DRUMMER CAFE - Community Forum

I have two kits and the 14" on both kits is a major pain in the arse to get tuned up.

On the Mapex it will tum nice with a nice sustain but when I hang it on the stand its a dead thud. I'm pretty its a resonance thing with the stand but I have no idea how to resolve that.

On the Gretsch kit it just sounds hollow, with out the meatiness of the 12" tom. That might be a bad head or me trying to tune it too high. Still experimenting with that one.

Done ranting but any suggestions are welcome

I take it we are talking about a 14x14 Floor Tom?

To my ears, square-sized Floor Toms, whether it's a 14x14 or 16x16, never sound with the same timbre as a non-square-sized Mounted Tom. The Floor Toms have a different character all together to my ears. We've discussed this in the past, so I'm sure others will chime to agree/disagree.

Personally, I would let go of trying to get the Floor Tom to match the sound/timbre of your other Toms. Just get it to sound good on it's own.

The sustain issue can be helped by using R.I.M.S. (or the like), or mounting it differently, like getting it off the stand and using Floor Tom legs. Also be sure that you check all of this by tuning and listening in different rooms. The room acoustics DO make a difference, especially when it comes to perceived low-end and sustain.

Also, if you don't have fresh drumheads on the drum, you aren't being fair to the instrument! ;)

There was a video on Bob Gatzen's youtube account where he moves a mounted tom from the end of the arm to the base of the arm and the change in sustain/resonance is incredible. Similar things happen with all mounting systems. Certain floor tom feet will resonate better than others. Putting a piece of foam under some of them make them resonate better, or buying the Pearl floor tom feet.

My 8x12 tom was giving me fits, then I started playing it in different parts of the room.  It never sounded the same anywhere.  Have someone play it for you from a distance as well.  You will be amazed from 20 feet away how good you are at tuning!

I don't play a floor tom any more.  My large tom is a mounted 14, next to a mounted 12.

It isn't a big thunderous sound, but that's not what I want.  I never liked the contrast I heard in the past between mounted and floor toms.    My 12 and 14, mounted, sound
*even*.
[Yes, I know this didn't help at all.  :)   ]

I have been enjoying this immensely lately.   [Disclaimer before I proceed: I think I still have a great deal to learn about tuning and tone.  I fully admit to being probably a hack at this.  While I studied for 7 years as a child to teenager, my teacher never saw to teaching me about tuning.  The sum total of my tuning knowledge leading up to my return to drumming was - a 30 second review with my awesome drumming Uncle Jimmy when I was 9 years old - telling me to tune lugs across from each other, moving in a circle.  That was it.]

But, I now have a 17 year old son studying drumming, and every day I am treated to someone playing My drums from a distance.  All I gotta do is get about 20 feet away, with the highs rolled off, and I'm listening to drumming heaven.  Before this, I Never heard any kit I played on - except while sitting on the throne, which, to me, tonally is the worst seat in the house.     8)

I have a Mapex MBirch kit with suspended floor toms equipped with their I.T.S. system (Isolated Tom System) as are all the toms in the kit and I don't have this issue you seem to be having.

Does your kit have this type of mounting system?  If not you might want to check it out.  Makes them sing!

That's b/c high frequencies don't travel as far as low frequencies.

Tuning difficulty goes up as the shell volume (diameter x width) increases.  That means that a 16x16 is more difficult to tune than, say, a 14x14.  This is b/c there are more harmonics that come into play as the volume increases.  This can be measured (and quantified) with a spectrum analyzer... in other words, it's not just an opinion... larger drums are simply more difficult than smaller ones.

I can't explain why your 14" tom dosnt sound good... but I can say that it is going to be more challenging to tune than your 10 or 12 inch toms...

EDIT: Bart fixed the drum size typos.

I don't think this statement is correct.
Harmonics and volume have nothing to do with one another.
Harmonics are an integer multiple of the fundamental frequency.
In other words a fundamental of 100 Hz, the second harmonic is 200 Hz, the third is 300 Hz, the fourth is 400 Hz, etc.

Volume, or to be more precise Sound Pressure Level (SPL), has no effect on harmonics

Volume as in the space inside the drum. Hence why he was talking about volume in reference to the size of drums.

Can I just interject something, if only to give TheArchitect some encouragement.
I don't find toms that hard to tune - snare drums are another matter.
I find the floor toms are the easiest to tune, as I generally go for a simple sound = very low. My tom method is also very basic:
First tension the bottom (resonant) head until it sounds like it rings unhindered, in other words, with a pleasant sustain. I tend to shoot for a mid-low tensioning.
Then I tension the top (batter) head above the point where the head is wrinkled, but as low as it will go, again with a pleasant tone and sustain.



That could be very true.
As I tend to go low on floor toms and mid tension on the higher toms, I guess I'm used to hearing a different timbre.
square sized floor toms do not bother me one bit (14 x 14", 16 x 16"), but I avoid smaller toms in square sizes. I'm pretty happy with traditional sizes actually (8 x 12", 10 x 14").
I agree also about the effect of hardware.
I mostly use RIMS mounts on mounted toms and Pearl suspension legs on floor toms.
Traditional tom mounts do work, but I can generally hear a difference in tone and sustain. These days I'm not always after a long sustain on my toms, so hardware choice tends not to be so critical. however, I still prefer the tone of isolated drums (RIMS etc).

My custom kit has all square-sized toms... I actually like them more on smaller toms, just the opposite of what you like, Chris.  My problem is that I just dont like small toms b/c they sound like bongos to my ear.  But deeper-small toms have more harmonic content than shallow ones...  ;D ... so it kinda compensates for that bongo sound.

Good point antman and it's amazing how this little trick works, especially to even out the decay thru all the voices of one's drumset.

But I find that usually floor toms have too long of a decay.  Sooooooooooo I run a very thin head on the bottom of my floors and I also detune a few lugs on the batter head to control the decay.

I have no problems with floors and big hangers ;)

Opps, sorry my bad

In different acoustical enviornments I share your sentiments Architect. My hanging 12x14 can be the problem child as well. There ARE those precious moments though where it sounds heavenly and all is right with the world :). It comes down to being a mad scientist and experimenting. For me its (usually) which bottom head will be the ticket..... but two weeks later in another corner of some room 70 miles across town it acts up again and my dreams are shattered :'(. Ive had some good luck with Evans (genera) resonants with some drums. If I was a doctor id ask you to bring the patient to the emergency room for an examination but you may have to play doctor yourself and change the bottom diaper on the child until you no longer want to put it up for adoption.

I usually try to tune my 16x16 similar to Chris' method described above.

That brings up a question, Chris:

What type of heads? single vs. two-ply resonant? single vs. two-ply batter?

Thanks

After some more experiments:

Gretsch 14"x14" tom - This is part of the Catalina Club jazz kit. I was trying to tune this kit in a traditional "bop" style with fairly high tunings on the toms and the kick almost being a 3rd tom. It seems I went a bit too far. By lower the tuning on the rack tom just slightly and the floor tom to a more mid-high pitch they are sounding much nicer.

Mapex 14"x12" hanging "floor" tom - This was a more complicated process. First I had to do some experiments on where on the mounting arm to place the toms. There were differences on the other drum but they were very subtle compared to this drum. The other thing I did was retune all of the toms considerable higher. About as high as the toms would go without choking. For those of you who use them, the drum dial read 78 top and bottom on Evans G1's. I may drop the 14" and 16" a tiny bit, I haven't decided

Its a very non-traditional sound for rock. Its much closer to (and was inspired by) Steve smiths tuning on a vid of his I saw. The M-Birch drums still resonate nicely and speak very clearly in this range. Not ideal for Zeppelin covers but interesting for the the instrumental stuff I like to dabble with and record.

Speaking of drum dials. I learned a few things about these as well.
1) They seem much more accurate on smaller drums in terms of a consistent reading = even tuning.
2) I found that after roughing in as accurately as possible with the dial I still had to go back old school for fine tuning. The over all process was still much faster with the Drum Dial and will make things much more consistent pitch was.  There were still subtle pitch variations that created a "beating" that needed to be smoothed out by ear. Probably never hear it live but it would be very obvious to a microphone. Interestingly enough, the Gretsch kit seemed much more susceptible to this than the Mapex. I suspect it was the mahogany shells vs the birch.

Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention Architect, was that over the years ive come to realize that after playing many various size 14'' drums my 10x14's were thee ballsiest, fattest, fullest, warmest 14's out of them all. They actually rivaled my 16x16 floors for depth of pitch and were the most enviornmentally friendly drums id owned. It wasnt until id went to deeper 14's that problems occured. LONG LIVE THE 10x14's!!!!!.

I'm very concerned if the stand changes the sound significantly.  I've seen tom suspension hardware do this to a very nicely tuned drum.  It was causing the drum to warp because the hardware did not distribute the stress to enough lugs.  As Bart suggested, you may need to change the mounting hardware. 

I have often wondered if a lot of 14” toms get knackered snare hoops thrown on them in some point in their life… They are such a convenient size for that kind of thing..

N