"I do like that muffled thud sound out of my bass drum especially when I'm just practicing. When playing shows and stuff though, I'm sure a bass drum with more resonance would probaly be better."
This brings up another important thing to remember when altering anything about your drumset: What you hear and what your audience hears are two different things. I normally just have someone else play my drumset while I walk around and listen to see if everything sounds like I want it to. This is really important to me as I play acoustic jazz mostly. When I do play rock, I'm all miked up and through the system so I can adjust things through the EQ..
One of the finest kits I have heard is a set of 60's Leedy drums with 28" basses. I use 2x 24s myself, but I want to try bith 26's and 28's. I do not have to muffle my basses at all because I use Aquarian 1 Super Kick Bass heads and then have the WHOMP without any overing. No pillows no anything to kill the full sound of my basses.
I use a 26inch Acrylic RCI Starlite bass drum, and its awsome. Its all in the tuning. Basically its louder the bigger it is. Also the bass drum beater won't hit the centre of the drum going above 22inches in diameter, so you need to consider that too. Size won't influence rebound if you tune accordingly and add some slight dampening strips or something like that
I want to move up from a 22" to a 24" so bad. I recorded with a 24" inch Ludwig Classic Maple and it blew my mind. I took a little bit to warm up to it, but I so want one now. What helped me a lot was adding the toe clip to my DW5000. I could really lay into it then.
I've heard 18"sound like cannons and 26 sound like a marchinfg band overtaking the rest of the kit and visa versa. I had double 24" Recording Custom bass drums in the 80's with no muffling at all, and they were the best sounding bass drums I ever heard. Nice thump and enough rebound to double tap and not lose the definition. I currently have a single 22 and it has a nice punch. I'm 5'7" and have my toms (8", 10", 12") somewhat angled and even though they are not deep toms, the 12" is close to the bass.
If it's of any use, jazz musicians typically use smaller in diameter and shorter in depth basses. That should tell you something if you're looking into metal or rock.
Linear Mode
