Chunkaway
Silver Member
With regards to anything ply and/or affordable, I agree, perhaps with the exception of single flange wood hoops, but only in combination with extremely low mass associated hardware.
I actually would disagree. I owned two Ayotte kits back in the early 2000s (both 22/12/14/16). One of the kits had wood hoops (Ayotte hoops) and the other had 2.3mm metal hoops. The wood hoops dried out the sound and made it more focused. I would describe it as somewhat similar to die cast hoops, but with its own sound.
I brought both of these kits into the studio once and the engineer and I listened to the same track with the different kits. There was definitely a difference. By the way, we used the wood-hooped model on the recording.
Having said all that, I have two C&C kits and I deliberately did NOT get wood hoops. I think wood hoops are absolutely fine, I just feel like the cost isn't worth the difference in sound. My $.02.