Measuring heads

When you see like, 16" x 14" tom, i presume the 16" is across the top. Is the 14" depth?

Most of the time it's depth x diameter...unless you're talking Pearl. They do it diameter x depth. Not sure why.

So my kit, which is:

22" x 16" Bass Drum, 16 lugs per side, fold-out spurs

But for some reason, snares are always listed by depth x diameter (ie: 5.5"x14") and I have no idea why. I think the best way to learn it is to just read a ton of drum magazines and get used to drum sizes and you'll be able to differentiate where the statistics are pointing.

My bass drums were always designated by depth and width...ie 14x22 or 14x24. I think that's the way they were listed in the old Ludwig catalogs as well...

Throwing in things like e-bay and this forum and any other "non-official" spot, I usually look for consistency. A 16" x 22" kick drum (or 22" x 16" kick) is USUALLY 22" in diameter and 16" deep. There aren't very many tube kicks out there with 16" heads that are 22" deep. Same with snares....the diameter is almost always a 13" or 14" combined with something between 3" and 8" depth wise. Turn those around and you've got a teeeny tiny head on a tube.

So if you can figure out which is which by looking at the kick and snare, it's usually safe to assume that they're describing the toms in the same order.

Of course, one of these days, I'll buy a kit off the 'net with a 22x16 kick, a 14x5 snare, and toms measuring 12x10, 13x11, and 16x16 and end up with a completely crazy kit....except for the floor tom, which would be pretty damn standard.

The larger number is the diameter, and if they're square (same both ways) just look at the other drum listings and you should be able to find out

I see little consistency across the various sources. I grew up with diameter listed first since that was the most vital of the two measurements. Now it appears that more companies list depth first which makes no sense to me.

Interesting. Okay not that interesting. Things like lumber, and tables, are usually labeled small dimension first. I was going to include floor space but I'm not so sure on that.

Now that I think about it, drums used to always be labeled depth first. I think Premier was the first company I noticed that did it the other way.

I'm going to start measuring them by volume. I think my snare's about 252 cubic inches.

But how many cubits is that precisely?

Exactly 14.

Thank you...I thought so...