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dontfeartheringo wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 9:54 pm Holy cow this is amazing.

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 12:05 pm There was a really exhaustive DFTR post about Bonham's sound that kinda blew my mind.

http://www.aquariandrumheads.com/produc ... age-series

For comparison, the Modern Vintage heads are the same thickness as Emperors. The Deep Vintage heads are thicker than THAT.Bought a Deep Vintage 2kick drum head. Hated it. YMMV.

Also, been experimenting with the emperor as batter kick drum head. I've been trying to figure out how to capture that '60s kick drum sound exemplified here:
[long lost youtube link]

and in the solo at about 35 seconds here:
[another long lost youtube link]

I've not forgotten how FM mr.arrison wasted $80 here:

mr.arrison wrote:so this weekend, I tried the Bonham tuning technique, with the Remo Ambassador reso and the Emperor batter on my 22" (+ the felt strips) and you know what? It sounds like ASS. Absolute shit. Tried multiple tunings, used a pneumatic drum tuner. Brand new heads. 80 bucks, wasted.

I'm no Bonham, but it's even more amazing that HE could coax a great sound out of that set up.

I've always felt bad about that and I've also been mystified as to how this could have gone so wrong for him, so I got a new Emperor batter recently with the plan of getting it just right.

I've spent a few weeks messing with it, and I've reached some conclusions:

1. The felt strips matter. The thin felt strips that Gibraltar sells aren't really suitable for muffling an Emperor batter. It's just not going to be heavy enough. I got some Attack Thick Felt strips from my local drum store. Oddly, a quick search of the web doesn't find them for sale. The thick felt is actually closer to what was used in the '60s. They got rid of that buzzy sustain that makes the head sound weird and unlike a kick drum.
1a. Make sure you have a friend to help you stretch the felt strip tight across the drum so that you don't have the strip sagging away from the head once the head is tensioned.

2. The thickness of the resonant head matters. The Ludwig Heavy resonant head I have is 10 mil and coated. 10 mil is the thickness of a Remo Ambassador, so it's not crazy thick. The Ludwig coating, though, is thicker than the Remo coating and adds some mass to make it a little deeper timbred. If you want warmer and deeper, consider the Fiberskyn head for reso.

3. Tuning matters (a lot). Tune the batter head up gradually until the head starts to make a note instead of flapping. Stop as soon as it starts to make a note. The resonant heads needs to be pretty tight. As everyone from Jeff Ocheltree to Bob Gatzen has noted: tight kick drum resonant heads means you don't have to port it and that it gets a quick, tight sustain rather than a rumble that will make your playing undefined.

4. Drum size matters: with modern heads like the Powerstroke, you get this great modern, scooped sound with lots of top and bottom, but not a ton of mids. With the Emperor, you get a slightly less defined attack and more present low-mids with a pretty steady drop off before you get to sub-frequencies. We have this idea that the kick drum is this subby, thunderously bottom-y sound. If you go back and listen to those Zeppelin recordings, that's actually not so much the case. They've got a TON of low-mid presence and a lot of attack, but the lowest frequencies in the mix are not bass drum sounds, but bass guitar sounds. Surprise!

That said, you can get low pitches out of kick drum one of three ways:
1. thick resonant head
2. low tension resonant head
3. GREAT BIG resonant head

He used the Ludwig medium drum head, so it's the thickness of a Remo Diplomat (!!). We know that Bonham liked his kick drum sound to be tight, so he kept the reso tuned WAY up. So.... he wasn't using the 26" kick drum for cosmetic reasons. That giant drum allowed him to use a thinner resonant head, tuned way up, and still get plenty of boom.

5. Technique matters: Bonham played heel up, beater-off. Check out the difference in sound here:
[another lost Youtube link]
(I love this guys narration. So great. "Here's a little Fool in the Rain for you." So good.)

Not burying the beater MATTERS. Letting the batter head resonate gives you that deep tone.

6. Beater material matters: Unported resonant head + Emperor batter head = lots of rebound on the beater. If you have a plastic or wood beater, the beater is going to be more responsive to the head coming back at it and you're going to get that 'BRRrrrrr' between the head and the beater. A felt beater is going to soak up some of that and not be quite so bouncy. Also, if you listen to "Levee" up there, you'll notice that there's a little ghost note on the downbeat. "BUMP-uh." I've heard people speculate that there's a tape delay on the kick drum of that there's an echo in the room. This is wrong. When you play an Emperor batter, heel up, when you kick it hard, you get a little slap back. Oddly, it always seems to be in time for me. I just roll with it. One of the upsides of the Emperor batter is that it's FAST. Modern heads soak up some force and don't give anything back. The Emperor allows you to get the beater off the head and back much faster. A lot of punk rock and harder Zeppelin stuff becomes significantly easier.

7. The room matters: a lot of what is great about these old recordings and videos is that the room around them is pretty great, particularly 'Levee' and the above segment of "Beware of Mr. Baker." You only have so much control over the room you're playing in, but some rooms really bring out the best in a kick. Player perspective on the Emperor-as-kick-drum-batter isn't really thrilling. It sounds kind of papery and from where I sat, it seemed kind of boing-y. Once I had someone else sit behind the kit and I walked out into the room and heard the resonant head the batter working together, a lightbulb went on. I don't want to discount the pleasure of hearing your kick drum sound great from where you're sitting, of course. It isn't always about what the audience hears, but make sure that before you throw the Emperor in a dumpster that you get some perspective on the sound in the room.

So, I've moving all my drums over to Emperor batters, one at a time. Got some barely-used Powerstrokes if any of you cats need one.

Hope y'all find this helpful.

Thanks to the efforts of FM Busbus I purchased a 24" 3-ply WFL kick off of the Madison, WI craigslist a few weeks ago. I skinned it with a coated Emperor and a thick felt strip. Reso is a Powerstroke II with a regular modern thin felt strip. I am nailing the '60s kick sound, now. With 3-ply toms skinned with coated Emperor tops and coated Ambassador bottoms, the kit sounds almost exactly like the kit on "Black Dog."

Felt strip thickness matter.
Drum size matters.
Beater technique matters.
Man, oh, man, what a sound, though.

twelvepoint wrote: Thu Mar 23, 2023 1:47 pm Yes, that's the one! I guess it was kick-specific. Not that I'm going to get a 26" drum anytime soon, but I loved the thoroughness of it.