Towels etc damping toms and snare often kept things sounding VERY dry. Even cymbals often got the treatment, with cotton wool etc taped underneath. These tricks go back further than the 70's even.... sorry to all the purists who can't abide ANYTHING but heads and shells, but it's a recorded fact :=) Aside from acoustic treatments, the 70's also saw the common use of noise gates, especially on drum tracks. All of these techniques had very drying implications on the sonics.

This may not be the sound you're after, but a lot of drummers in the 70's used what they called concert toms, which were just regular toms with no bottom head. As you can imagine, they'd be very dry with very little ringing or resonance.

ok, so you know how lots of 70s albums have this really dry tight drum sound? whether it's the first ramones album, a funk album, a prog album, or for an example that takes it too far, the cartoonish toms in the intro to "station to station" by david bowie.my question is how would i go about getting this kind of drum sound, apart from close micing and damping the drum heads with (adhesive) tape?

thanks!

the sort of classic '70s batter head was the Evans Hydraulic head, which was a thick two ply head and a thin layer of oil sandwiched between the plies.You want boxy tone? Brother, it's in there.Remo pinstripes also have a thin layer of oil in them, but the plies aren't quite as thick. These get that boxy tone when tuned down and/or get old and beaten out.On the toms, tune the batter head to the desired note, then tone the resonant head lower- around a third lower, maybe a fifth.Put a sleeping bag or some egg-crate foam in the kick drum so that it touches both heads. Use a Remo Pinstripe or black or silver dot Remo head for the batter and a massive hole cut in the resonant head. The snare drum head needs to be coated, tuned down and with a rolled up paper towel duct taped to it.As for the kind of wood you'll want to get this sound, just buy something cheap. You're not really going for a super-resonant kit, so the ring of the wood in the drums isn't a huge issue. You will have the ultimate '70s thumpy kit, and coincidentally, a kit that I would actually push an old lady down and run out into traffic to get away from having to listen to.But if you want that mid-'70s boxy thing, man, that's your best set of options.

steve wrote:Pinstripes don't have oil in them. I... I had no idea.You learn something new every day.It was the Newton Rings that made me think that they did.So, that's two new things I learned today.I stand corrected.

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those falam heads sound great for that modern drum corps sound, but i don't think i've ever seen/heard one on a regular drum set. doesn't really sound like a drum at all - sounds like a drum corp snare drum. i have one [marching snare w/falam head] that i've used in the past for misc overdubs or as a 2nd snare on a kit. it's a very particular sound.steve, do you know are the falams all coated? i've seen some that look woven, but maybe there's just a clear coating over the kevlar. i think the most common are black and white coating.

Start here...the cartoonish toms in the intro to "station to station" by david bowie.So great. Bip Bop BipBipBip Thunk...I'll be playing drums with the 5 Card Studs on Valentines day (lot's of '70's one-hit-wonder tunes, etc), so I got to get out the Roto Toms. I can't handle the total dead sound, so I let them ring a little.

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