the bastard child

does anyone else hear have one drum on their kit that is always a complete pain in the ass to tune?

I just put G2 Clear heads on all my toms. The 10" and 14" sound great right off the bat. But i had to play with my 12" for damn near an hour to get it to sound good. Tuning isn't usually a problem for me but that 12" kicked my butt. Is it possibly just the drum head itself? My bearing edges look good and the drum isn't out of round. If i tune it too high it sounds like {censored}. I finally got it tuned as best i could but it is so loose that i think i'll be having to retune it daily.

Anyone have the same or similiar problem and if so, how did they fix the problem?

Jeff

i'm with ya man.. its always either too papery (out of tune) and it takes the longest for me to get it right

if the head is brand new or really old then ye it could be the head, probably just a one time thing, usually smaller and bigger toms are easy to tune and the middle ones are hard to find the right sound, completely normal. but like i said it might be the head.

Hmmmmm..... Well I just put new coated G2 batters on my 10 & 12 inch toms yesterday and they both tuned up quite quickly and easily. The problem your having may be with the resonant head. Try De-tuning the batter head completely, turn it upside down on your drum stool while you sit in another chair. Now tune the bottom head until it sounds good to you, if this doesn't seem possible then its probably time to change the res head. If on the other hand you succeed, turn the drum over and tune the batter head to the same pitch ( for max sustain), unless you want a shorter decay time, in which case you would tune the bottom head lower than the top. Another problem may be that your possiblt trying to make a 12"tom sound like a 14" tom.If this is the case, I'd save your pennies and get a 16"floor tom. Yet another possible answer would be that you have gotten a bad drumhead. If its tuned up fine before but now its being difficult,this would be my first guess.

I always have trouble tuning my toms. They always got this nasty paper sound with them. I changed the heads recently and I still hear it. I tune them pretty low so maybe that's the problem. I'll keep trying to find the perfect sound. There has to be a way to get them perfect.