I suppose I just don't understand what is so difficult about making a drum sound good.

Here's a story from BR I found humorous, he was on his bus and he says Mr. Ludwig came in and asked, "did you know there's a wrinkle on your bass drum head?" Buddy says, "no, I didn't know that, did you touch it?" Mr. Ludwig says, "of course, there's a wrinkle." Buddy asked, "did the drums sound good?" Mr. Ludwig, "yes" Buddy, "then why did you touch it? Now I need to go back and put the wrinkle back on." LoLoLoLo

A good medium tuning for that set up is a C note for the rack, and F note for the floor. I don't really use it on the bass drum but the Overtone Labs app for your phone will have suggestions.

With those you can tune even tension, bottom head higher, batter head higher..

When using the Tune-bot, start by evenly tensioning your drumhead up to pitch, clamp the device on the rim between two lugs, and tap the head about an inch in from the rim nearest to the lugs around the drum. Then just tension up or down until the desired frequency is achieved.

Even tension for "C" on your 12" tom = 225hz

"F" on your 14" floor = 150hz

That's muting the opposite head, and tapping around at each lug.

That's a 5th interval (think the intro of the song "My Girl").

About the lowest, decent pitch out of that 14" floor will be a D# to an E is my best guess.

Download the app to your phone when you get a chance. It has all the recommended tunings as well as an artist user tuning section. Their website has the same information.

Hope this helps.

Interesting reading when you research Buddy Rich drum techs and drum tuning. Found a reference that said he always had a sheet of plywood available because he liked the way his drums sounded on a wooden floor. And some fairly critical references to the world’s best drummer having poorly tuned drums. Lots of opinions! :)

Thanks for that great post Justin! I’m excited to work through this! I’ll let you know how it works for me.

Thanks again!flowers2

I saw a photo on one of the vintage drum pages on Facebook of him with a kit on top of ply wood. I think it was the Buddy Rich page. If I find the photo ill post it this week.

Heard something interesting today while listening to Stairway to Heaven:

At the 5:38-5:50 mark in the song one of Bonham's toms is tuned to the same notes as those being played by Jones and Page.

That song is perfection by Bonham.

OK... it’s here... now the fun part! Can I figure this out? :).

There should be plenty of youtube videos that could help you out with it.

Have fun Jim and please give us a review.

Jim,

Have fun with your tunebot! A good tuning that I’ve used for an EXTREMELY fat sound on my new USA Club Dates is tuning the rack tom to A# and the floor tom to D#, which is 200 hz for the 12” and 134 for the floor. I have mine tuned equal on both sides, but I tend to sometimes tune the reso higher than the batter head. This tuning is really best for rock, when I’ve tried to play Jazz tuned this low the drums aren’t sensitive enough at a pianissimo to piano level to get the best tone. They just kind of grumble unless you lay into em more, then they sound superb! Perfect for that fat rock sound.

Here’s a link to the tunebot calculator:

http://tune-bot.com/calculator.html

If I want to mess around with changing the pitches, I tune them with the tune bot at a moderately low tension, and then move each lug up a quarter to a half turn at a time until I find where they sing in the tuning range. Then I’ll measure the pitches and write them down to remember them.

OldReliable