't need YouTube to be a musician.

If there's one thing I'm thankful for, it's that I started drumming long before I'd ever heard of the Internet.
 
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I can’t help but wonder what caused the lugs to strip. Could you give us some insight into your tuning methods? Are you tightening all of the lit’s finger tight first and then putting A drum key on and turning it a little on each lug, say maybe a1/2 a turn a couple of times around the drum and then maybe a quarter of a turn until it’s tuned right?
 
This is a rampant problem among today's drummers. Too often, tinkering takes the place of drumming. YouTube and similar contrivances of distraction can spawn confusion and discontentment. You end up pulled in fifty directions, incessantly searching for a better way of doing things when there was nothing wrong with what you were doing in the first place. Just turn off the hype, and play your drums. You don't need YouTube to be a musician.

If there's one thing I'm thankful for, it's that I started drumming sixteen years before I'd ever heard of the Internet.

I'm also a member of a traditional shaving forum (safety razors, straight razors, etc) and this same thing is also a HUGE problem over there. Dudes have literally 50+ vintage razors, assortments of blades from all over the planet, and are always chasing 'better'. To the point that they get protractors and calipers involved to measure 'angle of attack' and stuff like that... Just friggin shave.

Same thing goes here... Just play your damn drums.

I'm my early years I spent so much time tinkering, time wasted not simply playing.
 
I'm also a member of a traditional shaving forum (safety razors, straight razors, etc) and this same thing is also a HUGE problem over there. Dudes have literally 50+ vintage razors, assortments of blades from all over the planet, and are always chasing 'better'. To the point that they get protractors and calipers involved to measure 'angle of attack' and stuff like that... Just friggin shave.

Same thing goes here... Just play your damn drums.

I'm my early years I spent so much time tinkering, time wasted not simply playing.

Man, that's hilarious about the shaving forum. Damaging your drums is one thing; carving up your face is another. :)
 
Dudes have literally 50+ vintage razors, assortments of blades from all over the planet, and are always chasing 'better'.
You have mentioned this before. I'm left wondering, how much better than smooth is there? Do these guys just need to wax their face and be done with it?

They would hate me. I hate shaving. Its electric trimmers and a guard. I treat my face like sheep.

Sorry for the derail, now back to our regularly scheduled thread.
 
Grew up drumming as a child and teenager. Switched to bass guitar around 16. Played in many bands as a bassist. Deep down wanted to go back to drums but shrugged it off for years.

Now...finally dropped a grand on a new drum set. First I have ever owned. Loved the tone and the kit but kept second guessing the tuning. Kept adjusting and adjusting. One day I'm satisfied, next day I'm adjusting again because I saw a video on YouTube. Wash, rinse, repeat. Adjust some more.

Now my brand new drum set has three stripped lug nuts and I'm convinced I've ruined two of my drum heads because now they have dead spots that I cant seem to tune away. On top of all this, my family is wondering where the hell I went all day and night tinkering with this sh$% instead of with them. So now I feel guilty, have a pissed off wife, stripped drums. After all that money. I dont even want to look at the drums. But I was so excited three weeks ago.

WTF. You guys enjoy your life. I'm get drunk and watch Godfather
ah that’s a bummer! It’s a day so as long as it’s not frequent, also your a bit annoyed that it all came down hard. You will get back up again my man.
 
Yes. . . Yes, that's fine. Now just sit back and tell me ALL about it. (Proud to be a part of the Drummer's Psychiatry Dept.)

The Couch.jpg
 
eh.. for the record I just dropped similar on a Decade set, hoops were basically trashed when it arrived. Bent, warped - one I had to pop off a tom because it was so bent it wasn't seating correctly. Went through that same buyers remorse like you are.

So Pearl just sent me all new replacement hoops but it's the same 1.6mm junk that was on it. I dropped a buck and a quarter on 2.3mm hoops from a factory outlet and they should be here this week. Swapped out hoops from my other kit and that buyers remorse has faded.

I guess my point is - fart with it but don't be obsessed.

And after some relentless tuning and adjusting I have them where I'm liking them a lot now. Still want to tinker with it but I need to be playing them more so I'm balancing that.

You'll like the 2.3mm hoops a lot more. The difference will be significant.
 
Grew up drumming as a child and teenager. Switched to bass guitar around 16. Played in many bands as a bassist. Deep down wanted to go back to drums but shrugged it off for years.

Now...finally dropped a grand on a new drum set. First I have ever owned. Loved the tone and the kit but kept second guessing the tuning. Kept adjusting and adjusting. One day I'm satisfied, next day I'm adjusting again because I saw a video on YouTube. Wash, rinse, repeat. Adjust some more.

Now my brand new drum set has three stripped lug nuts and I'm convinced I've ruined two of my drum heads because now they have dead spots that I cant seem to tune away. On top of all this, my family is wondering where the hell I went all day and night tinkering with this sh$% instead of with them. So now I feel guilty, have a pissed off wife, stripped drums. After all that money. I dont even want to look at the drums. But I was so excited three weeks ago.

WTF. You guys enjoy your life. I'm get drunk and watch Godfather

How can you be depressed having several drinks and watching the Godfather? That's my favorite movie of all time. And what do you drink while watching the Godfather? That matters. But seriously, you really don't have anything to be depressed about. You spent a grand on drums and may have a couple of stripped lug nuts. Those can easily be replaced. Drum heads are disposable anyway so you definitely can't get bummed about a couple drum heads. So, how much time have spent tinkering around with your drums? A week? Maybe not even a week? A few days? Your wife will definitely get over your absence for a lousy week. The money? Fix the lug nuts and you can resell the kit for close to what you paid for it assuming you understood the value of what you were buying. But even $1,000 isn't anything to be depressed about.

Here's something to think about that you can do something about. Your entire post talks about the drums themselves. But not once do you mention playing them. Learning to play them. Practicing. Etc. If you are still interested in the drums then you need to stop trying to tune them and make them sound perfect and instead learn how to play them.

You want to hear depressing? Try being out of work from a high paying prestigous career and not being able to find similar work for 3 1/2 years. Try running through a pile of savings paying for normal expenses. Try hearing your wife tell you she wants to leave you. Try hearing that the shrink you're seeing says you are clinically depressed and need to take medication to deal with it. Try retreating into yourself and losing touch with many if not most of your friends. Now, THAT is depressing. You got it pretty good bud from where I sit.
 
It's never going to be perfect. You can spend hours and hours adjusting them and the next time you play them the rack tom is going to sound off, or the snare is going to be too "boxy" or whatever.

Get some high fidelity ear plugs, I use Hearos Rock n Roll series but any of them should be fine, they make the kit sound similar to a mic'd up kit with lots of attack and clarity on the cymbals but none of the harshness. I teach lessons on a kit with beat to shit heads and Sabian B8s and from what my ears hear you'd never guess it.
 
It's never going to be perfect. You can spend hours and hours adjusting them and the next time you play them the rack tom is going to sound off, or the snare is going to be too "boxy" or whatever.

Get some high fidelity ear plugs, I use Hearos Rock n Roll series but any of them should be fine, they make the kit sound similar to a mic'd up kit with lots of attack and clarity on the cymbals but none of the harshness. I teach lessons on a kit with beat to shit heads and Sabian B8s and from what my ears hear you'd never guess it.

Thanks for "telling it like it is," bonerpizza. It's vital for everyone to keep in my mind that sound has meaning only to ears, that all ears register sound differently, and that many factors influence the way frequencies are transmitted and thus converted to sound. Drumming is a lot more important than tuning. Your tunings will have different impacts from room to room; your ability to play will be universal.
 
Don't forget that what you hear from the throne isn't what everybody else hears. I thought my toms were *ringy* and the sympathetic vibrations in the snare wires drove me crazy; I hated my ride cymbal - it would ping everywhere but you couldn't crash it. Then my buddy came over and played my set for a bit. It sounded GREAT from about 15 feet away! Even the ride sounded good! Like everybody else said, fix those stripped rods/nuts, replace the batter heads (and resonant heads if needed), tune it reasonably and play. What you *think* you want to hear and what you can live with will come to equilibrium in time.
 
Grew up drumming as a child and teenager. Switched to bass guitar around 16. Played in many bands as a bassist. Deep down wanted to go back to drums but shrugged it off for years.

Now...finally dropped a grand on a new drum set. First I have ever owned. Loved the tone and the kit but kept second guessing the tuning. Kept adjusting and adjusting. One day I'm satisfied, next day I'm adjusting again because I saw a video on YouTube. Wash, rinse, repeat. Adjust some more.

Now my brand new drum set has three stripped lug nuts and I'm convinced I've ruined two of my drum heads because now they have dead spots that I cant seem to tune away. On top of all this, my family is wondering where the hell I went all day and night tinkering with this sh$% instead of with them. So now I feel guilty, have a pissed off wife, stripped drums. After all that money. I dont even want to look at the drums. But I was so excited three weeks ago.

WTF. You guys enjoy your life. I'm get drunk and watch Godfather

I'd say, for now, stop tinkering! Get on them drums, don't worry too much just yet about perfect sound. Just get back into it and most importantly HAVE FUN! drums are supposed to be fun.

Worry about pristine tuning later on down the line when you have your mojo back (and if you plan to play gigs or record videos)
 
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