bass drum boom?

tas4499 · #1 (**permalink**) 11-05-2008, 09:13 PM

i currently own a tama stage star 18X14 inch bass drum. i use it for practice and gig alike. i love the small size of it but have had to dampen the hell out of it (an oversized pillow) to make it sound "deep." this obviously adds a dead muffled sound to it unless is is run through a p.a. in which it doesn't matter.

any suggestions on how to get the "deepest" sound from my bass drum? new heads? cutting a hole in the resonate head? obviously i won't get a 22" sound from my 14" but I was curious to other techniques rather than stuffing a large pillow in it where I get that dead sound with no resonating breath.

thanks for any and all suggestions. much appreciated.

peace and a groove,

t

lukey · #2 (**permalink**) 11-05-2008, 10:29 PM

the only thing I can suggest is to try the evans emad dampening bass drum head if you havent already. it gives you a couple levels of dampening to choose from, tho it may not be as much as you'd like. sorry i dont have any more ideas!

shazaam · #3 (**permalink**) 11-05-2008, 11:01 PM

...get a bigger bass. Umm other than that try some pre dampened heads I guess. A reso hole may help but with that small of a drum I don't think it'll do to much till it's miced.

slingerland59 · #4 (**permalink**) 11-06-2008, 12:03 AM

If you search older entries in this forum you'll get a zillion good ideas. Ultimately, everyone sends you to Prof. Sound's Drum Tuning Bible (free) website. If you search "tuning bible" in this forum you'll see what I mean.

I just reviewed the tuning bible's section on tuning kick drums and it offers a very thorough, scientific approach -- but maybe too much information, if you know what I mean!

I have a 14" by 20" drum myself. After years of experimenting I think the biggest sound I have ever gotten out of my drum was when I had two heads, with no hole in the resonating head, a 2" wide strip of felt across the underside of the batter head, and I had the resonating head tuned very loose and the batter head tighter. I think that matches what the professor says at various points in his bible about getting a deep bass note.

Now I have a 6" hole in the resonating head because I needed to mike it internally and I don't have the felt muffling (it's hard to tune the head with the felt across it). After reading the bible, I think next time I'd use a smaller hole in the resonating head and I'm going to experiment muffling the resonating head too because I've never done that.

It's very tricky stuff! You'll never get a stomach turning boom but a little bass drum can kick ass.

Oh ya, and I took off the tom mounting hardware and use separate stands. I want the bass to resonate as fully as it can without interference.

tas4499 · #5 (**permalink**) 11-16-2008, 12:32 PM

thanks for the input everyone. i went to my local drum shop, explorers percussion, and they set me up with an aquarian super kick II. it has done the trick. thanks for the ideas, any knowledge is good knowledge.

take care,
t

CJDG · #6 (**permalink**) 11-16-2008, 03:51 PM

Double ply heads will reduce overtones.
you don't need much dampening material to impact the sound quality of a drum.
The more stuff you put in your drum the more volume you reduce... hence a quiet drum.
Also the pillow will reduce the shell vibration further hurting sound quality.

An 18" drum is near a C to D with regards to fundamental tuning of the drum.

A hole in the head does affect sound quality, reduces bounce, etc... but it allows you
to easily get dampening material into the drum if need be.

If you have a way of getting some dense 100% cotton on hand you can put that in the
drum to soak up some of the higher tones... I think there is a product called the kickbrick
which features this.