I played the clear ones and like them-for a specific purpose. They are great for a small room, lots of attack, short decay, nice warm tubby sound. They really mute things nicely-if that is what you need. I had an issue with a conductor-didn't like any buzz, ring, tone in a snare (I kept telling him a snare it suppose to do that) said the same of a tom, get in then get out of the way. So I had to mute my snare with the Evans HD dry batter head and use hydraulic heads on toms. I guess it did have a nice clean muted sound-I guess...... maybe???? Actually playing that head on my snare batter really forced me to clean up my playing a good bit-any errors are magnified it seems (I never realized how all the snare "white noise" can hide errors). I don't think they had the colored one when I bought them???? My kick batter broke on a 16 kick one time I was playing with a jazz group and I put the hydraulic head on and it sounded great in a pinch.