I was watching some drum tuning videos on youtube the other and saw all kinds of drummers or drum techs explain how they tune their heads, etc'. Anyhow, there's this Bob Gatzen guy, who I don't know who he is, but I saw how his kit set and decided he's bullshit, It looks like a rocket launcher!
Anyhow, he said something that sounded reasonable to me - when putting a new head, don't stretch, because it's easy to stretch an equally and then the head might be fucked. His approach is to tune the head to your how you're going to tune it, play the drum for some time then re-tune it and again until it stabilizes. Sounds reasonable, now I got all paranoiac that I over stretched the bottom head on my snare drum.

How do you do it?

Also, does it ever happen to you that all of your lugs are tightened the same but there's one lug that's almost completely loose?
I don't know if it's just the abused head I have currently on my snare, but I re-tuned it and wanted to bring it to a certain pitch. I made sure that all of the lugs I turned so far had the same tension and suddenly this one lug is almost completely loose. I checked with a drum dial and the tension was the same all over the snare. I had to give this lug half a turn or a full turn to make it tighten reasonably.
Also, it sometimes happen that I turn a lug a full turn and the tension doesn't change. Kinda weird.
The snare is a 70's LM400 supraphonic.

Oh and, I'm looking for some new snare wires, any recommendation? I've seen a puresound 20 strands snare wires for 10$. looks ok, but I don't know though.

Should I split this into different threads? It felt stupid to create 3 new threads about drums.

That Gatzen guy is loopy. That's what OCD looks like when applied to drum tuning. You're not performing spinal surgery, you're getting relatively even tension on a plastic membrane which you will then strike with GREAT FORCE using a wooden stick. I say stretch it a little, tune it, stretch it a little more, tune it, play some, tune it... repeat.

The weirdly tensioned lug needs to be lubricated, most likely. Also, it's important to know that every lug tensioning the drumhead pulls on every other lug, so you can have the lugs on either side of it torqued down a little too tight, and the tension crossing the lug is held by its neighbors.

Well lubricated tension rods make life a lot easier- you can start to feel the right amount of resistance on the lug as you're tightening it the first time, presuming that rust or other junk hasn't built up in the threads of the lug. That dreck keeps you from getting an accurate feel for how tight the lug is as you turn the drum key. This is important for getting the head in close before you start tapping on it to finalize tensioning.

This stuff works great for both lubricating your tension rods and smoothing out bearing edges.

First, you'll want to give the threads of the rods a scrub with some steel wool, medium to medium fine. (Don't use this stuff on chrome parts, btw!) Once you have buffed some of the grime and crud off of the threads, wipe it good with a paper towel with a little bit of WD-40 on it, then dry that off. Last, add some of this glide stuff or some lithium grease. You'll be able to get a much more accurate feel for how much tension is on the lug once they're turning a little more freely.

When you turn the lug a full turn and the tension doesn't change, it's because the lugs on either side of it are so tight that it takes more than a full turn for the lug to start pushing down on that part of the hoop.

Which snare wires you use is purely a function of the sound you're going after. Drummaker.com has all of the Puresound wires that you can buy. Call Andy Foote there and ask him which you'd choose for the sound you're going for. (and then buy what he tells you to. Don't jerk him around... He's a fantastic guy.)

I like the 14" 16 strand copper Puresounds, myself. You can do more research on their snares at their website.

Bob Gatzen seems like the kind of guy who shits in lab glassware so he can take his crap into the garage and analyze it. I have no doubt that he is certifiably out of his fucking mind.

That said, he raises many useful points about tuning. You can learn something from watching his tuning vids on YouTube, especially the one about bass drum tuning. I think that is very valuable. Most drummers just throw a pillow in the thing and let the soundman worry about making it sound like a drum.

Those drum dials are good for a start, or if you're in a hurry, but I've found any hip new device for drum tuning to be smoke and mirrors. There has been no device that has gotten better results in five minutes than I could get in half an hour using a drum key and my ears.

No matter what you use, the main essentials are striking next to each lug to compare pitch and moving across the drum to lugs on opposite sides, back and forth. Also, understanding how the relationship between the two head's tensions effects the sound. Everything else is witch craft.

Thanks for the replies guys.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a guy who follows trends and go buy the newest tools and such. I have a drum dial because it's a nice instrument. Even just for the sake of seeing the pressure of the head in a certain point, no so I can tune it better, just so I can see what it is.
I tune by ear and even if I even the drum by looking at the drum dial, I always listen to the drum. I know which lug is too tight or too loose by listening to the drum and hearing which side the weird vibration is coming from.
I always like to hear people's ideas and see how they do certain things, I'm always learning cool new tricks which make my life easier. Anyhow, the people who's ideas and methods I count on and appreciate the most is of you guys(I can explain why I trust you and not others!).

Thanks for the cleaning advice patrick.

I tune my snare to sound really low and thick(as much as I can, it's a 14X5), but not flappy so the stick bounces back nicely when hitting the drum mildly. Of course, I like some crack, but not too much. I also use the internal dumper on the snare to dump the top head a little bit, I don't use gaffer tape or moon gel or any of that stuff, the internal dumper is more than enough.

(I guess everyone is aiming to that tone, so it's nothing new)

I will look over at puresound to see which snares would fit this "sound" best, I also call andy.

btw, how do you make your floor tom stop ringing when hitting the snare? It always sounds weird in the room mics, at first I thought that my snare sound totally different through the mics, but soon realized that it's the floor tom adding it's ring.
What else can be done to avoid this except from tuning them to a different pitch, though I wouldn't mind altering the floor a little bit.

losthighway wrote:Those drum dials are good for a start, or if you're in a hurry, but I've found any hip new device for drum tuning to be smoke and mirrors. There has been no device that has gotten better results in five minutes than I could get in half an hour using a drum key and my ears.

No matter what you use, the main essentials are striking next to each lug to compare pitch and moving across the drum to lugs on opposite sides, back and forth. Also, understanding how the relationship between the two head's tensions effects the sound. Everything else is practice.

There's no substitute for doing something a LOT.

I liked my drum dial before I dropped it and broke it. Now I hardly ever think about it, but if someone gave me another one, I'd use it.

Eliya-
this sound you describe- "low and thick" with "some crack." A '70s LM 400 is nearly the perfect snare drum for that, give or take an inch or so of depth. I'd most certainly try a coated emperor on it with an ambassador resonant head and some 16 strand Puresounds. Remember also, though, that your close mic is almost always going to be a little pingy. You can tighten the batter head up to a reasonable tightness and still get that thick sound out of the room mics. The wallop sound that most of us associate with a fat, thick sound is as much a function of room dynamics as it is tuning. If you isolate the snare mic on a lot of recordings that have that sound, the close mic still sounds kind of thin and timbale-like. This may be because of the short soundwave of higher freqs hitting the mic at the right peak, or it may be because of some phenomenon I am not enough of a pro to identify.

As for your floor tom resonating when you hit your snare drum- doesn't that make your snare sound a little deeper in the mix?

I don't mind a little bit of cross talk between drums, so long as I am not having to fight the hi-hat in the snare mic. That's my biggest problem... However, I use the SSL plugins from Waves, and if I need to knock some of that out, I just use the gate feature. I wouldn't go monkeying with the sound of the floor tom too much just to knock out something that the listener will never notice.

you could also try tightening the bottom head on the floor tom- that often tightens up the overall sound of the floor tom anyway, getting rid of that "gra-WOW" ring that plagues floor toms.

I have new heads for my toms on my Ludwig Maple kit, AND i have a cameraman lined up for early next week. Tuning video comes soon!

-p.

eliya wrote:Don't get me wrong, I'm not a guy who follows trends and go buy the newest tools and such. I have a drum dial because it's a nice instrument. Even just for the sake of seeing the pressure of the head in a certain point, no so I can tune it better, just so I can see what it is.

That's a good idea, to have tensions for a reference so you can repeat combinations that have worked before when you change heads. Some people can hear the actual notes, but I can't do it without a keyboard or guitar for reference.

I pay more attention to the intervals between the drums which are a little easier to spot. I don't think a drum set needs to be 'in tune' but a lot of times a specific interval just gives the drum set the balance it needs. Something close to a fourth between floor tom and rack tom I like, and then snare a third higher than the rack tom. They don't need to be 'in tune' exactly, but these intervals work well in the mix on my drummer's set.

Another thing that bears mention is that the extent to which the head is under even tension at every point (which is what Drum Dials and so on purport to measure) is less influential to your overall drum sound than the relationship between the batter and resonant heads. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen a drummer fiddle endlessly with a batter head and get a shitty sound, and then I politely ask if I can tune the reso for 5 seconds and make the drum sound like a drum.

dontfeartheringo wrote:As for your floor tom resonating when you hit your snare drum- doesn't that make your snare sound a little deeper in the mix?

heh
The floor is "engaged" a little bit later, so it sounds like a low sustain for the snare. I don't like it. I actually didn't notice that while playing, I recorded some drum tracks and heard this weird low ramble.

dontfeartheringo wrote:I don't mind a little bit of cross talk between drums, so long as I am not having to fight the hi-hat in the snare mic. That's my biggest problem... However, I use the SSL plugins from Waves, and if I need to knock some of that out, I just use the gate feature. I wouldn't go monkeying with the sound of the floor tom too much just to knock out something that the listener will never notice.

you could also try tightening the bottom head on the floor tom- that often tightens up the overall sound of the floor tom anyway, getting rid of that "gra-WOW" ring that plagues floor toms.

I don't mind too much cross talk either, well, it sometimes bother me when the snare wires are rattling, but it's not biggie. I'll try to tighten the bottom head on the floor tom a little bit, next time I encounter this.

dontfeartheringo wrote:I have new heads for my toms on my Ludwig Maple kit, AND i have a cameraman lined up for early next week. Tuning video comes soon!

-p.

yay!

while we're talking about drum tuning i can't help but mention the Tightscrew tension rods. They have a little strip of nylon and prevent the lugs from getting loose while you're playing. Pretty amazing little device (esp on a floor tom that's tuned really low).

It's tripled the life of my heads easily.

Also, when putting a new head on once you get a sound you like the rods don't really LET the head loosen back up again.

they're also no harder to turn than a regular tension rod

work WONDERS in the studio. don't have to worry about the drum dropping pitch in between takes