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converted 16" bass drum reso sound

Posts: 7 Threads: 1

Hi, first post here. We sort of made two drumsets out of one -- it was a Gretsch catalina Maple that I got my son not knowing he would become primarily a jazzer. Anyway I bought a 16x14 floor tom after he started getting gigs in small venues along with a trick conversion mount. We used this as the bass drum for a combo kit. With the 14 x 14 floor tom and 10 inch tom it does pretty well in small venues, and it fits easily in the car. The 12 inch rack tom and 16 x 16 floor tom with the fairly monstrous 22 x 16 (?) bass drum are now the big band kit, which mercifully can be stored at my son's music school.

After a lot of trial and error we found that aquarian modern vintage on the toms and aquarian deep vintage on the bass sound pretty dang good. The only problem is that while the sound coming off the converted bass drum batter head is very good, the same can't be said, maybe of the reso head. Any ideas on why? Is this a common thing in the bass drum universe, or does it have to do more, maybe, with this size of drum? thx!

Posted on 8 years ago
#1
Posts: 1971 Threads: 249

Welcome!!

Help2 Just something I read... maybe some food for thought.

ResonantThe main purpose of a resonant head is to react to the moving air column that’s set into motion when the batter head is struck. The two most common thicknesses for resonant tom heads are 7 and 10 mil. Bottom snare heads are often very thin, ranging from 2 to 5 mil.The thicker the resonant head, the more sustain and the deeper the tone. Thinner resonant heads have less sustain and a brighter tone. (Less mass and less energy equals less sustain.) Also, thin resonant heads will need more tuning maintenance because they vibrate more rapidly and are less rigid than thicker versions. If you use a coated resonant head, the overall tone warms up significantly. Some resonant heads are also available with a dampening ring such as Evans’ EC Resonant, which helps focus the overall tone and increase the lower overtones.Resonant examples: Evans EC Resonant, Remo Hazy Ambassador, Aquarian Regulator, Attack Extra Thin Snare Side

Not a Guru... just interested..
Posted on 8 years ago
#2
Posts: 545 Threads: 67

All depends on the completely subjective definition of "sounding good".

For a reso head I would refrain from pre-dampened heads. I'd buy a coated single ply (or a fyberskin?) and experiment with external muffling. With external muffling you're in control of just how and how much you muffle, and you can adjust at any time (I played in two bands once, in one band my sound needed to be tighter, in the other band it needed to be wide open, so I even used external on/off muffling on the batter side).

I made a drawing once to explain how it works.

Use a felt strip (or somthing similar), blue line. Fold it in the corners at the rims. Push it in the corner with a stiff piece of cardboard (or something similar that does the job) (red line) and use some kind of clamps to clamp the cardboard to the hoop (brown). You can now use long or short strips, narrow or wide strips, thin or thick strips, felt or cotton, or you name it. Off course, when you found your sound you can run the strip under the hoop and take away the cardboard and clamps.

You could also put a little foam or a pillow in the drum (for lower tone), but be sure it does not touch the heads from the in side; because you want to be able to control the amount of head muffling from the outside

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Posted on 8 years ago
#3
Posts: 7 Threads: 1

thx guys, helpful info!

Posted on 8 years ago
#4
Posts: 1163 Threads: 36

Just a question. What technique is your boy using when he's playing the little BD? Is he letting the beater bounce back off the head? That should give you that sort of "PUNG" sound. If he's using a heel up sort of bury the beater in the head technique your going to get more of a "DOIYK" sound.

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Posted on 8 years ago
#5
Posts: 7 Threads: 1

Technique definitely has something to do with it, as does the beater. The vater bomber pedal helped get a rounder smoother tone, and more of the as you say "pung" sound (nice!) rather than the less pleasing "doiyk". As far as dynamics and/or applied force, the drum definitely has a sweet spot. Too hard and / or buried batter and it goes into doiyk territory. It occurs to me that the smaller drum may exacerbate this tendency.

But even then, the sound is just better coming off the batter. I did a little micing test just to make sure I wasn't "hearing things" to confirm. . . maybe we will try bartw's method at some point.

A semi- related question -- would you equate the pung sound with gretsch and the doiyk sound with Ludwig?

Posted on 8 years ago
#6
Posts: 1427 Threads: 66

I think it is the depth of the drum.

I personally feel deeper drums are "slow" to respond and too much depth relative to diameter is a bad thing in a bass drum. What I call "square" (depth equal to diameter) bass drums generally don't sound good to me. Often a 12" deep old school bass can be tuned and tweaked wherever you need it whereas the same cannot be said for deeper bass drums.

In general of course but maybe these thoughts provide insight.

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Posted on 8 years ago
#7
Posts: 7 Threads: 1

definitely . . . the Cat Maple came with a 16 x 16 which no matter what we did was hard to control. Thus the purchase of the 16 x 14 which was much more manageable as far as tone and a smaller footprint. It also allowed us to make basically two sets out of one.

I didn't know about vintage era 12" bass drums. I thought they were usually 14".

thx for the reply!

Posted on 8 years ago
#8
Posts: 7 Threads: 1

here's a 22 x 12 that sounds pretty authoritative . . .

http://memphisdrumshop.com/c-c-super-flyer-drum-set-221216-ox-redantique-white-ccsf223oraw

Posted on 8 years ago
#9
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