Congratulations Stroker. This snare would be a pinnacle of sound, design and beauty for me as well. Great to hear it’s meeting and exceeding your expectations.
For your planned SQ2 kit, what sound characteristics/qualities drew you to the Birch shells? And, do you plan on varying shell thickness for any of the drums?
I believe you were initially attracted to Maple a few months ago (when deciding on Sonor over DW) so just curious what changed your mind. My current Sonor is thin-shell birch and I’ve played maple as well before so sincerely not trying to put you on the spot.
Knowing you were also looking for input on the configuration, my only suggestion would be bass drum depth considerations.
For your intended use, the 22” & 24” diameters seem to be a good fit. I have a 20” & 22” and could easily be swayed to 22” & 24” and still have versatility. And part of that versatility for me is tuning options... from both heads tuned the same pitch to a 4th or 5th apart within a fundamental range of about 5-7 semitones.
Similar to toms, I also rely more on head rebound than pedal rebound so I usually have a light spring tension on most pedals. As such air volume is an important factor and I tend to choose 20” - 24” BD depths based on overall air volume rather than just larger diameters = larger depths or everything at a 14” depth.
If you have a similar playing and tuning approach, I’d humbly recommend swapping the depths on the bass drums to 22x16” and 24x14”. These have volumes within 300 cubic inches of each other (~6079 ci & ~6330 ci respectively) and by using primarily only tuning I’m able to vary their sound from more punch to more boom while still maintaining good head rebound.
Just a suggestion though, there’s certainly other philosophies and approaches to selecting depths.
Again congratulations on your snare, and best of luck with your SQ2 design and order,
