At the risk of hijacking this thread, I've see a couple times, folks using a 14x14 or 16x16 floor tom with a snare on the bottom as a snare. The floor-tom-as-snare-drum has always intrigued me. Can anyone give me a reason why this is a bad idea?

i don't think it is - i've seen a band use it and the guy had the biggest, baddest drum sound. the only thing i can think of with regard to big drums is - how the fuck will you transport them around? drums take up plenty of room in the van as it is, let alone if they're all super-sized with chips...

To answer the "floor tom as a snare drum" question. The response would be shit. That's what you get when you use larger drums in general. You hit, or the pedal hits the batter side of the drum. A column of air rushes to the other head to vibrate....sound ensues. If tuned well, lovely. If tuned poorly, a clam.
So, the further the column of air has to travel, the longer it takes for the sound to develop and the more power it looses. It still matters, but not as much for toms and kicks. But for a snare? Man, I can really hear a big difference going from a 6" deep to an 8" snare. You just totally loose the snare sound.
That's why the old cocktail kits in the 50s that used a super long floor tom with an inverted pedal on the bottom head for the kick and the top head for the snare drum just used a sort of 1/2 snare for more response. There were many varieties of this, but most sounded like hell.
Unless you're going for look alone, there's no reason to go with drums this huge. With the variety of heads available today and proper tuning, you can make even a 20-22" kick sound massive. You get much larger than a 24" in the studio and it starts getting mushy. It's so much easier to control a 24" or less. Floor toms? Don't even get me started on them....I love using a 16" & 18", but couldn't imagine anything larger. You'd have to gate everything or tape the crap out of them to cut the ringing down.

while having to tune a 14x14 snare would not be fun, i saw this band 'sinkhole' play one time, and the drummer had one. it was devastating.

lehabs wrote:But for a snare? Man, I can really hear a big difference going from a 6" deep to an 8" snare. You just totally loose the snare sound.

yes, this is why marching bands use snares that are 11" or 13" deep, isn't it? i have a marching snare that is the easiest to tune of my three snares, because it's a 10-lug rim (or is it 12). all i have to do is tighten each of the lugs a little bit, and the thing is nice and consistently tight and sounds great. it full, loud, and just generally great, *i think*. hitting rimshots properly on that thing, all i can say is "wow". it certainly has not lost that snare sound.

also, is it a column of air that causes the resonant head to vibrate? i had heard it's the transmission of the vibration from the batter head through the shell, not through the air. if it's moving through the air, is the resonant head then vibrating the shell?

toomanyhelicopters wrote:also, is it a column of air that causes the resonant head to vibrate? i had heard it's the transmission of the vibration from the batter head through the shell, not through the air. if it's moving through the air, is the resonant head then vibrating the shell?

The crack on the batter is resonated by the shell and simultaneously amplified by both heads. The air movement from the initial blow is what initially triggers the snare wires but also the amplified sound waves.

Regardless, I don't think there is a perfect drum sound. There are just too many things you can tweak in order to get a sound "you" like. That's why they make 2.5"x10" copper snares AND 8"x14" maple snares. Different strokes for different folks, I say. If I had the money, I would buy as many different snares as they could come up with -- even that tamborine snare sonor made had an interesting sound.

Tim

I want that bass drum they have at Purdue.

http://www.purdue.edu/BANDS/aamb/bbd.html

brad lepik wrote:I want that bass drum they have at Purdue.

Does the girl with the gold hot pants come with? If so, I'll take two please

This is guite an interesting thread and though I have no really strong feelings about it I'll add my 2 cents just like I do on every other thread.

I own a mid 70's 26" x 14" Gretsch stop sign badge kick. The reasons I bought it were mainly to have something that had "character". While I realise "character" is an endlessly debatable issue in itself, as I've posted elsewhere, I'm really tired of the same "punchy", lifeless, toneless PUNT on every second record I hear.

So I got something I feel is a bit unique, has a open, tonefull sound, and generates a degree of ownership satisfaction that you (I) just don't get from an off the shelf Tama or DW. I haven't recorded a lot with it but even people who wouldn't give a rat's ass about tone have commented on how well it's gone to tape with very little EQ or compression needed. No, it doesn't sound like a basketball in a gym, but that's kinda the point.

Now, I agree with all the posts about head selection, tuning, miking, room ambience etc, but the original post was about big drums and gettting that "Dale Grover sound".

As far as the "Dale Grover sound" goes, there are probably many ways to achieve this (tuning, miking, head selection, playing style, etc). A lot of it will depend on the ability of the engineer and mixing engineer as to how it all turns out on tape. Unfortunately it can be mixed to shit and the time and effort you put in to have a unique sound can be lost fairly easily.

Yes, the Shellac drums (20", 12", 14") sound fantastic, as do Bonzo's drums (26", 14", 16" 18"), as do Dave Grohl's drums (kinda). But really, at the end of the day I say you buy what the hell you want, with the caveat that you don't buy a sow's ear and expect a silk purse. And goddammit, if you like it then that's all that matters.

Good luck.

bdp

If you really must have big cock drums you can get a woofer.

the guy from Dashboard Confessional has a 26 x 18 bass drum with a 26 x 8 woofer, Gretsch-satin wallnut finish. Giving him an extra 8 inches