Dang floor toms

[Tadpui]

Man, the drum forum has been lonely for a while now. I took my drum setup down before the holidays and I'm just now slowly getting back in the mood to whack them around a bit and record the results. Not totally there yet, but at least heading that direction. (And I'm sorry @CrowsofFritz that I dropped off the radar on your collab...ping me if you're still interested, since I'm finally getting set back up).

A friend sent me some drum tracks of his, since his band is trying to record a demo for their booking guy. And honestly they sounded very good. And hearing his Pearl kit that has 12/14/16 toms and a 22" kick finally clicked it in my head that I'm tired of fighting my 10/12/14 and 20" kick to make them sound how I want. It was a bad decision to buy the "fusion" kit instead of a more standard rock-oriented kit.

So I hunted down the same kit pieces in my desired sizes and bought a 22" kick, 16" floor tom, and a 14" rack tom. The kick and floor tom arrived last week and the rack tom is due tomorrow, so I've been able to play around with them a bit. I put an EMAD batter and EQ3 reso on the kick, tuned it how Rob "Beatdown" Brown shows, and I immediately loved it. I'm happy with the kick, even with no muffling inside.

But...the 16" floor tom, just like the 14" floor tom, is proving to be a pain in the ass to tune. I'm using G2 coated on the batters and Genera clear resos. I feel like I've tried all of the tunings in their ranges and the main problem is that they ring out way too long. There's some sort of deep resonant tone and they just go on forever. The best results I've gotten so far is to tune the reso heads just about as low as they'll go, then tune the batter heads to taste. But still those SOBs just want to go "booooonnnnnnnngggggggg". I don't want to deaden them so much that I kill the tone of them, because they actually sound very nice.

I think my next attempt to tame them is to try a suggestion that I saw to pull some cotton balls flat and put them inside the drum so they kind of "gate" the reso heads. I tried that before with some chunks of Auralex, but that stuff was a little too rigid and I could hear them bouncing around in there like popcorn.

But you guys that get awesome tom tones, what's your secret? Yours "sounds like records" to quote Warren Huart. Mine sound like a Moog synth dying a painful death. I don't recall you guys doing anything fancy, just tuning them and they sound great. What gives?

[Lt. Bob]

is that Klingon you're speaking?

[Bill L]

The guy I work for, he runs a sound and production company for venues, told me to tune the drum to the fundamental of the shell. In other words, tap the shell of the drum and listen to it's natural note. And tune the drum accordingly. That's why DW actually puts the note on their shells.

dw-collectors-cherry-mahogany-tuning-compare.jpg

By tuning the resonate head either higher or lower will change the way the pitch resonates; either pitching higher or lower after the initial hit.

I'm still learning, as I'm not a real drummer, but the difference between well tuned drums and poorly tuned drums is drastic. And different styles of music require different tunings.

[Greg_L]

I like the loose batter/tight reso method. It gives a deep tone with a quick pitch bend and doesn't need much damping, if any.

[JD01]

is that Klingon you're speaking?

Qa'Pla!

[Tadpui]

I think I've tried keeping my resos tuned up and trying as loose of a batter as I could get away with, but I'll have to try again because I don't remember the results. Seems like it was still really ringy, but I'll try again.

I don't remember having this issue with the cheap stock resos on these drums, it's been tougher since I changed them out. I'm guessing that they're a bit thicker than the stock ones?

I just got everything miked up again for the first time in a few months, so I'll record a couple of different tunings and see what you all think.

I've been using a TuneBot, which suggests a "centered" tuning based on the shell size, then has tunings +/- 3 steps from there. And you can choose the amount of resonance, which I think tunes the reso closer to the batter the more resonance you ask for. I might just dedicate this evening to trying them all.

I've tried various things with the Drum Dial too. I've tried Rob Brown's "press down on the head and tighten until the wrinkles go away" method. That worked amazing on the kick, but not so much on the toms. And I've tried to just go by ear, but that's always a disaster with me. My goal is to use the tools to figure out what I like, then learn how to just do that by ear. You'd think I'd be better at it by now, but not yet...

[Greg_L]

Ugh, dude TuneBot is the devil. I've never heard a drum tuned well with the TuneBot.

Drum Dial is pretty slick though. If you need to use a tool I'd say stick with that.

[Tadpui]

Ugh, dude TuneBot is the devil. I've never heard a drum tuned well with the TuneBot.

Drum Dial is pretty slick though. If you need to use a tool I'd say stick with that.

I think that the TuneBot is pretty cool, but it does have a tendency to do some weird things. As far as I can tell, it's listening to the most fundamental tone. But since a drum head is just a bunch of overtones on top of that fundamental, I do end up with all of the lugs sounding wonky to my ear. It's like the overtones throw it off, or it's not paying attention to the right frequency or something. I mean, I do end up with a final pitch right where it says it should be. But the heads sound...off, somehow. Like none of the individual lug pitches seem right.

My issue with the Drum Dial is that once I painstakingly get the tension all even and try to even out the lug pitches, things go awry quickly. I end up with way too high of a pitch and end up having to start over. They say to pick the highest pitch and tune everything up to that, but I'm doubting that advice. Loosening a lug seems to throw everything into disarray though.

I know I'm overcomplicating it, but I just want to get good at it and get comfortable with the process. I really have trouble picking out the pitch that I'm "supposed" to be listening to among the half dozen overtones that are all going on at the same time. I can't seem to train my ears to hear that fundamental note. It's like tuning a 12-string guitar by strumming all 12 strings at once and trying to pick out the ones that are sharp or flat. Apparently I'm a Snark and not a Polytune

[Armistice]

Believe it or not, there is a (paid ) service that will translate from Klingon to English, and vice versa, for you...

Klingon.jpg

[Tadpui]

@Armistice I can't believe that the geeks at Google haven't added Klingon to Google Translate yet. Seems like more than one dev would know it.

And thanks for talking me off the cliff and letting me vent, guys. I went back to the Drum Dial, got everything close enough to start tuning by ear, and now I'm much happier with my tom sounds. Still a little too ringy but not as bad as before. And holy cow does my 12" rack tom die when it's mounted on the kick. Holding it in my hand, it sounds nice. When mounted, it sounds more like banging on a coffee can. Weird.

[Greg_L]

I think that the TuneBot is pretty cool, but it does have a tendency to do some weird things. As far as I can tell, it's listening to the most fundamental tone. But since a drum head is just a bunch of overtones on top of that fundamental, I do end up with all of the lugs sounding wonky to my ear. It's like the overtones throw it off, or it's not paying attention to the right frequency or something. I mean, I do end up with a final pitch right where it says it should be. But the heads sound...off, somehow. Like none of the individual lug pitches seem right.

My issue with the Drum Dial is that once I painstakingly get the tension all even and try to even out the lug pitches, things go awry quickly. I end up with way too high of a pitch and end up having to start over. They say to pick the highest pitch and tune everything up to that, but I'm doubting that advice. Loosening a lug seems to throw everything into disarray though.

I know I'm overcomplicating it, but I just want to get good at it and get comfortable with the process. I really have trouble picking out the pitch that I'm "supposed" to be listening to among the half dozen overtones that are all going on at the same time. I can't seem to train my ears to hear that fundamental note. It's like tuning a 12-string guitar by strumming all 12 strings at once and trying to pick out the ones that are sharp or flat. Apparently I'm a Snark and not a Polytune

Okay that's kind of weird. First thing you need to do is check that your bearing edges are smooth straight and true. Then check that your hoops are not bent and your lugs and lug screws are clean and lubricated. A head that's sitting flat and happy on the drum should tune up pretty evenly without any crazy variations in tension.

One thing I've found that doesn't work no matter what is trying to force a drum to a sound or pitch it doesn't want to do. Each drum has it's own little range of relative happiness, but there's really only one sound that it wants to make. Snare drums are a little different, you can force them to do things. But toms have a pitch and frequency where they naturally resonate. That is where they sound their best. I tune my drums to their lowest natural happy pitch and fine tune from there.

It might help you to learn how to hear the way drums ring and sing if you start from scratch with only one head at a time. Take your floor tom, remove the batter head, and focus on just the reso head. It also helps to lightly touch the center of the head while you tap around the lugs. Very light touch on the middle of the head helps tame the unwanted overtones. Tune the reso head by ear to it's lowest natural pitch. It should ring like bell. Then flip the drum over and set up the batter head the same way. Position the drum though so that the resonant head is not interfering with what you hear from the batter. Have the drum sitting flat on some carpet or a towel or something. Do not let the reso head ring while you tune the batter. When that's done you can put the drum back on it's legs or it's mount and see how the heads interact. It will probably be booming like a mofo but that's good. That means it's in tune. From there you can sneak up on juggling the two heads for attack or sustain or deadness or pitch bending or whatever you want. How the two heads throw the shockwaves at each other is how they make a drum sound like it sounds. You can put the heads out of phase with each other and get beneficial canceling just like any other audio source. Or you can do it wrong and it will sound like ass. But start with tuning the drum to be happy by itself and then you'll be in the ballpark. And then you can add some tape or moongels to finish it off.

[Tadpui]

My suspicion is that I'm feeling the effects of an entry-level drum kit, and that manufacturing tolerances and materials in this price range are a little more loosey goosey than even a slightly higher quality kit. I think that the kit sounds great if/when I ever get into a happy tuning. But getting it there seems way more challenging than it should be.

I've checked out the bearing edges as best as my untrained eye can afford, and I haven't noticed any nicks or defects there. The hoops (1.5mm steel triple flange...whatever that means) seem perfectly round as well, but you could fool me pretty easily. There's one suspect spot on the new kick's bearing edge, but that's the one drum that I'm satisfied with I've treated every lug with a dab of white lithium grease, so they're good and lubed up.

[Tadpui]

My 14" rack tom arrived today so I was finally able to displace the troublesome 14" floor tom. So now I've got 12 and 14" rack toms and a 16" floor tom. I spent a few hours tuning, detuning, retuning and I think I finally figured out a good system. And I think I finally figured out why the TuneBot was having issues (or rather why I was having issues with it).

I finger tightened everything, then shot for a 75 on the batters and resos according to the Drum Dial. Then I got them reasonably in tune by ear from there. Then I was able to use the TuneBot to fine tune it and get the desired pitches for everything. I've got the resos about a 3rd above the batters. They sound great, finally! Still some room for improvement, but at least nothing is going booooooonnnnnnnggggg any more. They sound like...well, like toms now.

I think the issue with the TuneBot is when the lug pitches are all out of whack, there's no telling what frequency the head is going to resonate at. It might coincidentally be the desired pitch, but none of the lugs are in tune with each other so it sounds awful. If I got things finger tight, then gave everything 1/2 or a full turn, the lug pitches were out of whack. And I was relying on the TuneBot to fix it all. Once I got things reasonably within the correct range by ear, the TuneBot could do a much better job at detecting the correct pitch. And I stand a much better chance of tuning by ear when I at least have the Drum Dial to get me in the ballpark first. So all 3 techniques together finally got me a reliable way to finally get these things tuned to my liking.

[Greg_L]

I've got the resos about a 3rd above the batters. They sound great, finally!

In my experience that's pretty much where you wanna be for rock drums. Resos tighter than batters.

Well done!

[Lt. Bob]

Believe it or not, there is a (paid ) service that will translate from Klingon to English, and vice versa, for you...

Klingon.jpg

of course there is lol