Curious;;..If some of you have a problem with the coating on Ambs failing you, but you like the sound of Ambs, why would you not just use clear Ambs?..Or do you feel the coated sound totally different to clear,,or you don't like the look?

I do use clear and frosted heads on certain drums. Mainly I like using coated for:

Brushwork - I can't get a swish with smooth or clear.

Sound - I truely believe that coated heads "tame" the overtones a little and make the sound a little darker.

Aesthetics - I really like the look of a coated head on this era of drums plus the inside of the shells on this kit are painted gray and I really don't want to see that when I'm playing. It kinda kills my mojo... guitar3

So, many reasons as to why I want to stick with coated on this specific kit.

@press roll:

I have some experience with white suede remo heads.

Tryed a 18" white suede emperor on a Rogers Big R floortom. No matter what I tryed, I couldn't get is to sound right. Finally ordered an ordinary coated ambassador: floor tom sounded great!

Same with a 16" white suede emperor on a Sonor Swinger floor tom (straight shell).

In both cases the suede head reduced the tuning range; they did not allow to go very low, they would wrinckle. The sound was to much focussed in the mid range to my ears and a plastic like quality, which I disliked.

Tried a suede ambassador: same "problem" but less strongly so.

So, no more suedes for me.

That is: on (floor)toms. I've used both 16" white suede heads on an oversizes snaredrum I made, and both worked really well.

I also had a Slingerland kit that was equipped with Remo suede heads. They didn't have the warmth that I like. So changed them to my usual Remo coated Emperors and Coated Ambassador.

I received the Remo suede head over the weekend and it was not really what I was hoping for as a batter head on my toms. I instead put it on as the resonant head and it sounds pretty good. Might stick with this over a regular coated ambassador for resonant.