Drum dampening/muffling techniques

E-Rings at home because in my basement my drums sound like crap down there with no muffling...go figure. A finely tuned unmuffled drum kit playing live. Well, sometimes anyway. Most of the time i go unmuffled live but on occasion i will put a small pillow in my bass drum and maybe use just a little moongel on my snare depending on the situation.
 
I only muffle the snare and the kick. For the snare, I cut up old drum heads to make my own dampening rings. I also like to use electrical tape to do moongel-ish dampening. Works great.

For the kick: pillows and towels.
 
i run everything wide open & "muffle" a bit w/ head combos. gonna try all black dots on my yamaha fusion kit soon for the Tony vibe.
 
I try to stay wide open depending on the situation, Snare with E-ring...if needed from old drumhead as mentioned above. Bass drum with the Simon Phillips rolled towell method....if needed. Everything else is wide open. Duct tape is always close by just in case.
 
Powerstroke 3's on my bass drums, and my snare. The rest Emperors over Ambassadors.
 
no muffling on snare or toms (with white coated single ply heads), and only a felt strip on both batter/reso kick heads with no port. old school for me over the last few years.
 
On snare and toms I use colored duct tape, folded so it has little 1/2 inch fins sticking up. Very customizable. Evans EQ Pad for the bass.
 
I play everything wide open with exception to my bass drums. My 18" and 26" bass drums have felt strips front and back, (fiberskyn reso, ps3 coated batter, emperor reso and batter respectively) and my 22" has an evans retro screen reso and emad clear batter. Either way I love the wide open sound and these all accomplish the job. I leave it up to my sound guy to adjust any overtones. My method is to give him all the resonance he needs to work with, rather than try to pull more sound out than is there...
 
PS3s on the kick, coated emperors on the toms, coated ambassadors on all snares, not really any muffling. One of my steel snares has an internal muffler, but I rarely use it.

OH WAIT. I have an Ambassador X on the steel snare.
 
Wide open on main snare (don't want to choke her if I can help it).

The not so good snare gets an Evans Genera Dry Snare Batter, which brought that snare back to life for me.

Toms open, though often a little damped by using double ply heads.

Kick is EMAD, so I use the dampening foam ring that comes with it, no pillow usually.

I did buy some moongel recently but not had the need for it yet.
 
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