Turtlerock Forum

ok couldnt wait till monday

of the mirad of choices of products like the infamous
gorilla snot , moon gel , gaffa tape , tea towels , cardboard rings old skins cut into rings

what do you guys use to tame top skins ?
experiences with working things and things that sucked
when.. why.. why not ..?

enquiring minds would like to know

I got some aquarian rings about a year ago that work very well to reduce the ring and warm the sound up a bit - but they can buzz with hard hitters.

Some gaff on the bottom skins - sometimes with a bit of yoga mat (the 1/8" thick plasticy stuff). Used to use bluetack but gets too hard when it's cold.

Cotton wool balls inside the floor tom is a neat trick - poke them through the vent hole one by one until the bottom skin is dampened enough.

Rick one of the best tricks I know for snare is simply put your wallet on it... away from the hit zone of course.
This sorts out a lot of overtones I don't like in snare...I hate ringing snares. Trust me this is a quick and easy winner.

That cotton ball idea for the floor sounds like a good one. Other than that I put soft rubber/foam strips held on by gaff on toms sometimes to tame them. I try to put the edge of the rubber/foam down around where the rim and skin meet... then gaff into position.
The main problem with dampening rings is that they can buzz against the skin and rim. Mostly on floor.

Seen and done the wallet trick
i forgot about it till now ben
anyone here work in a drum store
what are the things that sell
do you have to go looking for snot?

TUNING!!! I can't believe the amount of drummers that can't tune to save themselves. Ok, I am a drummer and an Audio Engineer and always pride myself with getting the best out of any kit in any situation. No amount of adding stuff that shouldn't be on the heads will save a drum sound without killing any of the tone of the drum - although that said there are tricks with small bits of gaffa folded in a way to get more in a smaller area that will get rid of ringy snares and moongel on toms always works a treat if they are a bit ringy and you don't have the patience to tune them properly. Don't underestimate the resonant (bottom) head in your tuning also as this is where most of the tone comes from. Tuning tricks with the bottom head making the tone go up slightly from the initial attach by tightening one tuning lug slightly higher or the opposite with the tone going down or an "open" drum sound with the top and bottom heads tuned to themselves depending on the sound you are after. I might try and document some things on the next studio drum session..

And if anyone needs a drum tech who also knows audio

I am sure your dead right geoff but i have seen alot of
junk attached to heads in my time as well
what are the products / popularity of the things that go out of your store?

rick wrote:I am sure your dead right geoff but i have seen alot of
junk attached to heads in my time as well
what are the products / popularity of the things that go out of your store?

Moongel is great and quite popular - a good trick too is to cut it in half as you don't always need a full piece for toms - it also works great on ride cymbals if you want to cut down a bit of ring! We also have the O-Rings in stock but they aren't that popular as we usually discuss head selection and tuning and show a lot of drummers that before selling them those! Evans make a stick on velcro type dampner which is ok but it doesn't last very long once a kit goes into cases etc.. Other than that we do a lot of full reheads with a free tune - ie: buy a set of heads, bring your kit in and we re-head and tune your kit up free of charge - then we show the customer a bit about tuning to keep it in it's best form..

Moongel is fine, zero-rings too. Nothing is cheaper (often free) or more readily available than gaffa.
I always use a bit of gaffa and a bit of tissue or toilet roll.
I hear the thing about tuning, but sometimes I just don't want a ping coming from the snare. It really depends on the music. A damped snare sounds rubbish in loud rock, with a wall of guitars and/or keyboards.
Otherwise I usually damp out a little unwanted resonance in my drums. Usually bass drum and snare.

There are a lot of really great pre-damped heads now. They can be great for live, but for recording I advocate choosing a head set that delivers more resonance than you need, then backing it off with tuning and tape. Ultimate flexibility. You are giving the songwriter and producer/engineer exactly the sound they need on the day.

I have a set of those plastic rings for emergencies but a drummer who can tune is better!

Otherwise and toilet paper.. I read somewhere pantyliners can be a lifesaver but haven't tried it out!

i like the bonds raglan t-shirts cut up and used instead of tea towels,
really thin cotton

i find you can get away with then a bit more often than tea towelling up,

most of these dampennings only work if the drums are tuned to a nice note anyway,
especially the tea towel or shirt thing
otherwise it just makes an obnoxious little note, not nice

sandbag up against the skin of a kick drum for that old stones dead sound, sometimes no front skin either

i like moon gel, but as has been said it usually kills too much of the tone of the drum for me, i like it on cymbals though

Ben M wrote:Rick one of the best tricks I know for snare is simply put your wallet on it...

Now that result is going to vary depending on the drummer. Obviously if Charlie Watts but his wallet on a snare it will result in a much more dead sound as compared is I was to do the same.

David W wrote:

Ben M wrote:Rick one of the best tricks I know for snare is simply put your wallet on it...

Now that result is going to vary depending on the drummer. Obviously if Charlie Watts but his wallet on a snare it will result in a much more dead sound as compared is I was to do the same.

Charlie would still find something to whinge about. "it needs more 50's and less of these bloody 20's dunnit"

http://connect.in.com/charlie-watts/ima ... 53652.html

As you can see, Charlie uses very specialised damping equipment on his drums.........

BTW, I couldn't upload this photo, "Unable to find image size", or some such, never had a problem before.