reducing treble and increasing bass in my drums

hey all

ive asked something similar but just thought of a better way of rewording it.

how do i reduce treble in my drum kit? it sounds absolutely piercing.

dont get me wrong its not volume im concerned with its treble.

how do i get round fat sounding drums..

im asking for skin suggestions

tuning methods (please dont just post the link to the tuning bible ive i find that site almost useless)

thanks alot

What kind of drumheads are you using now?

Pure fat bass sound with low treble:

-Use a muffle ring in your bass drum

-Use 2 closed heads (own preferation, I used a cheap ass Thunder batter head and it almost made the same low tone soundpressure as my Evans EQ3)

-Use soft beaters

-For shorter sustain use a hole in the resonant head (when trying this, first make a small hole, 3 or 4 inch.)

Try experimenting with some different heads. If you want to minimize the high overtones by a little check out the Aquarian Double Thins or the Studio-X , Evans G1, Attack 2-Ply, or Remo Emperors.

If you want to cut it even more check out Evans G2, Aquarian Performance II, or Remo Pinstripes.

If you want to drastically cut all treble you could check out the Evans Hydraulics. A bit boxy for my taste but everyone has different tastes.

Depending on your preference and also what your shells are made of will make a difference. I have a maple kit that I like the Evans G2 heads but on my Ludwig Vistalites I prefer the Aquarian Double Thins or Studio-X. For both Kick drums I love the Aquarian Super Kick II.

Maybe buy a few different heads for your smallest tom and see what you like before outitting your entire kit.

Yes, Evans etc. also use build in muffle rings.

thanks guys

so its mainly about skin selection?

atm my skins are the factory swingstar ones that came with the kit...but these caved in a while ago so they have teatowels over them to even make a sound. thats the toms.

i have an evans something on the snare.

Sometimes this fourm pisses me off. When a guy comes in asking a question, and some one tells him to experiment with diffrent heads. Some people just dont have the cash to do that {censored}, I don't. Just a small out burst sorry. Go ahead.

...true. All you can really do is explain what kind of sound you want, and see what the most popular answer is that turns up. For me, i wanted the same kind of toms, that had that thundering presense to them. After looking around and going on advice by my drum teacher at the time, i picked up Remo Pinstripes on all my toms, and I love em. You kinda have to take peoples word for how good they are, and hope they have the same idea in mind that you do. But thats how it goes I guess!

Well from the starting point of your current heads, almost any head will sound good by comparison. My heads are all Evans, G2's on the toms (coated or clear), Evans G1 or G2 coated for the snare, EQ2 bass drum batter no pad, EQ1 resonant bass drum head no holes, small piece of dense foam inside bass drum about a foot and a half wide and just barely touching both heads. When tuning don't go in a circle go in a star pattern, if you buy the Evans tom heads it will show you this method on the back of the box. I try to tune the both tom heads (on one drum) to the same pitch,starting from the floor tom, working my way up to the high tom. For the snare you might want to tune the bottom head up higher than the top. I've gotten pretty good at tuning drums over the years in all humblemess. In fact several drummer friends have asked me to tune their drums for them and/or asked me to show them how to tune them, so hopefully thats some small consolation to you. Good luck and be patient:cool:

I have the G2's with a diplomat resonant. This works really well for the higher toms. You might want to try Remo Fiberskyns for something a little different. By the way, there seems to be a misconception that G1's are equivalent to emperors. In actuality the are equivalent to ambassadors, while G2's are equivalent to emperors. As far as I know Evans does not make a diplomat weight head

Well since I was the target of Boone 5 outburst I can only say that I did list a few heads depending on how extreme muffling he wanted. I did not know by how much he wanted to cut down the overtones, nor did I know what the shells were made of.

All I did was make suggestions based on how extreme he wanted the muffling to be and I told him to experiment with the smallest tom first and even stated which heads I personally use.

Sorry for those of you I may have pissed off..

Well, if you are after a "round" sound....try Evans OIL heads.

These will give you a thud, without a lot of attack...which is what it sounds like you are trying to get away from.

I would suggest that you just buy 1 Evans OIL head, and try that and see how it sounds to you...then if you like it, cover the rest of the kit with them. Try it on a Floor tom....the head should only cost about $16 or so for a 16" tom head.

When I was using Ludwig Acrylic Drums, I used oilheads on the batter side with Remo Ambassadors on the resonant side, and they were awesome sounding.

My next set of batter heads are probably going to be oilheads.

Tim

Just buy a head with build in muffle ring, or just buy a muffle ring. Evans makes a lot of heads with build in muffle rings. When you don't want to spend 35 or 40 dollars for an expensive Evans/Aquarian (etc.) head just buy a muffle-ring. I have an Evans EQ3 now, the only thing changed about my bassdrum head is a chipcard on it for a little click sound.

The best way reducing treble+overtones with the lowest bassresponse reducing.

Look inside your bass drum. There should be an equilizer panal in there. Just turn up your bass and turn down your treble. Oh and one more thing: Im on drugs.

got new skins today for xmas

all have that built in muffle ring and really seem to have done the job they sound great.

learnt alot about tuning as well....its so much easier with good skins..

cheers guys

So what kind of heads did you get ?

evans eq2 bass drum head

and a 16" and a 13" remo powerstroke4 heads

i didnt even choose them tho, they were xmas gifts but they all have muffle rings that Yokozuna mentioned and work great, really good to know my drums can sound good.

That's cool, keep em going!

I'm getting myself some tomhead with build in muffle ring soon I guess, because I always have dampen-rings on my heads