Patience my friend... lots of Dyna-mic talk out here. You'll get some feedback from somebody who fought the same battle for sure.

I fairly recently rebuilt a Dyna (having never touched one before) for a former professional drummer who had put it out to pasture in the garage. I followed Tommyp's Dyna tuning guide.. let me see if I can find the link to that.

You wont go wrong with Tommy's guide. Be patient.... and thers probably nothing wrong with your original snares, if they are set up right.

Coated Ambassador or Evans J1 Etched on top, Ambassador snare side.. are my preferences. Tuned to factory spec.

I agree with ploughman....probably nothing wrong with the old snares. I restored one of these last year to resell on ebay not knowing much about how to set them up or anything else about them other than they were bringing good $$ at the time. Well.....after finding all the missing parts (this one was real messed up, like it had Pearl lugs on it when I got it!) it was time to set it up. I found an old scan on the web somewhere of a factory setup sheet and followed that. Basically you tighten the snares on the snare frame until you get a musical tone out of the snares themselves. Then you adjust the snares with the throwoff until they just kiss the bottom head and maybe a 1/4 turn more then LEAVE IT. First time I let a friend try it at a gig he tried cranking them up tighter and it totally choked the drum! The key is to have them just touching the head and no more. I used a coated ambassador for the batter and a hazy ambassador for the snare side tuned up moderately high, like a jazz tuning and wow! What a responsive snare! I restored it to sell, but really I wish I had kept it! It was a COB model, the most common type of Dyna, but I tell you....it gives my cherished Supraphonic a run for its money! So if its mushy and choked....you need to tune it higher and let the snares breathe.

Here is the TommyP section.. You can also PM him directly and he can help you if you are still having troubles.

Rogers Dynasonic Tuning Guide

David

THANKS for putting up the link to the set-up instructions David... you beat me to it! And THANKS Ploughman for the nice words too! :-D sutfun!...

I'm pretty sure I have an idea as to the "sound" you might be looking for. I play a 1967 Rogers wood WMP Dynasonic as my main snare drum and it does deliver across the board stylistically. The fact that is is the wood model helps a lot I would say as it isn't quite as "crystalline" sounding as the COB models... it is without a doubt a bit "warmer"... which is of course due to the nature of the wood. The drum retains it's sensitivity though, and is very articulate, yet has a real nice "knock" to the rim shot when playing the R&B/Funk styles, yet speaks crisply when played in the jazz idiom as well. I set this drum up just as I wrote in the set up guide with final tweaking/tuning left up to the individual drummer of course. That said...

I was recently asked to do a booking demo for a band that was going into the studio. They sent me some finished clips in the mp3 format. If you want to PM me, I can send you a couple mp3's, as I think this might be the "sound" you are going for with your Dynasonic.

Tommyp

Thanks gentlemen, I did remove my snares from the bed a few days ago, and several of them drooped like wet spaghetti, so I'm sure that didn't help, and so I've got a set of Puresound on the way. I'll install those, re-tune according to the guide, and see how that goes. I've been using Evans for sometime, but I suspect they may be tired too, and so I'm looking at returning to Remo's. Thanks, I'll give all this a shot.