Ok, here's my take on the subject.......lot's of people interchange the two terms. Nothing wrong with that right? In my book, no. However, the term strainer comes from the marching drum world. Most marching snare drums back in the old days had something called a "military strainer" where the snares were always "on" and all you could do was tension them to your liking, no way to "turn them off". The term "throw-off" came about when Ludwig developed the first modern "strainer/muffler" (yes they considered it a muffler also because it would "mute" or "muffle" the snare sound to just a tom-tom sound) in the early teens of the 20th century. You would literally "throw-off" the snares, hence the name throw-off.

So, technically, strainer=non switchable, throw-off=switchable.

Make sense? :cool:

But, in the 1918 catalogue Ludwig was introducing their new mechanism and still referring to it as a “strainer”.

Maybe thats what Ludwig-dude was saying though!

so, what i am getting from that, is that the snares, themselves are the strainer but when you put a device attached to them, that allows their removal or cancellation , then that is the throwoff. so calling a throwoff a strainer is incorrect, correct?

yep. I agree 100%

calfskin - There has generally always been a device attached to the “snare” wires. (those wires were how the snare drum got it’s name). As Ludwig-Dude and O-Lugs have mentioned when the switchable on-off was added folks eventually started to call it a throw-off also. The word “strain” can mean that there is some sort of pressure on something so the use of strainer could have been used for the stretching device on a snare.

O.K. just to follow my own thought here I just checked my Webster Pocket dictionary for the word “strain” and the first definition is: “to stretch or draw tight”. Some strainers only stretch and some also are able to do a quick throw-off too.

That's how I have always understood the difference...a "strainer" only puts a strain on the snare wires, "throw-off" also allows the player to quickly release the snare wires with a lever.

The "throw-off", is just a part of a better strainer, is the way it looks to me.