Location of tom seems to affect the sound

[johnwesley]

Good grief, this thread is like attending an astro physics class. All the aural explanations and drum placement advice as well as mounting, curvature of the bass drum and drum head type is academia gone wild. I said it previously, the sound of the drum is different from the audience perspective than the drummers. I'm inclined to suggest throwing the damn thing away and using just one tom so you can get back to playing instead of fretting over something that just doesn't respond to "remedy". Unless of course this is an exercise in thesis for some college course.

 

[MntnMan62]

Good grief, this thread is like attending an astro physics class. All the aural explanations and drum placement advice as well as mounting and drum head type is academia gone wild. I said it previously, the sound of the drum is different from the audience perspective than the drummers. I'm inclined to suggest throwing the damn thing away and using just one tom so you can get back to playing instead of fretting over something that just doesn't respond to "remedy". Unless of course this is an exercise in thesis for some college course.

I find it interesting. Not being a scientist or even remotely scientific at all, I find the technical aspects of how and why drums sound the way they do under different circumstances to be quite interesting. We get it's not your thing. Maybe you could just go find another thread to read instead of complaining.

 

[johnwesley]

I find it interesting. Not being a scientist or even remotely scientific at all, I find the technical aspects of how and why drums sound the way they do under different circumstances to be quite interesting. We get it's not your thing. Maybe you could just go find another thread to read instead of complaining.

Not complaining. Just offering a common sense alternative. Truly hope you enjoy the varying hypothesis offered and who knows? Maybe someone will come up with an answer to "What color drums provide the best resonance?"

 

[MntnMan62]

Not complaining. Just offering a common sense alternative. Truly hope you enjoy the varying hypothesis offered and who knows? Maybe someone will come up with an answer to "What color drums provide the best resonance?"

Wow. Continued sarcasm. And to suggest others are lacking common sense? Just wow.

 

[johnwesley]

Wow. Continued sarcasm. And to suggest others are lacking common sense? Just wow.

Did NOT suggest others lack common sense. Guess I hit a nerve. Sorry.

 

[Noisy]

To detect if the issue is more sound wave instead of mechanical issue, try touch the tom shell with your fingertip as you hit it. Can you feel the shell vibrate longer in one position than the other? Is there a somewhat consistent relationship between the shell vibration and sound, or not? Based on that information, you may be able to decide which direction to pursue first.

Edit: you can also VERY lightly touch the batter and reso heads with your fingertips to detect the vibration. If there are equal vibrations going on in different locations but the sounds are extremely different, you can make some conclusions from that.

 

[yammyfan]

Have we eliminated the tom choking on the mount as a possibility yet? Honestly, that sounds a lot more likely than anything else I've read so far.

 

[Andy]

All the aural explanations and drum placement advice as well as mounting, curvature of the bass drum and drum head type is academia gone wild.

Not really John, I've done a lot of this kind of work so others don't have to. My suggestion was simply to move the drum position relative to the bass drum whilst holding it & striking simultaneously, then observe the change. It's a simple test that takes 1 minute to perform, and provides a ready solution choice to the player - I call that pragmatic, not academia gone wild.

As for listening position & perspective, I couldn't agree more, hence my footnote. That said, the affect the OP describes can deliver a negative even if the drum is mic'd, and at that point, a remedy is required, depending on playing context.

On a wider note, final tensioning and adjustment should always be done with all the kit elements present, and with the goal of the kit delivering as a single coherent instrument, as everything affects everything else.

 

[johnwesley]

I'll acquiesce to your first point given what I've seen and heard of your drum building skills. Your second point is clever and worth a try. Thirdly, I agree with tuning all drums as they're placed for playing much like putting together a sports team OR a band.
I'm not as skeptical as I am thought provokingly sarcastic. I believe that comes from 40 years in broadcasting and extensive writing. I found it the best way to get proper answers and explanations.

 

[Lennytoons]

When I tune my drums for a gig I always have someone stand "out in the audience" to listen. Then after I tune I have that same person ( who knows how to strike a drum) play a bit and confirm the tuning. Remember you're tuning for what the audience hears, not what you hear. Those are two different things.

 

[cfen]

You’re not going crazy. It’s a byproduct of mounting a drum right over a large solid mass. When you put a drum on a table it does the same thing. In this case you’re just about an inch or so away.

a quick solution is to tune the drum down by about a quarter turn on the batter head. That generally fixes it for me.

another more time consuming thing to do is to flip the mounting arm from pointing up to pointing down.

 

[mrfingers]

I’ve discovered your ears’ position really does play a part in hearing your kit from the throne. Case in point: I moved my snare up 2” and it’s sound changed, moved my cymbals height above my head and their sound changed. (I now tune any drum with my head directly above the drum and not off to one side.) So the problem That Erict43 has may just be a hearing thing, not a tuning thing.