I just had another thought about the choking issue. Are you on sharp edges? If you are on real sharp 45s, that may be the culprit. You see, the edges are going to make the head resonate in a way the shell was not designed to. These thin shells are not deisned for sharp high resonance, they want a warmer, shallower less cutting signal. I would knock just the very top of the edge down. You can always sand it back if it does not work. I mean just knock the knife edge off, rolling over a tad bit to free up the head and flatten it out.

Hi Jonnistix, the edges are quite rounded. I don't know if you can see it to well in the pics, but I basically used the original profile on the outer part of the bearing edge. The re-rings were cut with an inch and a quarter 45 degree router bit.

I cut the outer edge with the same bit then sanded the edge with a round over. The drum isn't choked. The high overtones are still there. By lowering the tension on the snare side, it lessened the ringy dingy.A little moongel or even tissue makes a big difference. What is different about the sound from the original shell is it's much deeper and louder.

One thing I did do was to square up the shell with itself first. I stuck PS sanpaper sheets on a piece of plywood and sanded the shell square again.

I like the way it sounds. I will get a sound file up soon.

Cheer,Ed