If you can post some pics it would be helpful. Cell phone pics sent to your email/saved to documents are easy to make attachments here. I never need to resize them. Just a thought.........

You do have the cord running the right way in the wires ends yes? The wrong way can lift the ends off the head. Not sure the best way to attach straps to the P83 that accepts cord/string. You could bolt a small thin piece of bar stock through the holes. Some thin screws like some used on bass/guitar pickups with washers and nuts. This would allow the straps to be tightened like the P85 but would take some time to setup. But not sure how well it would hold without the pinch groove. Maybe some double sided tape on the bar and cord looped around to help hold? Dunno?? Hopefully someone can chime in and help I'm not much of a Ludwig guy sorry!

I was thinking along the same lines as Glenn as far as a flat bar across the front mounted with two small machine bolts/ nuts. A p85 bottom might slide on to the p83 strainer. They make p85s that are setup for strap. New p85s are pretty cheap if you decide to go that route long term. Same shell holes as the p83.

Mike

Bar stock and screws. Pretty crafty guys.

Lets see a pic of the bottom of your snare with the wires engaged.

When wires are on, the distance between wire plate end and shell bearing edge must be exactly the same.

The cords must evenly fit through the holes and plate with no contorting of the plate or wires.

I can't send any pic yet, the cell phone I have now actually doesn't have a camera. I want to be able to eventually to post other pics on here too. I'm using the string that came with the wires, not sure I realised there's both string and cord available, are they two different things? I don't know if I want to change the bit on the strainer, maybe if I had the part at hand, I do also have an acrolite from late 70s I think (serial no is scratched out by previous owner! ) and it has p83 12 holes, so no go there. The string under the end plates does appear to be lifting the wire off the head a bit in that area, but this can't be avoided because on these end plates there are no guiding grooves -I read that they designed it like this for some reason, I splashed out and have a set of these wires on a radio king and no problems whatsoever-courtesy of the deep snare beds. And I've had the stock Ludwig wires that came with the drum on it , the acro has them now-sweet, also had those great German wires on it and also some puresounds, but the drum has the same problem despite putting all of them on it. Im wondering if I might sadly have to just sell the drum, but probably don't want to do that just yet, maybe this drum is out of round or something, I will see if I can get it into a more acceptable zone ........I have some pretty thin stringy stuff somewhere -used it on other drums , it might help make it flatter.

Odg - When you're experiencing these kinds of mechanical problems it's time to go back to basics and check everything from top to bottom.

1. Have fresh, well-tuned heads on the drum.

2. Make sure the snare wires (when engaged,) are centered between the bearing edges.

3. Make sure the snares are right-side up and that the string/cord goes -over- the center part of the end bar, then tighten down the butt side first. I always cheat the snares toward the butt side a little because I know I will be pulling them the other way when I tension the strainer. I want the snares to end up perfectly centered on the head between the bearing edges when the snares are engaged and up to playing tension.

4. Disengage the strainer, loosen the tension knob and lace the strings through the holes in the plate and execute the first part of a square knot, right over left.

5. Engage the strainer and then finish tying off the knot, left over right. Turning the tension knob, gradually increase the tension on the snares until you get a good clean response from the drum.

If after following those steps there are still problems, I'd look at the hardware and snare beds next. Try the set-up steps I laid out for you. That 'should' take care of the problem. Good luck.

John

Yes and thanks, this can wait a little., I'm going to first sort my RK snare out especially as for upcoming gig on Saturday (new batter head and smoothing out the beezwax I ' roughly' applied before on the bearing edges) good to ya all on your friendly input as always. Top class here.

Well I've tried again to solve the problem and by following johns advice but it's no better and I do know how to set snares up, so I don't know, I suppose if there is some kind of edge problem or minuscule warping of the shell then it's pretty hard to fix on a metal drum if I knew it could be fixed I would be willing to pay. Does anyone know if this is possible. I'm petty certain there's no place locally that could do this type of work.as for nationally in the uk who knows?

Storm Trooper sorry if this is getting boring but I'd rather leave it on a 'good note' I'm just going by what it sounds like in a room in house, it has been ok in pubs on gigs.ive said this before but have tensioned top head again higher and hardly any rattling now :o