emad...

I picked up an Onyx Emad yesterday for the kick batter head. It came with the two sizes of foam inserts.

I went into the recording studio last night, and the sound was, I thought, boomy and undefined. I didnt like it.

I had it tuned to around 75 on the drum dial, with the reso around the same.

This thing seems a bit unwieldy. Anyone have any tuning recomendations for it?

I am using the Onyx tom heads, on my Maple Mapex kit, and I love the sound...big, punchy, and defined. Everything the emad wasnt!

Help!!!!!

ask marko...he's been into emads...

try removing the DrumDial from the equation then reducing your batter little by little. Try the small insert first than the second to see what better fits your tone of choice... Voila. O.K. maybe not voila but give that a shot

Having both reso and batter at the same pitch is a recipe for boom. (I do it deliberately for unmiked gigs for just that reason.)

I tend to like the reso a little lower than the batter, others like the opposite. I'd try both and see what happens.

Keep both pretty low, too. Once you eliminate the sustain, the sound you get will largely be a figment of the engineer's imagination anyway. They have an uncanny knack of being able to make different bass drums with different heads all sound the same . . .

I don't play 'em anymore, but did. Reso just above wrinkle, 'bout 1/4 turn tops. Batter about 1 1/2 - 1 3/4 turn above wrinkle. Small batter ring, cut it in half if it's too much muffle. large reso ring. Wide open inside. You're gonna need to play around with it man. I would leave the DD out of it though. Just some suggestions.

on an emad i actually keep it tuned JUST above wrinkles and i generally dont need a key to tune it that way. if i tune it more it tends to die because of the rings. try a lower tuning, off the top of my head the 75 seems quite high but i didnt measure the bass drum with my dial since i just decided to keep the "above wrinkles" tuning. hope that helps

Was it the monitored sound or the acoustic output? Move the mic around. If you have the luxury, move the kick around.

just above wrinkle on the reso. Tune the batter lower, IF you are micing the batter. I use EMADs front and back. Live I crank the batter head, probably around 70 I would guess. When I record or mic the batter, I tune it down.

thanks guys...the constants in all the answers was "just above wrinkled" and ditch the dial.

I will mess around with this today, and see how it sounds.

Excellent help, as always from you guys here! Your the best!

I just had a session with a drummer last week. he had an emad, we ended up taking the foam insert out. they sound great when drumming but once you mic it up and run it in a mix it just sounds kind of weird. definitely experiment.

do you know what mic or mics were used on the kick? we started out with an EV re20 and switched to a sennheiser e602, that brought a nice punch back to the kick in.

Not sure what you found when you messed with it, but I have great success with a medium to med-low tension on the batter (a bit higher than just above wrinkle though) and a medium to med-high tension on the reso. If needed I put a felt strip under the reso. This is a killer sound for recording.

What reso head are you using?

Tight heads sound/play the best...

I use an EQ3 on the front, and tune it maybe 1-1.5 turns per lug. Batter side (EMAD1 or EMAD2), 2-2.5 turns.

I might be switching to PS3/PS4 soon though - I tend to switch around every once in a while "just for the hell of it" - actually, it's to make sure I'm using what sounds best to me!