whats the deal with snare beds?  

for a while my main snare was an acrolite.  when i started building snares from toms, i used it as a referance.  it has no snare beds.   so my new drums had no snare beds.  i knew what they were and had an idea to thier purpose, but figured, if the ludwig didnt have it, it wasnt entirely necessary.  

fast forward a little while.  im planning on building a couple new drums.  and had recently read ron dunnetts site.  on said site he espouses the necessity for a snare bed.  for the love of pete and all that is holy, you need a snare bed.  so on this first of two new drums i cut the bottom bearing edge.  and gave it a wee snare bed.  not much, just a tad shallow and flat.  

so im playing this drum today and its bugging me.  because of the snare bed i need to turn up the tension on the strainer to get the snares how i like when they are on.  unfortunately, this means when they are off, they arent as off as id like them (they still rattle) so now im regretting the snare bed and planning on trimming off the bearing edge and cutting a new one to get rid of the bed (im glad it was shallow).    im also thinking of installing two strainers instead of a strainer and butt.  but thats another story

so ... whats the deal with snare beds?

I've never understood the need for snare beds, particularly in the age of the plastic head. Calf heads - once you seat them - are supposed to conform to the irregularities of a drum shell, but plastic heads negate that need as far as I can tell.

Some VERY respected drum builders swear by snare beds, but they've never explained it in a way *I* could understand. To me it seems like it makes it far more difficult to tune the snare head, and increases the chance of breakage.