I have to agree with everything said. It mirrors my experience as a professional drummer for almost 30 years. I’ve played a LOT of different drums, almost all top of the line kits from practically every major manufacturer, and several series within those brands. The most significant aspect to me is the actual tactile experience. It’s not subtle at all. For example, I endorse DW, and I’ve played lots of their different shells over the last 11 years. Same sizes, same hardware, heads, etc. But the experience is totally different when playing a Collector’s Series Pure Maple with reinforcing rings compared to the Cherry Jazz (my favorite) which is thicker, and has a large percentage of soft gum wood in the middle. And, he’s right about recording. The sound gets so mangled it doesn’t matter, unless you tune medium to high. In the end, it’s about how the drums feel and how they make me feel. It’s hard being a consumer of this stuff because I don’t think most drummers have the opportunity to play dozens of different types of pro kits on a regular basis. It’s a total gamble to know if you’ll like the expensive kit you just ordered. It’s just part of the experience, but you’ll eventually figure out what you like if you play long enough.
I am a drum builder. I can tell you. Wood type and hardness generally doesn't matter. The biggest factors of a drums sound is 1. The bearing edge. 2. The heads. and 3. The depth of the drum.4. Diameter of venting. The rest is barely perceptible nuance. Drums are rarely perfectly round. If you place it on a coordinate measurement machine, you will see what I am talking about. What you are paying for in high end kits are the finishes and materials. You give me a cheap drum with nice edge and good heads, tune it, and place it next to DW, then ask you to close your eyes and tell me which one is the 'better' drum, you would have a 50% chance of getting it right.
I found a home made octoban, a clear 6" plastic pipe with no bearing edge. The horrific non-musical abomination of a sound. Curious on what type of angle is involved to make it sound decent. Or was it in the garbage for a reason?😂🍻
@@niteshades_promise haha. All you would need to do is add a bearing edge with a router and as long as the head seats flat on it, I bet you it will sound like any other octoban. All you need is a router, a flat table, and a 45 degree router bit.
I don't make them commercially. I make them for myself and my friends. There is not much money in the drum building business@@JackNiles Hyper saturated unless you a niche with access to collector level clientele.
The heads make the sound! Material type, thickness, bearing edges, rim type, wrap are about 5% of the sound. A guy on RUclips plays a kit covered and it sounds like regular drums, he takes the blanket off and they are trash cans modified for heads on them
Dear Joel love your videos! Love the technical stuff. On this video you open with remarks about guitars and wood choices. If I may interject here- spruce is the utmost important wood choice for what’s called the sound board or top- acoustic guitars. While some guitars are made totally with a given species of one wood, it isn’t preferred. Spruce has long been the choice to convey the sound from bridge. Same with pianos, which is percussion as well as drums. Pianos have spruce sound boards. As you pointed out in another of your well produced videos, “drum shells should not resonate”. Brilliant! I couldn’t agree more. If I could fabricate a small kit by machining pure zinc, really dense stuff, tune up a set remo ambassadors, I bet that would be very pure tone! It’s just bringing gig to gig!
If you haven't already check out this Paiste Cymbal Documentary/factory visit video put out by Drumeo: ruclips.net/video/EH4OCKoO66E/видео.html. At 21:25 Jared plays a one-off drum kit Paiste has at the factory that is made from shells that were cast from melted down Paiste cymbals (warranty returns from artists and other users). CAST drums. HEAVY SHELLS -- those shells aren't doing much resonating. They sound AMAZING!
I’ve watched all your videos in this series you’re doing and it’s really insightful. Watching your videos has really helped me understand the sound I’m looking for before I sink money into a drum or head. Trying to get great at recording myself right now and I think I’ve saved a lot of trial and error by watching you. Also your videos aren’t nerdy! You go around the nerd talk and the marketing talk and get down to realness of it in a way that’s easy to understand but also nuanced. Keep making videos man!
I agree with your series. I have a video on RUclips called "Pearl Superman Drum set Restoration". It is a trashed Pearl Export with Luan shells where I had to fill all kinds of holes bored into the shells over the life of this drum set. I ended up painting the inside of the shells with an Epoxy Bilge paint, essentially putting an epoxy 6 mil layer on the inside. I leveled and smooth the bearing edges, and waxed them. This drum set is awesome and can keep up with the high end kits as well. I think your series on the bass drums depth and this one with the wood types lays bare all the biases in modern times associated with drummers in general. You can take a low end set and make it sound great with a little work. Bearing edges, heads, and a good chamber with a finished interior of the drum are the largest contributors to a good quality drum sound.
One of the most important things after drum heads is whether the bearing edges are level. I re-cut the edges on 2 of my kits and getting them level is more important than edge, because you can tune them evenly and accurately, which means cleaner tones = nicer to listen to IMHO.
The reality is for all intents and purposes, you can use any of the woods for any music or sounds/tunings. Side to side you can hear the difference, but in the real world, especially in the context of mix, it doesn't really matter. Play what you have access to, practice makes an order of magnitude more difference than the wood.
It's so nice to hear an explanation with rationale rather than people stating opinion as fact. Thanks a ton for this. It makes a lot of sense. I liked the elasticity/ plasticity discussion. It's obvious you have more understanding of physics than most RUclipsrs. I realize that is a pretty low bar, but it's appreciated. I do wonder about the direction of elasticity of different plies. I assume that there is more elasticity along the grain (like a hunting bow) than across it. Many shells are advertised as having certain plies with grain running vertically while others run horizontally. It would seem those could effectively cancel each other out to some degree. I have heard that normal plywood stays flatter due to the alternating direction of the grain in different plies. The more you learn about this stuff and the longer you think about it the more confusing it becomes. Thanks regardless!
Grain orientation definitely affects the inherent pitch of the drumshell. Shells with more vertical grains tend to be lower in pitch compared to those with horizontal grains. Horizontal orientation produces stronger shells (ability to hold their roundness), but I still have questions about how the inherent pitch of the shell affects the overall drum sound. Fiberglass shells are extremely low in pitch, as are acrylic shells, but I don't find that their useable tuning range is much different than wood shells if quality craftsmanship and hardware are involved. I do tend to hear differences in volume and projection depending on these factors (and mass being a critical contributor to greater volume). It is all very interesting, and sometime hard to extract the impact of one characteristic from the intersection of all the others. Still... I try. Thanks for being here!!!
You’ve confirmed everything I’ve ever said about how it really doesn’t matter the shell material of the drums. No need for me to give an abbreviated summary of what I say lol You e said it all! Well done!
To sum up my experience : if you're talking about ply shells, the sound or "tone" of the wood is the less relevant aspect by far, since there is almost as much glue as there is wood in the shells. The density, ease of working into plies, resistance to tension, etc is a lot more important. However, if you're talking about a solid wood shell, then the difference in wood is much more drastic, since every piece of wood in a stave shell resonates separately from the next, there are a lot more harmonics and way less glue - not to mention one solid piece of wood, almost zero glue. But they are obviously thicker, so less vibrating, and less tuning range since they are much higher in pitch to begin with. I'm really curious to see a hybrid of a ply *and* stave shells, for example with solid wood rings top and bottom, as well as reinforcement across each lug, with opposite grain from the plywood. I think especially for snares this would be killer... with high tension lugs, the tuning range would be crazy!!!
I bought a Pearl Sessions steel snare drum in 1995. It has since then been my goto snare for gigs. What a great drum. So I was glad to hear you mention about steel.
I agree with the observations about bearing edges, how round the shell is, and heads. I’m glad more of us are aware of the importance of these issues. I think we might also consider shell build, e.g, multi ply, steam bent, and stave shells with thin inner walls, and whether the shell is undersized relative to the head or not. I’d argue that some shell materials offer a more noticeable sonic difference than than others. E.g, walnut vs acrylic, fiberglass or stainless steel. The walnut is going to favor a lower, fatter sound. I can get that with the other three materials, but it’s not quite the same. They pick up a little more high end, even at lower tunings, than do the walnut.
I posted this on Part One but now I think it belongs here... There's a few bits of relevant physics worth clarifying a bit more. (1) The shell being relatively rigid and immovable creates sustain because head vibrations hitting the shell can't be transmitted into the shell, and get reflected right back into the head going the other way. (That's a lot like how guitars get sustain. Most of the energy of string vibration hitting the bridge or nut or fret can't be transmitted into the guitar, and is reflected right back into the string.) Only a little fraction of the energy is transmitted from the head(s) into the shell, leaving most of it in the heads, to be transmitted into the air bit by bit at successive cycles of vibration. (2) Rigidity works together with mass to resist vibration, so a shell that is more rigid may resist vibration better than one that is more massive. Rigidity braces the edge of the shell against more mass of shell. (Imagine that the shell was completely rigid. You couldn't move the edge of the shell at all without moving the entire shell exactly that much, so the entire mass of the shell would resist the vibration at the bearing edge. If the shell is flexible, only the mass near the bearing edge matters much... a floppy connection to the rest of the mass of the shell doesn't help a lot.) (3) THICKNESS of the wood usually matters FAR MORE to stiffness than the intrinsic stiffness of the particular wood itself. A particularly dense wood might be twice as stiff for a given thickness than a lighter wood, and usually about twice as dense, but you can just make the lighter wood a little thicker and it will be just as stiff. Stiffness depends on the CUBE of the thickness, so you can double the stiffness by using 26 percent thicker wood. (1.26 * 1.26 * 1.26 = very slightly over 2.000) If you double the thickness, you can make the shell 2 * 2 * 2 = EIGHT TIMES as stiff. That means that if you use a wood that is 2x lighter and 1/2 as stiff, but make it twice as thick, it will give you a shell that weighs the same but is several times stiffer than the thinner shell of the harder wood. That is why the soundboards (tops) of acoustic guitars are usually made of light woods (usually spruce or cedar), NOT expensive dense hardwoods. The only really important tonewood in a guitar is usually a cheap, soft, light wood, not the expensive "tonewoods" that raise the prices so much, because for a given mass you can make it significantly thicker and thus much stiffer for its weight. (4) That means---and everyone needs to understand this---PARTICULAR WOODS DON'T HAVE PARTICULAR SOUNDS INDEPENDENT OF THEIR THICKNESS, and SEEMINGLY SMALL DIFFERENCES IN THICKNESS MATTER A LOT, up to a point. Maple doesn't have a particular sound, nor does mahogany, or beech, or poplar, or any of them. They all have roughly similar mechanical properties aside from their density and stiffness, which are strongly correlated and don't really vary all that much. The shell's stiffness is what's important to how much it resonates, and at what frequencies, and that depends more on how thick it is than which of those woods it's made of. Once the wood gets to a certain thickness and stiffness, though, you reach a point of diminishing returns. If the shell is stiff and massive enough that very little energy is being transmitted from the heads into the wood at all, make it even more stiff and more massive won't make much of a difference.
Thank you… great video. I wanted to share something from my experience. I promise not to mention brands. Currently own birch, maple, poplar, and oak drums. There is something really special about my oak set that not one of the other drum sets come close to. They are far more deeper, warmer and powerful. Same sizes, same heads. I even bought a drum dial to make sure I could get the same head tension. Still the oak drums are hands down far more superior. If you’re ever in the market and can afford oak, give them a try. You won’t be disappointed!!
To my knowledge I have never played oak drums... not sure, honestly (I've played lots of people's drums over the years). I'm not in the market for a new kit, but will definitely try a set out at some point, I hope. I'm always in the market for snare drums, however.... ;)
I'll bet they weigh a ton! I can remember using oak drumsticks when I played rock back in the 60's. They were very destructive to my heads and my cymbals cringed in fear. Oak is indestructible and very dense/heavy.
I've tried dozens of combination wood drums (especially bass drums) . From Mahogany, Poplar, Birch, Maple etc. and a combination of many wood types. now I use maple (6-8 ply). After 10 years the wood finally dries out and sounds very punchy without getting muddy. but many of my friends swear by the mahogany shells.
Joel you de man. I love your videos. I have been playing drums for 55 years and I learnt more in about twelve hours of your videos than I had done previously. I particularly liked the one on the $1000 dollar Ludwig kit.....in my regular playing days (70s 80s) I sometimes made up kits using assorted drums but a key component to making them sound good was good cymbals! Now I am retired (engineer) I am looking to upgrade from my Pearl export to a 2nd hand Pro level kit.
I have a couple of Nordic shells for a future project, they look good but no sound yet. I've built two kits and various snares for myself and friends, your conclusions are spot on. Great video!
Not ALL drums are made out of plywood. I owned a company some years ago where I produced stave design drum shells, Including full drum kits. The fact that I could use many different species of wood created a pallet of sonic properties that became very intriguing to me and my customers. Stave design drum shells utilize the various densities, porosities, and sonic properties of each wood, quite different from ply shells. And it was because of that premise and reality that I became a fairly successful company, which was also cutting edge at the time: nobody else made full stave drum sets when I started doing it. It was very rewarding to me to get feedback from all of my customers. Without exception, they were ecstatic over the drum that I had made for them. And, that was the best part of my business. 😊
Good video. I've always thought that the shell doesn't really make so huge difference eq-vice. It kind of does the high and low frequency roll off, but the main thing is the characteristics of the sound. How much different resonances and overtones it creates and where in the frequency spectrum. That makes a very subtle difference, but you can hear it in through the mics as well. My friend has two kits (Tama Starclassic if I remember right) of same sizes and they are made of different woods (birch and maple). Once we tuned those kits to similar pitches with similar heads and recorded some stuff. While the sound was really close, there was some little differences. The Birch had a little less resonances in the lower middle region (should I say it was cleaner in there?) and the stick attack was a bit higher sounding than the maple one. Maple in the other hand had more lower mid content and the bass end was a bit messier (not-so-defined-note). It was a great test. I'd say that the bass-mid-treble -charts in drum ads are kind of right describing the sound, but not quite so drastic.
I am not a drum maker or a physicist specialized in acoustics, but as a musicologist and percussionist here are my two cents for this discussion: It is useful to think about what type of instrument drums are. They are not idiophones; that is, instruments in which the acoustic vibrations originate from exciting the entire body (shell in many cases) of the instrument (maracas, i.e.). Drums are membranophones; instruments that produce sound through the vibration of stretched membranes. This being the case, the sound producing material is whatever you use as the drumhead and NOT the shells or frames that you use to stretch it. The shells, however, act as modifiers of the sound produced by the heads. They mainly modify it as amplifiers, and in much less degree as filters reinforcing some frequencies and absorbing others somewhat changing the timbre (arrangement of overtones) produced by the head. The amplitude modification is mostly related to the size of the shell (depth; NOT width -if you change the width/diameter you're changing the size of the membrane, which of course, affects the pitch). The timber of an instrument depends on the amplification box material but more importantly on its shape. Since most drums have a circular section (because there is no way to have a uniformly stretched membrane using a polygonal frame) that factor is not usually a variable for drum sets (with some exception with those suit case kick drums. In other drums, timbre modifications occur with different circular section solids like conic, barrel-shaped, and goblet-shaped shells). Bearing edges and hoops also affect the sound INSOFAR they determine the amount of membrane surface in contact with the shell and the frequency of that contact in particular regions of the membrane. The effect of bearing edges -and less hoops- is then more noticeable than that of shell material because it directly modifies the membranes behavior. SO, there are VERY SUBTLE differences in timbre caused by the shell material, HOWEVER --and this is my main point-- we ARE NOT able to hear those timbre specificities through recordings (YT, TikTok, IG, etc. videos) because in many cases drums are recorded using microphones that are close to the drumhead and therefore mostly pick up the sound directly from the head and not modified by the shell. And when microphones are far from the instruments they also pick up the sound modified by the room they are in so we hear reverberations, echoes and further filtering. This "problem" happens for any type of instrument but is critical for drums because almost the entirety of a singular acoustic wave occurs with its attack. Add to that the specific capturing and transducing capacities of the microphones, and then those of the speakers/headphones used. I should perhaps make my own video about it, but feel I shouldn't keep wasting more time on this.
This felt very validating. I’ve had to stand my ground a few times over not just slapping gels on my drums so I don’t lost the sound, respectfully of course. I once had to tell a guitar player “you don’t play exclusively in palm mutes, right?” before it clicked. Then we were able to work together to find tones that still preserve the characteristics I aimed for.
wait,,, that kick drum is perfect too!!!! the internet would benefit from a video on kick tuning for sure!!! I prefer the poplar sound but they both sound great!
I must be a drum geek as well, I made it through the whole video. It's interesting to hear your thoughts on the various woods used in making drums without all the sales hype from drum manufacturers. This is very good information. I'm wondering though with all this talk about the wood used for making drums, how does the different wood used in drum sticks affect the drum sound - maybe an idea for a future video. Thanks for sharing Joel, it's very much appreciated!!!
Maybe this will help. Probably wont make your doubles better but here it gos. Stress (psi) is the force applied to a material. Strain (length) is the deformation when the stress is applied. Stress/ strain is the modulus of elasticity of a material or E. Great video.
Yeah, I've been reading about MOE (Young's modulus) for the past couple of months. Still trying to fully wrap my head around its application in this area... something there, I'm certain, but haven't put my finger on it yet. Thanks for being here and for reaching out!
I have 7 snares (so far) myself, and one of them, my Wells Custom snare, isn't plies of wood at all. Its a steam-bent solid Cherry snare. It's gets a very distinct tone compared to my others. That may be because its solid, and/or Cherry, but it's *one of* my favorites.
That’s why I love my copper snare drum and maple drums. I recently bought a Yamaha stage custom in birch just to test some heads and tuning to see if I could get it to sound like my RFM Canopus Kit I’ll let you know later
Absolutely fantastic vid from beginning to end! Subscribed! So far, I've been learning basic skills on drums for super cheap or thrown away - I just hate to see an instrument go in the garbage. Currently working on two badgeless drums I rescued from the curb. The shell wood actually looks decent. Much better than the Verve kit I practiced re-wrapping on. I have no idea what brand these two are, but they're old enough for the clear topcoat to have severely yellowed all theway through. I thought they were light gold - surprise!, hoops and lugs off, they were a silver sparkle in their youth. Your vids are so useful and so well researched!! Watching interior and exterior finish choices vids now. 😊 Thank you!!
Good info. Speaking on the acoustic guitar, most have spruce, cedar, or mahogany soundboards that provide most of the sound. They are generally soft compared to the body woods that help amplify the sound and contribute to the overall tone.
Really good analysis and totally squares with my experience. I have a custom maple kit that I built in 2002 from 5mm, 6-ply Keller shells that is still my favorite kit. But in 2006 when I needed more volume for a hard rock situation (and didn't want to destroy my thin shell custom set), I bought a Tama Starclassic Performer Birch kit with slightly thicker 6mm, 6-ply shells. While that set served my needs as a stage kit for 17yrs and I even converted it to a jazz set with the addition of a smaller bass drum and floor tom with higher tunings, I always wished I was playing my maple set. The birch drums are louder, but they also sound very dead in comparison. Finally at the beginning of 2023 I decided to get a new Starclassic Maple set with 5mm, 6-ply shells to be my new stage set. Volume is less of an issue because I'm always mic'ed for rock these days, and the new maple kit "sings" like my custom set, which is now my permanent home studio kit for most recordings. I'm still keeping the birch set because it has a very different recorded sound from either of the maple kits given the same drum sizes, heads, tunings, and mic's. It's great to have different options from different woods!
Joel! If you mention your previous videos put a link in those videos for people like me to watch so I don’t have to search for those. Love your channel by the way!!great work!
Watch the Ford drum co guys do the comparison of Sonor toms at NAMM, you can’t hear any difference in the sound, and they’re all different shells! They’re point is that all your hearing is the head, I think you’ve touched on that in one of your videos. ✌️thanks!
Microphones/signal path/processing rather diminishes the tonal nuances in differing tone woods, yes. In the room is another story, but recorded it is much harder to hear. The upside of this reality is that the quality and completeness of the build of a drum has tremendous impact on its overall quality. Many inexpensive drums can be made to sound fantastic with a bit more work to 'finish' the build (instead of stopping short of the mark as most companies do with their lower lines). I'm actually about to do a video on this week after next, so stay tuned! I think it'll be fun (I see lots of 'how to make your cheap drums sound good' videos out there, and yet no one really seems to dive deeply into what really differs between 'good' and 'cheap' drum, so I'm gonna -- hopefully I don't make too many folks mad at me in the process ;)
Really enjoyed this and as others have said, your almost scientific approach while still looking at things as a drummer is both rare and valuable. More than that, your ability to explain it is also great. I particularly like your care to try and use the correct terminology in this one - as a former engineer/metallurgist and current drummer, it matters. I particularly liked your mind blown moment when realising steel is so elastic - haha! They make springs from it so it's kinda obvious when you think about it, the stuff just doesn't seem very giving when you bang your head against it. What's really cool about steel (all metals actually) is the way those properties can be manipulated by heat treatment and other finishing processes. You don't see much mention of it with drum builders typically, occasionally some of the small builders mentioning that they protect their specific alloy or heat treatment processes closely (Dunnett and Acoutin spring to mind currently.) The main exception would be hammered shells which act as a surface treatment introducing tension into the metal, but there are so many more of these processes to explore - maybe they don't market as well as a shell that looks like it's been hit with a bat. That said I do think (though I have no proof) you're onto something with the elasticity - I've just bought a 1983 Mastercraft Rosewood and concur that it's noticeably staccato and noticeably louder - also feeling a little brittle under the stick compared to what I was expecting. And you see similar things with cymbals - heat treatment isn't quite spot on and the cymbals don't quite flex enough and eventually crack and shatter, versus soft supple cymbals no one likes to look at because they're taco shaped. Keep doing this stuff because very few others are - the combination of experience, actual knowledge and application to the instruments is rare. I'd say most of the big manufacturers have people in their midst who know this stuff but don't share because they're giving away trade secrets, same for the independent builders who know their stuff beyond just making pretty saleable items. Nice to see the know-how shared. PS - your comments on ply shells really make me want to get my head round steam bent single ply stuff and the solid shell drums - I have some and I'm adamant that it makes a significant difference because of the reasons you touch on. Will eventually get them under mics to 'prove' it - whatever that might be.
Thank you SO much for chiming in! I love kind remarks, but when they come from someone who has more knowledge about things than myself it is especially welcome and appreciated. So glad to have you here!!
@@drumdotpizza you sell yourself short - your knowledge is awesome, just keep sharing it with us! I know for a fact every one of my drum buddies who I've shared this series with have loved it. You're answering questions people didn't know they had, but know we're learning it's like assembling pieces of a puzzle.
Love this! I will say I'm a huge lover of rosewood snares. I've had quite a few, and they all have performed incredibly well. They do seem to have just a touch more of everything than most of my other wood snares. I'd love to see a video like this on different metals and their sonic differences, and if people can really tell any difference. Brass, aluminum, copper, etc
Been chasing snare tone decades. I could never get into metal snares. Different wood snares have different feels. I thought it was heads n hoops. Very interesting video.🤔🍻
Another question on wood vs depth of snare drums. I have a Gretsch Catalina Maple 14" x 6" and a Gretsch Catalina Club Jazz (mahogany) 14" x 5". I use both snare drums with my Gretsch Catalina Club Jazz (bop size - mahogany) kit. Both drums have the same bearing edges, heads, snares, triple flange steel 2.3mm hoops and tuning. I also use the same sticks and brushes on them. The maple drum sounds so much better with it in regards to warmth, in spite of the maple being harder than mahogany. I would expect it to sound more like a rock drum with penetration, but it doesn't. I love it because I'm a jazz drummer who plays low to medium volume! Please give me your opinion on the reason why the harder maple sounds softer than the softer mahogany - difference in depth?
Great question! The depth certainly plays a role, but I would submit also that the denser maple creates a stronger fundamental in the sound (lower tones are louder) giving the drum a fuller tone overall. I personally dislike the word 'warm' as a descriptive word, because it means so many things to different people that it's hard to nail down what one means by it (it is probably the most overused complimentary word when describing drums, guitars, microphones, recording media, etc.). By your use of the word I believe you mean a fuller, less annoying (probably less bright/aggressive) tone. The maple drum doesn't lack any of the high frequency response of the mahogany (in fact the maple may have more depending on the drums' interior finishes as maple is a tighter grained, denser wood which would naturally reflect more highs than the coarser, less dense mahogany), but the greater density of the maple will produce a stronger, lower frequency content to the tone which could certainly be described as 'warmer' than mahogany which produces a more midrange character. And then there's the deeper shell. Lastly (and I save it for last as it is something of a cop out (though totally valid)), no two pieces of wood are the same... sometimes we do have anomalies of performance in the physical world. I doubt this has much to do with your situation, however, as ply construction (lots of veneers glued together) tends to iron out such inconsistencies in practice. But I have had drums that simply didn't behave the way I expected (something I am actually experiencing right now as I just received a second identical maple snare drum to one I own (because I love the one I have and wanted another to try some modifations) and the two sound nothing alike. I'm going to mess with to see what the reason might be, but I was a little shocked by how much I don't care for the sound of the new arrival). Hmmm... Clear as mud?? ;)
@@drumdotpizza Actually, it all makes perfect sense. I'm glad you clarified the definition of "warm" because like you, it covers way too much territory in describing something. Anyway, you definitely understood what I meant by "warm". (I couldn't say "dark" because I start thinking of cymbals and that is a whole 'nother discussion.) Using a subjective word to describe anything than it is not objective (which could be measured with numbers or other concrete terms) is very frustrating. (For example, I hate the word, "earthy" to describe food like mushrooms or whatever, because this word literally means "like dirt" to me.) You did a very good job in answering my question. Thank you!
I have drums with shells made of maple, and others with shells made of maple/poplar or basswood. To tell the truth I've never found a lot of differences I find tonal differences are more influenced by head selection and tuning. I recently attended a jazz concert in a small jazz club setting. Sat right near the drummer he used a Sonor 'Bop' kit (the lower priced version not the higher priced version with the same name). The Sonor 'Bop' kit does not use the same wood as the higher end Sonor kits. The sound was amazing..very warm yet punchy. The bass drum sound was excellent. None of the drums were mic'd..purely the sound of the heads and shells came through. I have a Sonor 'Bop' kit I'd put it up against much more expensive drums for small venue acoustic situations, just as an example of 'lower priced drums' vs. much more expensive drums in terms of the composition of the shells. Very interesting video.
Your story is a perfect example of what I'm talking about! Thanks for sharing. I actually have a Sawtooth brand bop kit (18/12/14) made form poplar that I am going to 'improve' for an upcoming video topic. Poplar was the thicker middle ply of most of the classic drums made by Slingerland and Ludwig throughout the 20th century that are so beloved these days. There's a lot that isn't done in the finishing side of the manufacture of new poplar drums that I'm going to do to make them more appropriate (in tradition sense) for combo jazz type music. Gonna need to brush up some of my long disused jazz chops for the video though! ;)
Excellent video! I definitely have noticed that I generally prefer room microphones with all acoustic instruments, I do get more specific character of each type of drum, guitar etc. And yep, tuned super low, close microphone don’t worry about the wood. And based on the poplar and maple demonstration, I would use the poplar drum in a small cafe with volume limitation as it has a smaller sonic footprint. And the sugar maple drum in a bigger room with more people. Lastly, something I’ve talked about with band mates lately is to play the thing that makes you FEEL right. You’ll then perform better = better gig.
Absolutely agreed! I play best when I'm comfortable/at one with the drums. I'm cool with the sound of poplar drums (I do have a couple of poplar snare drums that I use for short, abrupt, poppy sounds from time to time, something poplar shells excel at), but I really don't care for the soft feel that they have, even with higher head tension.
Thanks for this. I currently have a Pearl Export ELX Poplar/Mahogany. Looking to upgrade and this subject has been very confusing. So thanks for your time and information.
Take the drums apart and finish the interior with tung oil or polyurethane or lacquer, etc. Not a heavy, shiny coat, just seal the wood to close up the raw grain. Will make the drums more lively, brighter like top line drums. Make sure to put masking tape over all the hardware mounting holes on the outside of the shell to keep from dripping through onto the finish (and cover the finish to avoid overspray, for example). Once the seal is dry/cured, reassemble and you're good to go. Will seriously improve the quality of cheaper drums (which, unlike nicer drums, are rarely finished inside).
Hey man, really great video! Miles (Davis) talked about one’s sound and developing one’s sound as being basically everything! And for drummers, what you talked about here is of course a massive part. Hats off to you for taking on the challenging topic. Everything you spoke about is also a very “organic” thing. Trying to explain how to “play through the drum” to get the sound to come out nice and full and not sound thin, or we use terms like “ let the drums breathe” bla bla.. Elasticity and how the shell reacts, how the head reacts, how the stick hit marries with the head so that the energy makes the sound big and round and free with unrestricted energy.. It’s like how the hell do ya explain that?!?! Lol!!! Anyway, I think you did a wonderful job and should do more vids like this.. Dig into the room and how the drums react to it, different mics and pre’s. Different overheads, room mics with different types of compression and how it fattens a drum mix. Maybe a video on drums and different types of sustain, moon gels, suspension mounts, and why what and when etc! Cheers! Myles- 👍🏼
Thanks so much for your input, Myles! I am actually going to be covering a lot of the engineering bits you mentioned (different mics, preamps, etc.) on my other channel, RecordingDotPizza (which a renamed old, original channel that I started for whatever reason back in 2012. I have only recently revived it (with the new name) to begin addressing recording related topics. I will definitely cover much of this over there!
Very cool! Funny - I was just in the Nordic website looking at shells the other day. Looking forward to watching your video on bearing edges. Subscribed!
Would you factor in woods that can handle temperature changes say like from Hot or Cold temps also humidity from wet or dry in order to stay in round and not warp out of round ? Simply which woods can handle extreme temp. changes.
Excellent video, I appreciate your passion and attention to detail. Totally agree with your take on how much the different wood types affect sound-as in that it does a bit, but it’s mostly only noticeable when you’re physically in the room with the drums. I’m a Ludwig guy and over the years I’ve acquired a bunch of random misfit unmatched drums that I enjoy making jellybean kits out of. My current kit I’m using for recording with my band: 14 vistalite tom, 12 rototom, 16 stainless steel floor tom, 18 maple floor tom, 24 maple bass, and a supraphonic snare. All these different materials but it sounds great together. I actually have a full stainless kit and to be honest I feel it’s the best sounding drum material overall if I had to pick one. Just a little more oomph in every way. Must be that elasticity haha
So you love SS, do you? I had a 24" SS bass drum at my studio years ago, but sold it when I officially closed shop. A friend of mine (well... my older brother's friend, actually) had a Ludwig SS kit (Big Beat) that he bought new back in 1980. Still had it about 10 years ago, but I ran into him a couple years back and asked if I could buy it (I've never owned a full SS kit and want one), but he had sold it for next to nothing to a neighbors kid the year before. I was so bummed to hear that (I would have happily paid him next to nothing for it!).
@@drumdotpizza oh no that’s sad! Yeah mine is a big beat configuration as well, it’s one of the 2009 100th anniversary kits that Ron Dunnett made, I found it on eBay in 2015 and had to have it haha. It’s got the gold hardware too so it’s really nice to look at. The crappy thing was though when it arrived at my house the UPS guy dropped the box off the back of the truck. Long story short, the kit was packed incorrectly and ended up getting damaged. The elasticity of the steel yielded to the force lol. But a friend of mine was able to bend it back into shape fortunately. I also ended up getting a bunch of money off of it. It’s not perfect but I kinda view drums like vintage guitars, where it’s somewhat desirable to have it be a little banged up and have character. Anyways, there’s a 2006 Dunnett/Ludwig prototype kit on Reverb right now, they’re only asking like 8k for it 😂 Get it and make a video on it! 😜
Poplar is a very underrated wood for drums...they sound great recorded, particularly. Whatever, keep em' cheap. They are warm, gushy, and highly tunable.
I'm planning on doing a Tama Mastercraft comparison between my various models (different shell materials). Gonna wait till I finish my Fibrestar Mastercraft clone build first, though!
Good thoughts about this subject,especially because your open for any aspect and noot have the tendency to lead or push it in certain,or wished direktion.So the result is,there is no right or wrong,no good or bad,but alot in between and it depends.....cool !
Thanx for that video! Of course it´s very specific and deatiled but thats what differs most drummers from those, who have much passion and are interrested in the details which make a difference. If a mathematic professor tells you something about arithmetics, most people would get bored. And here its the same. We are not geeks or nerds, we are drummers who dive deep in their subject which fascinates us!
Thanks so much for a very insightful video about the physics behind drum shell woods. Not being able to afford a maple set...yet I've always wondered if it's really worth buying a more expensive set or other exotic wood kits. I learned a lot. Cheers
If you want a quality maple shell kit I'd suggest you snag a Mexican-built Pacific CX, MX or LX series drum kit. They are North American Sugar Maple drums (same wood DW uses in their standard product line) and then sand the edges smooth (they were machined, but not sanded well) using 320-400 grit paper. Just lightly around the edges (go in full, sweeping circles around the edge, not back and forth in small places, as you don't want to remove too much material in one spot and therefore create an uneven edge). Sand the interior the same way until smooth. Then seal the edges and interior (they are unfinished at the factory) with a wood seal of your choice: tung oil-type product, lacquer, polyurethane, etc. Avoid glossy finishes, but a very light satin is okay... the object here is to seal the grain of the wood to allow smooth tuning of the heads (sealed edges) and to keep the raw wood from absorbing high frequencies (overtones, 'liveliness') created by striking the heads. Be sure to mask off the outer finish, including covering all the various hardware mounting holes with masking tape on the outside of the shell to prevent interior finish from dripping through onto the drum's external finish when being applied. Reassemble, and you will truly have a great quality, sugar maple drum kit! BTW, all the later, oval-lugged Pacific lines (FS, M5, X7, 805, etc.) are Chinese made, and the hardware is different (the lugs look very similar to the Mexican drums, but they're not... when you put them side by side you can tell). This hardware is not as well machined and often the threads will strip when trying to reassemble, so if you do this to one of the Chinese kits be VERY careful not to stress the threads any more than absolutely necessary. I have yet to rebuild one of those kits (3 of which I have done this to for people) without losing at least a few threads along the way. The Mexican made, maple shelled Pacifics can be exceptional kits in terms of tone and playability (the CX wraps fade badly, but that doesn't bother me) with a little elbow grease and some wood finish/sealer. Basically this is just finishing the last bit of production that they omitted at the factory to keep costs down. Hope that helps!
I like to think that the more you muffle the drum, the less and less it makes a single difference what material the drum is made of. The heads you choose have way more to do with perceived tone
Yeah I would agree with that! But…. for example there’s no way you’re gonna get a maple snare drum to sound anything like a bell brass snare, even when heavily muffled, those super heavy metal snares sound very unique.
So, I've done this kind of deep dive and found that yes different woods have different sounds, not blaringly different but different. The important thing was the heads!! I know that a lot of people will get their panties in a bunch over what I'm about to say, but here it goes: Evans and to a degree Aquarian heads, for whatever reason, don't draw out the shells natural tone. If you take a set of Evans off one kit and put them on another they sound the same, no distinction in wood type, but with Remo I was able to hear a difference. Remo just seem to bring out a more organic sound, which some drummers don't want and that's fine, but if you want to hear the shell use Remo.
Understood, though perhaps a bit broad in scope... Yes, heads and tuning/muffling will ALWAYS be more consequential than species of wood... I just want to cover all the variables (or most, anyway) that contribute to drum sound, and folks have been asking for a video on tone woods, so I did it. As for heads, I do agree that Remo's film (compared to comparable models from Evans and Aquarian) is a lighter, more flexible film (I believe they you Dupont Mylar while Aquarian, I am sure, does NOT (their film is quite different in feel and flexibility), and I doubt Evans does either. "Mylar" is a brand name for a particular formula of polyester film made by Dupont, but all the manufacturers use polyester-based film of some make, I'm pretty sure. The Remo film seems to yield more, and does sound a tad livelier, though beauty is in the ear of the beholder, of course. I don't care for the feel of Evans heads, and really don't care for their coating which comes off so easily (sometimes stuck to the interior of the box when you pull the heads out!). Also, both Remo's and Evans' coating is a fine particle, while Aquarian's coating is more stout, and I love the way it feels and the (I'm pretty sure) slightly greater muffling this heavier coating produces... makes for a great tone that doesn't require much muffling at all (on toms at least, and very little on snare as I tend to prefer the overtones produced by the drum). Yes, Aquarian is a more colored tone, I fully agree... and I LOVE the color. Comparable Remo models sound thin to my ear (so I tended toward coated Emperors for batters when I used Remo, which were a bit thick sounding, but the Ambassadors were just too thin and required EQ bumps. Aquarian's Texture Coated is the perfect balance of those to my ear, and I have really fallen in love with them. All three brands make wonderful products, and these differences aren't as significant as I probably make them sound, but after years I have become rather sensitive (and opinionated ;) on it all. Just my long winded way of saying that I agree with you (if I understand you correctly, anyway): Aquarian is more colored than Remo, and I highly recommend folks check them out. And no, I'm not affiliated with Aquarian (though I wouldn't mind being someday ;)
@drumdotpizza - Vwey interesting! I personally find the Aquarians to be much, much more flexible. The feel under the stick is so smooth, supple, and giving - not in any way in a negative stance. They make it a joy to play. I also find that it's easier for me to find my sound with them with out much drama from weird "noises", ringing or humming. I feel they find the fundamental , and exploit it. I used to use Evans all through high school. When they sold in 1995 to D'Addario (year I graduated) I went back to Remo and NEVER looked back. I did play some while I was teaching. The rep gave me a set when the 1st gen EC2 were released. They were ok. I even used a set for a recording ten years ago. I'm not too keen on trying them again. Roy gave me some drum heads when I was teaching too. We got a set of Power Thins, and Super 2 w/ studio x ring when they were respectively released. I hated the film back then though. That dry, dull, flat hazy film was horrible. When they started using the Nu-Brite film, I was intrigued. In 2022 I bought an entire set of Aquarians. Coated Super 2 on the toms, and it turns out I had a pretty steep learning curve dialing them in. But I haven't purchased a new Remo since then. Everything I've been buying has been Aquarian. Right now I have clear Response 2 / Classic Clear on my working kit, and it actually sounds like I want it to. All of the drums now sound at their "ideal" for me.
It isn't quite my favorite tone wood, but it is still very good is Purpleheart. That is probably the best looking wood for drums. DW Purpleheart drum sets are really nice. I have a set of Pearl Birch, and tend to like Birch more than maple. But what I really like is the Yamaha Hybrid Oak. That is a damn good sounding drum set! I also like how Mapex does a blend of woods, and their drums sound quite good too. I guess any drum set is a good drum set. lol. as long as it isn't a toy. Enjoyed the video!
one thing you really got across great is how drums sound a lot different when close mic'd. Simply because what you actually hear when mic'd is how the drum head sounds, and how the drum set reacts to the room it is in; the actual acoustic sound of the drums would be picked up with the room mic's but those usually have less part in most mixes. Now, when your drums sound really good acoustically, you might find that it does matter in recording, simply because you will move away with your mi's from the drums the better they sound. We see this with many productions, as with the royal blood self titled first album (and second..) - the sound engineer was so flooded by the sound of the drums in the room, it was mic'd only with room mics, so 90% of the drum sound is how they sound, in real life. Huge. Well, that recording was 10 years ago, but this way of recording has seen a revival, i just heard from a band which was already half through recording their new album, when the drummer got new drums. They sounded so much better than the also not bad sounding yamaha studio custom kit they so far used, they decided to record the first 6 songs all again after hearing the difference of the drums on the new tracks. And yes, they used room mics. So if you are being cheap, you can say cheap drums work as well, as you can not hear much of a difference mic'd. But again, that is only true when close mic'd for all the reasons mentioned in the video. I have customers in my showroom every day who hear the huge difference between certain drums, often when trying to capture these differences on a recording it is really hard to do so. Good example is our video about different kick drums and snares, where we used close mics and room mics, and the difference on room mics is always way more audible than on close mics, due to the fact that the mic itself plays a huge role in the sound... ruclips.net/video/Q9soErIr2do/видео.htmlsi=NDzkHROFxV55_ml5
Well, on cheap drums, you will find a few issues that might make them sound crappier. One is the quality of the bearing edge not being sharp and the shell not being flat. So there is something to be said on the sound quality of cheap drums. That said, when I say cheap, I mean low end entry level.
@@jross3680 Drums having not even bearing edges is a feature you find on all drums today, not only entry level crap. It is caused by drums being cut with cnc machines.
@@adorodrums Wow, really? I would imagine the big drum companies like Pearl and Tama would do a decent job. I have seen some of the cheap drums with wavy edges, and totally not flat. As a drum builder myself, I dont understand why they wouldn't want to take an extra minute to flatten out the shell and make sure they are using a decently sharp router bit.
@@jross3680 if a drum comes from a factory that has cnc it has issues with edges, no matter the price tag. Usually in one, two or three places of the drum, where the rotating table has the wheels. Yamaha has a video up somewhere where you see why: they cut both sides, the inside and outside bearing edge, at the same time, from top. The shell is rotated, and when there is any movement in this rotating instrument a vertical manner, that is how you get the dents, but usually they are not visible unless you test it on a flat surface, because the dents are rather smooth. And they do know about these issues, I have told them. I told Yamaha in person bc they visit your namm and music Messe booth several times each year, and I told the goons at Gewa, who make 70% of all drums today, and (one of) the manufacturers of Tama. They could not care less.
@@jross3680 found it: ruclips.net/video/jC4idXhu1RE/видео.htmlsi=jB4hFHh5tBvkdWZV as drum maker I cannot imagine why they spent so much money on a machine that makes so lousy edges. Issue is, the first drums each day might be okay, but as soon as there are wood chips flying around, you start getting these issues. I fix such edges now for 14 years, roughly since 2010 every major manufacturer has these issues. Gewa is manufacturing for pdp, dw, gretsch, drumcraft, Ludwig and many more.
Very good and informative video as always. When you made a video about drum sizes in a minimalist recording and now this video made me think about what value drumset would be best for the money. I think that yamaha stage custom is hard to beat. Hard and semi thick birch shell, nice durable hardware and you can get big sizes. 24x15 kick and for toms pretty much anything from 8 to 14 inch and 14 to 18 inch floor toms
Sounds like a great choice! I will be doing a video on how to modify less costly drums to perform more like expensive drums in a few weeks, so please watch out for that one... I think you'll find it helpful! I see lots of videos on improving mid-level (and cheaper) drums, but I never see them actually addressing the true differences between costly and less costly lines. I want to show folks how they can close the gap.... Thanks for being here!
Amazing content. I really wish I could see/hear the real difference between ply, stave, and steam-bent. Is there a difference? Do wood species sound more different if the shell is steam-bent? Also I'm really curious why you can find a million stave snares for sale, but full stave kits are almost non-existent. DW's VLT shells have a naturally lower fundamental since the plys aren't stretch perpendicular to the grain, thus the tension is way lower. Does that mean that a stave kit would have a crazy low fundamental since there's zero tension?
Stave shells DO have a very low fundamental pitch when thumped. The wood is in its natural state without the stress applied to plywood construction. LOUD drums, strong fundamental. The shells don't resonate much though... dense, hard to get vibrating. HUGE sound. I have one stave shell (not sure which wood species) that was given to me, and I'm currently working on building some stave shells with a woodworking friend of mine. Gonna make a few based on info on the internet and see how good we can make them. Not to sell, just to mess with and for testing, etc. I have some ideas.....
Very informative video, Joel. You spoke only about ply shells. Zebra drums had made me a custom kit with stave mahogany shells and I think you can hear the warmth of that wood even through some processing. Will there be a follow up about solid shells and stave shells?
@@drumdotpizza: before you finalize this, please be sure to differentiate between stave drums made of staves of uniform thickness, e.g , Brady and many others, and those with some of the inner shell scooped out, a la Hendrix. I like stave-shells - they have have less glue, resonate very well, and can really cut through when needed. But there is a huge difference between the Brady build vs. the Hendrix; the Brady build tends to favor a higher pitch, while the Hendrix build, with less mass in the shell, can favor a lower pitch. Removing shell mass is what Chris Brady did with his baritone snares, shortly before he retired. After he retired, Rhett Hendrix built a different drum but based on the same principle.
the birch bubinga combo is never going to let you down but i agree once you start micing up you can make any drum sound great but on it own the attack of birch and the low end of bubinga create a perfect sound for raw drums
Jeff Hamilton played Remo before he became a spokesman for Mapex. Remo shells are composite like MDF and yet his kit sounded great. I’ve been playing for 65 plus years and had many kits mainly Poplar or Luan. In my experience poplar are fine but Luan swallows up sound. I’m down to two kids now, a 2013 Sonor Safari and a new Tama Club Jam Pancake. I know the Sonor is some form of 6 ply Poplar but it sounds very good for the Jazz, Lighter Rock, Country. It has enough jam but in some occasions I Mike the 16in kick. The Tama Pancake has a 12x4 snare and 10 x4 cymbal stand Mount. The floor tom is 13x4 and both toms are concert/single headed. The shells seem to be Poplar (maybe Basswood ?) but have amazing projection. I swapped out the supplied tom heads with Evans Calftones and the snare batter with a Remo coated Emperor and they sound great. Personally heads are the key.
this series is awesome, feels so refreshing to see a man really digging into it and not following current brands' marketing agenda. So, I'm looking forward to more videos and also I'd very much like to hear your unbiased thoughts on cymbals and how their sounds come to be as they do, too!
Mmhh...now that you cover the woods I'd really like to se/hear a wood to acrylic shell comparison 🤩 Great vids, bassist here but instant subscriber, your production value is top notch 👍🏼
Awesome! 10 out of 10! These videos are amazing. It would be stupid cool to see the same series for metal drums - aluminum, COB, steel, bronze, bell brass, copper, black nickel of brass, etc. I’ve head for years that copper is so special & sweet overall. I simply haven’t pulled the trigger yet to complete this experiment. What do you like in metal? What do you prefer? Keep up the great work! TY 🤓
I have fallen in love with heavy, steel shell snare drums in recent years. I used to poo poo them as most inexpensive snare drums seemed to be made of steel, and I (ignorantly) equated that with the cheapness of material and performance of it. But then I bought a Tama steel Mastercraft snare and have NEVER looked back. Of course I love the classic Ludwig aluminum-based alloy snares (Acrolite and Supra) and their brass as well. And bronze. About the only snare I didn't love was a copper shell Tama snare that had the same strainer/butt and roller bed designs as the Mastercraft series (though later badge and 'Freedom' lugs from the later 80s). I believe Bill Bruford played this model, and I snagged one a few years back, but just never loved it. It had an odd, extremely dry (missing tone it seemed to me) character to it. Wasn't bad, necessarily, but didn't thrill me (and I do like to be thrilled! ;) That's the only copper snare I have spent much time with, so I can't say that the copper was the thing I didn't care for -- it could have been something else, and sometimes some drums just produce odd tones for some reason. So I don't want to discourage you, but you might see if you can try before you buy just in case it was, in fact, the copper I didn't like. Then again some folks love really dry, articulate tones!
Thank you! Maybe I missed it but I was hoping you spoke about painting the insides...like "silver sealer" or Ludwig white, or shellac. What does that do to the sound?
Talk about a can of worms!! Like you said, head choice, tuning, bearing edge , shell thickness, re-rings or not, wood type all add to the ambient room sound of a drum. All in all play them and enjoy.
You're bouncing your feet nearly this whole video and I adore it 🤩🖤🙏🏻 I noticed this in one of your older videos and I've never been able to unsee it. 😁 I love it, never chance.
I recently purchased a used kit, made of basswood-a Taye kit actually, why?itbwas really cheap,but sounds amazing (i ave messed with the snare quite a bit), i wonder if i took it apart and painted the interior of the shells with some type of resin,epoxy,fiberglass type-like alex van halennused to do to his huge bass drums so dave could jump off them,abd sound much better!good video and thanks for the info buddy.
The Ray Ayotte era of Taye drums had amazing workmanship and finish (inside as well as out) for virtually all there lines. The workmanship on my Go Kit was as good as on my StudioMaple kit (now my son's StudioMaple kit). I still have (and use) the birch/basswood snare drum that came with the Go Kit. Thanks for sharing!
Have you ever looked into fiberglass. I make fiberglass shells and of course I have my opinions but I have never been in the studio with them. So what's your thoughts ?????
I have only ever played a Pearl fiberglass kit (from 70s) that I used to own. I got it toward the end of my full-time recording days, and didn't get as much time working with it as I would have wanted. Sold it after I closed my studio. From what I remember I liked them. The inherent pitch of each shell was a full octave lower than wood shells of the same dimensions, and the tuning range was broad. I have been thinking a lot about fiberglass in the last couple of years and have been wondering about snagging the next Pearl fiberglass kit I see selling for cheap when it pops up. I did have a Pearl fiberglass snare drum, 6.5x14, that I loved (don't know why I ever sold it!) and I have just purchased a Pearl maple/fiberglass snare from the 80s that should be arriving this week. I'm looking forward to playing that drum. Do you sell your drum shells? Do you have a website or information I could see? I'm interested in knowing more...
For me. . . Hardwoods like maple tend to project more. I tend to use maple live. Softer woods like birch seem to be warmer. I tend to opt for birch in the studio. I also have MIJ Pearl fiberglass that I love overall. Of course fiberglass shells tend to have a beaded edge versus an actual sharp bearing edge. I will say that my drums have internal dynamic microphones and I readily admit that I’m a consistently inconsistent in my playing. Thus I use tons of compression and EQ. With that said, it’s probably more of the channel strip and and the outboard gear for me. Lol I don’t play jazz, I simply don’t have the chops. I play heavily processed rock. However, I do not employ sound replacement. There’s nothing wrong with sound replacement. It’s like any other tool. I personally don’t care for it. My point here is I’m sure this is heavily dependent on the music genre. Subtle music like jazz, you will definitely hear the nuance of the shell. Hard rock and metal, probably not so much. Excellent topic though!
Will do a follow up video to address stave and steam bent construction soon. Short answer is the realities of the wood used is consistent with what is covered in this video, but the lack of layers of glue (much lower glue to wood ratio) in steam bent, single piece drum shells results in a shell that vibrates less than a thin, ply shell does. Higher pitch in the steam bent shell as well (thin ply shells generally have very low pitch). The rigidity of the glue creates a shell that vibrates more (so if you like shells that vibrate easily the high glue ratio of modern, ultra-thin veneer shells is lovely). Steam bent shells tend to have stronger fundamental punch than modern, thin ply shells, and I prefer that, personally. Shells of harder woods, particularly if sealed inside with a hard, though not necessarily smooth/glossy finish, will produce plenty of overtones, so the full spectrum is present -- a perfect canvas upon which to choose your head and tuning/muffling to create the sound you want. Thanks for being here!
In my experience, the differences between the material of the drum greatly diminishes when you put damping on the drum. I've recently taken drum samples of three drums (copper, brass and gum) all tuned to C and D notes with coated Emperors. The differences are very minor. Completely open, however, the differences are quite vast.
Hopefully in time... I gotta start somewhere ;) I am hoping this grows as I am having fun bloviating about things I love (DRUMS!!!), but it takes time to film and edit, though I'm starting to get more comfortable with it. I do hope I'll be able to commit more of my time to it in the coming months and years. We'll see... Thank you so much for your encouragement!! It means a lot to me.
I have classic Oak Ludwig and I love it. Of course it's the best kit I have ever owned so I think its sounds amazing. But I remember I had a Premier XPK in the 90s and it also sounded great. It was a mahogany mix. But the Ludwig is just way better in my opinion. I'm sure the bearing edge makes a big difference. I have no idea of the bearing edge on the XPK. But my Ludwig is the sweet spot for me.
I had a 1998 premier APK set. Covered finish. The shells were made of eucalyptus and merante. Marathi is another species of Southeast Asian mahogany. The drums were painted inside. They sounded great!
As musicians.....drummer,guitarist etc..... It is absolutely fundamentally Important!!!!, That we take everything with salt, even Joel's words, as none of us are exempt from being marketed to for decades....last year's amazing best wood, will get used,now companies are making stuff with different woods, and it's the saving grace of tone, all while making record profits!... Every wood,every drum, every laquer etc, to my knowledge, has always always always been described as woody and earthy and WARMMM(my absolute fav marketing term) with low lows, and hi highs, that "cut through the mix"(what mix? The mix of cars and neighborhoods screaming?) It's mostly all bs. You can get any drum To sound good. A halfway decent set now, is ages head of back in the day. I just got a Yamaha stage custom, for 650$ and I've been blown away.theyre birch. But the construction and seem process, seems to be the biggest factor, as well as plies, and bearing edges, but more so heads!!! Heads make all the difference always
Today's inexpensive drums are light years ahead of cheaper drums a couple decades ago, and they can be made even better with a little targeted elbow grease (video on this is forthcoming in the next few weeks). Yes, heads make the most obvious difference in sound, but the assertion that I often see (and I'm not saying you did so here, but your comment did remind me of an assertion I see repeated too often, IMO) is that good heads make a good drum sound. OR... that the difference between good and bad drum sound is in the head and tuning you choose. I do not agree with this (not meaning to hijack this as this is not what you're asserting, but your comment on drum heads making all the "DIFFERENCE" made me want to expand on that a moment). Drum heads do make a huge difference: put an Aquarian Super Kick II on a kick drum or a single ply Texture Coated and the difference is HUGE! But either of these on a crap drum will present a crappy version of these different tones. Crappy heads on a nice drum will yield similar results. Sometimes different isn't the issue, but good and not good. The actual quality of a drum's construction (and really the fit and finish of the drum) is what matters. Many inexpensive drums are quite similar to much nicer drums in their construction (although usually with less costly veneers), but they aren't finished/completed the same way as this is costly to do. Rarely are edges sanded smooth, and interiors are never sealed, leaving the (usually rather soft) interior veneer to soak up all the high frequencies produced by the attack of the head producing a lackluster tonality (regardless of the head one chooses). This is rather easily remedied with inexpensive materials and just a little elbow grease, but too few people know to do this. These minor things drive production costs up, so companies compromise here to keep costs down on lower line products. Anyway, your Stage Custom drums are almost certainly NOT sealed/finished inside, and the edges, while likely well machined, are likely NOT sanded smooth, and certainly not lacquered or sealed in any way. These simple touches can really bridge much of.the remaining gap between modern entry-level drums and the expensive lines. Address these two issues (sanding edges and sealing edges and interiors), and you will TRULY be amazed by your new drums! There are other things you can do to affect their performance as well... but first things first. ;)
@@drumdotpizzaI'd be interested to see a video where you take maybe a cheapish tom or snare, and than change the heads,and tune it up,down etc, than sand the edges, play it again, than seal the interior (maybe 2 coats?) than play it, than do a few more coats, and play it. And than maybe just go nuts and do like 10-15 coats and see what the difference really is. I've never thought sealing the inside would do much(not like a different head would in terms of trimming off,or allowing high end attack, or lower end etc)
Awesome seminar. Of course, one could get lost in all the science, and try to design drums in their head, only for it to come down to hitting the thing with a stick and saying "I like this one" or "I like that one".
Another great video, Joel. I was hoping you might dig into ply orientation. Horizontal pies of wood are much more rigid than vertical plies. I know DW uses various orientations to achieve different sounds. Maybe others do as well.
The one thing that is definite is, it makes the shell stronger! It is a necessity for strength and integrity. After that, if the point is stability, anything else would be secondary. I wholeheartedly believe the type of wood and density are more important to the overall sound, not orientation, imho.
I love good drum educational videos like these. here my 5 cent: Shell having no impact is not true, but also, it is not as you imagine. I am a drum manufacturer who not only makes custom drums but also serial drums. Now with serial drums, you have the opportunity to observe single changes in manufacturing process: we have drums with the exact same hardware, dimensions, heads, tuning, only difference is the type of wood. Now when checking our maple and walnut sets, when tuned right, what you hear is the difference between walnut and maple. It is subtle when it comes to snare and toms, but pretty much audible when it comes to the kick. Now maple and walnut are pretty far away in the sonical spectrum, both being hard woods, but maple being way brighter than walnut. Thus it makes no sense to offer 3-4 more wood options that fall somewhere in between maple and walnut, sonically, when you can hardly hear the difference between these two woods. why is serial drum making better for observing differences in sound? Simply because when you build the same shell with the same tools and the same glue on the same day with the same humidity and the same pressure and the same.. you get the picture- you get a pretty similar product. now when i custom make a shell, there can be variations with EVERY step in manufacturing that can cause differences in sound, and unless you have done scientific research on each, you cannot really tell for sure how big each influence is. e.g. the direction of the wood grain has a bigger influence on the outcome of the shell sound than the wood itself. So there is so many ways I can f#ck with the outcome when I make a shell, it is really hard to boil it down to "this is maple, and this is birch"... this is bolloks, and it was used by drum brands to sell whatever they have in stock, not to educate drummers on how drum physics work.
now on comparing drum woods with different manufacturers: due to the fact that each manufacturer has a different approach on how to make the shells etc, the wood might in fact be the least of sonic influence - there is no way to compare "maple" drums between, say, Pearl, and Tama, since you have no idea what exactly you compare. As mentioned, the direction of wood grain has a huge impact on the resulting tone, the thickness of the single plys, the way how the plys are being prepared (some glue them to sheets before pressing them to a shell, some use single plys that get soaked in glue end pressed at once etc). I would wish videos like these would be done with the cooperation of a drum manufacturer who can give more insights that what a drummer can tell just from the look at a drum, but then again, drum manufacturers are just giving away informations that are supposed to sell their drums and show their magnificence, not shedding light on drum physics. So much disinformation is being spread in order to sell drums...
Hey Joel, not sure if have talked about directly mounting the Tom bracket to the Shell like they did in the “old” days compared to a Rimms mount system. Half my drums are directly mounted to the shell and sound fine. Can you do a comparison like the shorter size Bass drum video? ✌️🥁
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
I have to agree with everything said. It mirrors my experience as a professional drummer for almost 30 years. I’ve played a LOT of different drums, almost all top of the line kits from practically every major manufacturer, and several series within those brands. The most significant aspect to me is the actual tactile experience. It’s not subtle at all. For example, I endorse DW, and I’ve played lots of their different shells over the last 11 years. Same sizes, same hardware, heads, etc. But the experience is totally different when playing a Collector’s Series Pure Maple with reinforcing rings compared to the Cherry Jazz (my favorite) which is thicker, and has a large percentage of soft gum wood in the middle. And, he’s right about recording. The sound gets so mangled it doesn’t matter, unless you tune medium to high. In the end, it’s about how the drums feel and how they make me feel. It’s hard being a consumer of this stuff because I don’t think most drummers have the opportunity to play dozens of different types of pro kits on a regular basis. It’s a total gamble to know if you’ll like the expensive kit you just ordered. It’s just part of the experience, but you’ll eventually figure out what you like if you play long enough.
and a talented drummer can make mom's pots and pans sing like a finely tuned expensive custom made kit !
Joel, God bless you!! This is what serious drummers need to know, Thank you
I am a drum builder. I can tell you. Wood type and hardness generally doesn't matter. The biggest factors of a drums sound is 1. The bearing edge. 2. The heads. and 3. The depth of the drum.4. Diameter of venting. The rest is barely perceptible nuance. Drums are rarely perfectly round. If you place it on a coordinate measurement machine, you will see what I am talking about. What you are paying for in high end kits are the finishes and materials. You give me a cheap drum with nice edge and good heads, tune it, and place it next to DW, then ask you to close your eyes and tell me which one is the 'better' drum, you would have a 50% chance of getting it right.
I found a home made octoban, a clear 6" plastic pipe with no bearing edge. The horrific non-musical abomination of a sound. Curious on what type of angle is involved to make it sound decent. Or was it in the garbage for a reason?😂🍻
@@niteshades_promise haha. All you would need to do is add a bearing edge with a router and as long as the head seats flat on it, I bet you it will sound like any other octoban. All you need is a router, a flat table, and a 45 degree router bit.
I don't make them commercially. I make them for myself and my friends. There is not much money in the drum building business@@JackNiles Hyper saturated unless you a niche with access to collector level clientele.
@@JackNilesprobably one of those run-of-the-mill “custom” drum “manufacturers” who just buy and re-brand Keller shells and call themselves artisans 😂
50% chance you'll be right? Then the answer is neither. Please tell me more about your expertise though. Fascinating stuff.
The heads make the sound! Material type, thickness, bearing edges, rim type, wrap are about 5% of the sound. A guy on RUclips plays a kit covered and it sounds like regular drums, he takes the blanket off and they are trash cans modified for heads on them
Dear Joel love your videos! Love the technical stuff. On this video you open with remarks about guitars and wood choices. If I may interject here- spruce is the utmost important wood choice for what’s called the sound board or top- acoustic guitars. While some guitars are made totally with a given species of one wood, it isn’t preferred. Spruce has long been the choice to convey the sound from bridge. Same with pianos, which is percussion as well as drums. Pianos have spruce sound boards. As you pointed out in another of your well produced videos, “drum shells should not resonate”. Brilliant! I couldn’t agree more. If I could fabricate a small kit by machining pure zinc, really dense stuff, tune up a set remo ambassadors, I bet that would be very pure tone! It’s just bringing gig to gig!
If you haven't already check out this Paiste Cymbal Documentary/factory visit video put out by Drumeo: ruclips.net/video/EH4OCKoO66E/видео.html.
At 21:25 Jared plays a one-off drum kit Paiste has at the factory that is made from shells that were cast from melted down Paiste cymbals (warranty returns from artists and other users). CAST drums. HEAVY SHELLS -- those shells aren't doing much resonating.
They sound AMAZING!
@@drumdotpizzathank you sir.❤
I’ve watched all your videos in this series you’re doing and it’s really insightful. Watching your videos has really helped me understand the sound I’m looking for before I sink money into a drum or head. Trying to get great at recording myself right now and I think I’ve saved a lot of trial and error by watching you. Also your videos aren’t nerdy! You go around the nerd talk and the marketing talk and get down to realness of it in a way that’s easy to understand but also nuanced. Keep making videos man!
I agree with your series. I have a video on RUclips called "Pearl Superman Drum set Restoration". It is a trashed Pearl Export with Luan shells where I had to fill all kinds of holes bored into the shells over the life of this drum set. I ended up painting the inside of the shells with an Epoxy Bilge paint, essentially putting an epoxy 6 mil layer on the inside. I leveled and smooth the bearing edges, and waxed them. This drum set is awesome and can keep up with the high end kits as well. I think your series on the bass drums depth and this one with the wood types lays bare all the biases in modern times associated with drummers in general. You can take a low end set and make it sound great with a little work. Bearing edges, heads, and a good chamber with a finished interior of the drum are the largest contributors to a good quality drum sound.
One of the most important things after drum heads is whether the bearing edges are level. I re-cut the edges on 2 of my kits and getting them level is more important than edge, because you can tune them evenly and accurately, which means cleaner tones = nicer to listen to IMHO.
The reality is for all intents and purposes, you can use any of the woods for any music or sounds/tunings. Side to side you can hear the difference, but in the real world, especially in the context of mix, it doesn't really matter. Play what you have access to, practice makes an order of magnitude more difference than the wood.
Truly grateful for all of the work you put into this video. Thank you, Joel.
It's so nice to hear an explanation with rationale rather than people stating opinion as fact. Thanks a ton for this. It makes a lot of sense. I liked the elasticity/ plasticity discussion. It's obvious you have more understanding of physics than most RUclipsrs. I realize that is a pretty low bar, but it's appreciated. I do wonder about the direction of elasticity of different plies. I assume that there is more elasticity along the grain (like a hunting bow) than across it. Many shells are advertised as having certain plies with grain running vertically while others run horizontally. It would seem those could effectively cancel each other out to some degree. I have heard that normal plywood stays flatter due to the alternating direction of the grain in different plies. The more you learn about this stuff and the longer you think about it the more confusing it becomes. Thanks regardless!
Grain orientation definitely affects the inherent pitch of the drumshell. Shells with more vertical grains tend to be lower in pitch compared to those with horizontal grains. Horizontal orientation produces stronger shells (ability to hold their roundness), but I still have questions about how the inherent pitch of the shell affects the overall drum sound.
Fiberglass shells are extremely low in pitch, as are acrylic shells, but I don't find that their useable tuning range is much different than wood shells if quality craftsmanship and hardware are involved. I do tend to hear differences in volume and projection depending on these factors (and mass being a critical contributor to greater volume).
It is all very interesting, and sometime hard to extract the impact of one characteristic from the intersection of all the others. Still... I try.
Thanks for being here!!!
You’ve confirmed everything I’ve ever said about how it really doesn’t matter the shell material of the drums. No need for me to give an abbreviated summary of what I say lol
You e said it all! Well done!
Really like your content..... The real science explained.
To sum up my experience : if you're talking about ply shells, the sound or "tone" of the wood is the less relevant aspect by far, since there is almost as much glue as there is wood in the shells. The density, ease of working into plies, resistance to tension, etc is a lot more important. However, if you're talking about a solid wood shell, then the difference in wood is much more drastic, since every piece of wood in a stave shell resonates separately from the next, there are a lot more harmonics and way less glue - not to mention one solid piece of wood, almost zero glue. But they are obviously thicker, so less vibrating, and less tuning range since they are much higher in pitch to begin with. I'm really curious to see a hybrid of a ply *and* stave shells, for example with solid wood rings top and bottom, as well as reinforcement across each lug, with opposite grain from the plywood. I think especially for snares this would be killer... with high tension lugs, the tuning range would be crazy!!!
Novel idea! Are you gonna build one to check out?
I bought a Pearl Sessions steel snare drum in 1995. It has since then been my goto snare for gigs. What a great drum. So I was glad to hear you mention about steel.
I agree with the observations about bearing edges, how round the shell is, and heads. I’m glad more of us are aware of the importance of these issues. I think we might also consider shell build, e.g, multi ply, steam bent, and stave shells with thin inner walls, and whether the shell is undersized relative to the head or not. I’d argue that some shell materials offer a more noticeable sonic difference than than others. E.g, walnut vs acrylic, fiberglass or stainless steel. The walnut is going to favor a lower, fatter sound. I can get that with the other three materials, but it’s not quite the same. They pick up a little more high end, even at lower tunings, than do the walnut.
I posted this on Part One but now I think it belongs here...
There's a few bits of relevant physics worth clarifying a bit more. (1) The shell being relatively rigid and immovable creates sustain because head vibrations hitting the shell can't be transmitted into the shell, and get reflected right back into the head going the other way. (That's a lot like how guitars get sustain. Most of the energy of string vibration hitting the bridge or nut or fret can't be transmitted into the guitar, and is reflected right back into the string.) Only a little fraction of the energy is transmitted from the head(s) into the shell, leaving most of it in the heads, to be transmitted into the air bit by bit at successive cycles of vibration. (2) Rigidity works together with mass to resist vibration, so a shell that is more rigid may resist vibration better than one that is more massive. Rigidity braces the edge of the shell against more mass of shell. (Imagine that the shell was completely rigid. You couldn't move the edge of the shell at all without moving the entire shell exactly that much, so the entire mass of the shell would resist the vibration at the bearing edge. If the shell is flexible, only the mass near the bearing edge matters much... a floppy connection to the rest of the mass of the shell doesn't help a lot.) (3) THICKNESS of the wood usually matters FAR MORE to stiffness than the intrinsic stiffness of the particular wood itself. A particularly dense wood might be twice as stiff for a given thickness than a lighter wood, and usually about twice as dense, but you can just make the lighter wood a little thicker and it will be just as stiff. Stiffness depends on the CUBE of the thickness, so you can double the stiffness by using 26 percent thicker wood. (1.26 * 1.26 * 1.26 = very slightly over 2.000) If you double the thickness, you can make the shell 2 * 2 * 2 = EIGHT TIMES as stiff. That means that if you use a wood that is 2x lighter and 1/2 as stiff, but make it twice as thick, it will give you a shell that weighs the same but is several times stiffer than the thinner shell of the harder wood. That is why the soundboards (tops) of acoustic guitars are usually made of light woods (usually spruce or cedar), NOT expensive dense hardwoods. The only really important tonewood in a guitar is usually a cheap, soft, light wood, not the expensive "tonewoods" that raise the prices so much, because for a given mass you can make it significantly thicker and thus much stiffer for its weight.
(4) That means---and everyone needs to understand this---PARTICULAR WOODS DON'T HAVE PARTICULAR SOUNDS INDEPENDENT OF THEIR THICKNESS, and SEEMINGLY SMALL DIFFERENCES IN THICKNESS MATTER A LOT, up to a point. Maple doesn't have a particular sound, nor does mahogany, or beech, or poplar, or any of them. They all have roughly similar mechanical properties aside from their density and stiffness, which are strongly correlated and don't really vary all that much. The shell's stiffness is what's important to how much it resonates, and at what frequencies, and that depends more on how thick it is than which of those woods it's made of. Once the wood gets to a certain thickness and stiffness, though, you reach a point of diminishing returns. If the shell is stiff and massive enough that very little energy is being transmitted from the heads into the wood at all, make it even more stiff and more massive won't make much of a difference.
Thank you… great video. I wanted to share something from my experience. I promise not to mention brands. Currently own birch, maple, poplar, and oak drums. There is something really special about my oak set that not one of the other drum sets come close to. They are far more deeper, warmer and powerful. Same sizes, same heads. I even bought a drum dial to make sure I could get the same head tension. Still the oak drums are hands down far more superior.
If you’re ever in the market and can afford oak, give them a try. You won’t be disappointed!!
To my knowledge I have never played oak drums... not sure, honestly (I've played lots of people's drums over the years). I'm not in the market for a new kit, but will definitely try a set out at some point, I hope.
I'm always in the market for snare drums, however.... ;)
I'll bet they weigh a ton! I can remember using oak drumsticks when I played rock back in the 60's. They were very destructive to my heads and my cymbals cringed in fear. Oak is indestructible and very dense/heavy.
Great video !!!
Thanks for posting.
I've tried dozens of combination wood drums (especially bass drums) . From Mahogany, Poplar, Birch, Maple etc. and a combination of many wood types. now I use maple (6-8 ply). After 10 years the wood finally dries out and sounds very punchy without getting muddy. but many of my friends swear by the mahogany shells.
Now that was mind blowing...! So informative and accurate...! Thanks so much for the video..
Joel you de man. I love your videos. I have been playing drums for 55 years and I learnt more in about twelve hours of your videos than I had done previously.
I particularly liked the one on the $1000 dollar Ludwig kit.....in my regular playing days (70s 80s) I sometimes made up kits using assorted drums but a key component to making them sound good was good cymbals!
Now I am retired (engineer) I am looking to upgrade from my Pearl export to a 2nd hand Pro level kit.
Thank you for taking time to chime in! I think you'll very much enjoy a high quality used kit. Peace be with you!
I have a couple of Nordic shells for a future project, they look good but no sound yet. I've built two kits and various snares for myself and friends, your conclusions are spot on. Great video!
Not ALL drums are made out of plywood. I owned a company some years ago where I produced stave design drum shells, Including full drum kits. The fact that I could use many different species of wood created a pallet of sonic properties that became very intriguing to me and my customers. Stave design drum shells utilize the various densities, porosities, and sonic properties of each wood, quite different from ply shells. And it was because of that premise and reality that I became a fairly successful company, which was also cutting edge at the time: nobody else made full stave drum sets when I started doing it. It was very rewarding to me to get feedback from all of my customers. Without exception, they were ecstatic over the drum that I had made for them. And, that was the best part of my business. 😊
I love all this stuff. I'd like to see a video about the differences between metal shells too.
Good video.
I've always thought that the shell doesn't really make so huge difference eq-vice. It kind of does the high and low frequency roll off, but the main thing is the characteristics of the sound. How much different resonances and overtones it creates and where in the frequency spectrum. That makes a very subtle difference, but you can hear it in through the mics as well.
My friend has two kits (Tama Starclassic if I remember right) of same sizes and they are made of different woods (birch and maple). Once we tuned those kits to similar pitches with similar heads and recorded some stuff. While the sound was really close, there was some little differences. The Birch had a little less resonances in the lower middle region (should I say it was cleaner in there?) and the stick attack was a bit higher sounding than the maple one. Maple in the other hand had more lower mid content and the bass end was a bit messier (not-so-defined-note).
It was a great test. I'd say that the bass-mid-treble -charts in drum ads are kind of right describing the sound, but not quite so drastic.
I am not a drum maker or a physicist specialized in acoustics, but as a musicologist and percussionist here are my two cents for this discussion: It is useful to think about what type of instrument drums are. They are not idiophones; that is, instruments in which the acoustic vibrations originate from exciting the entire body (shell in many cases) of the instrument (maracas, i.e.). Drums are membranophones; instruments that produce sound through the vibration of stretched membranes. This being the case, the sound producing material is whatever you use as the drumhead and NOT the shells or frames that you use to stretch it. The shells, however, act as modifiers of the sound produced by the heads. They mainly modify it as amplifiers, and in much less degree as filters reinforcing some frequencies and absorbing others somewhat changing the timbre (arrangement of overtones) produced by the head. The amplitude modification is mostly related to the size of the shell (depth; NOT width -if you change the width/diameter you're changing the size of the membrane, which of course, affects the pitch). The timber of an instrument depends on the amplification box material but more importantly on its shape. Since most drums have a circular section (because there is no way to have a uniformly stretched membrane using a polygonal frame) that factor is not usually a variable for drum sets (with some exception with those suit case kick drums. In other drums, timbre modifications occur with different circular section solids like conic, barrel-shaped, and goblet-shaped shells). Bearing edges and hoops also affect the sound INSOFAR they determine the amount of membrane surface in contact with the shell and the frequency of that contact in particular regions of the membrane. The effect of bearing edges -and less hoops- is then more noticeable than that of shell material because it directly modifies the membranes behavior. SO, there are VERY SUBTLE differences in timbre caused by the shell material, HOWEVER --and this is my main point-- we ARE NOT able to hear those timbre specificities through recordings (YT, TikTok, IG, etc. videos) because in many cases drums are recorded using microphones that are close to the drumhead and therefore mostly pick up the sound directly from the head and not modified by the shell. And when microphones are far from the instruments they also pick up the sound modified by the room they are in so we hear reverberations, echoes and further filtering. This "problem" happens for any type of instrument but is critical for drums because almost the entirety of a singular acoustic wave occurs with its attack. Add to that the specific capturing and transducing capacities of the microphones, and then those of the speakers/headphones used. I should perhaps make my own video about it, but feel I shouldn't keep wasting more time on this.
This felt very validating. I’ve had to stand my ground a few times over not just slapping gels on my drums so I don’t lost the sound, respectfully of course. I once had to tell a guitar player “you don’t play exclusively in palm mutes, right?” before it clicked. Then we were able to work together to find tones that still preserve the characteristics I aimed for.
wait,,, that kick drum is perfect too!!!! the internet would benefit from a video on kick tuning for sure!!! I prefer the poplar sound but they both sound great!
I must be a drum geek as well, I made it through the whole video. It's interesting to hear your thoughts on the various woods used in making drums without all the sales hype from drum manufacturers. This is very good information. I'm wondering though with all this talk about the wood used for making drums, how does the different wood used in drum sticks affect the drum sound - maybe an idea for a future video. Thanks for sharing Joel, it's very much appreciated!!!
Maybe this will help. Probably wont make your doubles better but here it gos. Stress (psi) is the force applied to a material. Strain (length) is the deformation when the stress is applied. Stress/ strain is the modulus of elasticity of a material or E. Great video.
Yeah, I've been reading about MOE (Young's modulus) for the past couple of months. Still trying to fully wrap my head around its application in this area... something there, I'm certain, but haven't put my finger on it yet.
Thanks for being here and for reaching out!
I have 7 snares (so far) myself, and one of them, my Wells Custom snare, isn't plies of wood at all.
Its a steam-bent solid Cherry snare. It's gets a very distinct tone compared to my others.
That may be because its solid, and/or Cherry, but it's *one of* my favorites.
Yeah, I plan to get into stave and solid (single ply) construction in a future video.
That’s why I love my copper snare drum and maple drums. I recently bought a Yamaha stage custom in birch just to test some heads and tuning to see if I could get it to sound like my RFM Canopus Kit I’ll let you know later
Absolutely fantastic vid from beginning to end! Subscribed! So far, I've been learning basic skills on drums for super cheap or thrown away - I just hate to see an instrument go in the garbage. Currently working on two badgeless drums I rescued from the curb. The shell wood actually looks decent. Much better than the Verve kit I practiced re-wrapping on. I have no idea what brand these two are, but they're old enough for the clear topcoat to have severely yellowed all theway through. I thought they were light gold - surprise!, hoops and lugs off, they were a silver sparkle in their youth. Your vids are so useful and so well researched!! Watching interior and exterior finish choices vids now. 😊 Thank you!!
Good info. Speaking on the acoustic guitar, most have spruce, cedar, or mahogany soundboards that provide most of the sound. They are generally soft compared to the body woods that help amplify the sound and contribute to the overall tone.
Earned my sub!! You validated what 50 yrs of playing and gigging has taught me.
Thank you so much! Glad to have you here.
Heads, bearing edge, tuning,plies, sizes- dia vs depth, wood species a distant last but still important.
Really good analysis and totally squares with my experience. I have a custom maple kit that I built in 2002 from 5mm, 6-ply Keller shells that is still my favorite kit. But in 2006 when I needed more volume for a hard rock situation (and didn't want to destroy my thin shell custom set), I bought a Tama Starclassic Performer Birch kit with slightly thicker 6mm, 6-ply shells. While that set served my needs as a stage kit for 17yrs and I even converted it to a jazz set with the addition of a smaller bass drum and floor tom with higher tunings, I always wished I was playing my maple set. The birch drums are louder, but they also sound very dead in comparison. Finally at the beginning of 2023 I decided to get a new Starclassic Maple set with 5mm, 6-ply shells to be my new stage set. Volume is less of an issue because I'm always mic'ed for rock these days, and the new maple kit "sings" like my custom set, which is now my permanent home studio kit for most recordings. I'm still keeping the birch set because it has a very different recorded sound from either of the maple kits given the same drum sizes, heads, tunings, and mic's. It's great to have different options from different woods!
Joel! If you mention your previous videos put a link in those videos for people like me to watch so I don’t have to search for those. Love your channel by the way!!great work!
Watch the Ford drum co guys do the comparison of Sonor toms at NAMM, you can’t hear any difference in the sound, and they’re all different shells! They’re point is that all your hearing is the head, I think you’ve touched on that in one of your videos. ✌️thanks!
Microphones/signal path/processing rather diminishes the tonal nuances in differing tone woods, yes. In the room is another story, but recorded it is much harder to hear.
The upside of this reality is that the quality and completeness of the build of a drum has tremendous impact on its overall quality. Many inexpensive drums can be made to sound fantastic with a bit more work to 'finish' the build (instead of stopping short of the mark as most companies do with their lower lines).
I'm actually about to do a video on this week after next, so stay tuned! I think it'll be fun (I see lots of 'how to make your cheap drums sound good' videos out there, and yet no one really seems to dive deeply into what really differs between 'good' and 'cheap' drum, so I'm gonna -- hopefully I don't make too many folks mad at me in the process ;)
Exactly 200%
5 interesting series videos in one night, superb! Great framework for thinking about drum sound! 👍
love this series
Beyond excellent, Joel!!
Really enjoyed this and as others have said, your almost scientific approach while still looking at things as a drummer is both rare and valuable. More than that, your ability to explain it is also great. I particularly like your care to try and use the correct terminology in this one - as a former engineer/metallurgist and current drummer, it matters. I particularly liked your mind blown moment when realising steel is so elastic - haha! They make springs from it so it's kinda obvious when you think about it, the stuff just doesn't seem very giving when you bang your head against it.
What's really cool about steel (all metals actually) is the way those properties can be manipulated by heat treatment and other finishing processes. You don't see much mention of it with drum builders typically, occasionally some of the small builders mentioning that they protect their specific alloy or heat treatment processes closely (Dunnett and Acoutin spring to mind currently.) The main exception would be hammered shells which act as a surface treatment introducing tension into the metal, but there are so many more of these processes to explore - maybe they don't market as well as a shell that looks like it's been hit with a bat. That said I do think (though I have no proof) you're onto something with the elasticity - I've just bought a 1983 Mastercraft Rosewood and concur that it's noticeably staccato and noticeably louder - also feeling a little brittle under the stick compared to what I was expecting. And you see similar things with cymbals - heat treatment isn't quite spot on and the cymbals don't quite flex enough and eventually crack and shatter, versus soft supple cymbals no one likes to look at because they're taco shaped.
Keep doing this stuff because very few others are - the combination of experience, actual knowledge and application to the instruments is rare. I'd say most of the big manufacturers have people in their midst who know this stuff but don't share because they're giving away trade secrets, same for the independent builders who know their stuff beyond just making pretty saleable items. Nice to see the know-how shared.
PS - your comments on ply shells really make me want to get my head round steam bent single ply stuff and the solid shell drums - I have some and I'm adamant that it makes a significant difference because of the reasons you touch on. Will eventually get them under mics to 'prove' it - whatever that might be.
Thank you SO much for chiming in! I love kind remarks, but when they come from someone who has more knowledge about things than myself it is especially welcome and appreciated.
So glad to have you here!!
@@drumdotpizza you sell yourself short - your knowledge is awesome, just keep sharing it with us! I know for a fact every one of my drum buddies who I've shared this series with have loved it. You're answering questions people didn't know they had, but know we're learning it's like assembling pieces of a puzzle.
Love this! I will say I'm a huge lover of rosewood snares. I've had quite a few, and they all have performed incredibly well. They do seem to have just a touch more of everything than most of my other wood snares.
I'd love to see a video like this on different metals and their sonic differences, and if people can really tell any difference. Brass, aluminum, copper, etc
Ughh tone wood talk in metal guitarists...now this is real tone wood I can get into!@3:04 beautiful tama🤤🪵🍻🍻🍻
Joel, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with us!!
Been chasing snare tone decades. I could never get into metal snares. Different wood snares have different feels. I thought it was heads n hoops. Very interesting video.🤔🍻
Another question on wood vs depth of snare drums. I have a Gretsch Catalina Maple 14" x 6" and a Gretsch Catalina Club Jazz (mahogany) 14" x 5". I use both snare drums with my Gretsch Catalina Club Jazz (bop size - mahogany) kit. Both drums have the same bearing edges, heads, snares, triple flange steel 2.3mm hoops and tuning. I also use the same sticks and brushes on them.
The maple drum sounds so much better with it in regards to warmth, in spite of the maple being harder than mahogany. I would expect it to sound more like a rock drum with penetration, but it doesn't. I love it because I'm a jazz drummer who plays low to medium volume! Please give me your opinion on the reason why the harder maple sounds softer than the softer mahogany - difference in depth?
Great question! The depth certainly plays a role, but I would submit also that the denser maple creates a stronger fundamental in the sound (lower tones are louder) giving the drum a fuller tone overall.
I personally dislike the word 'warm' as a descriptive word, because it means so many things to different people that it's hard to nail down what one means by it (it is probably the most overused complimentary word when describing drums, guitars, microphones, recording media, etc.). By your use of the word I believe you mean a fuller, less annoying (probably less bright/aggressive) tone. The maple drum doesn't lack any of the high frequency response of the mahogany (in fact the maple may have more depending on the drums' interior finishes as maple is a tighter grained, denser wood which would naturally reflect more highs than the coarser, less dense mahogany), but the greater density of the maple will produce a stronger, lower frequency content to the tone which could certainly be described as 'warmer' than mahogany which produces a more midrange character.
And then there's the deeper shell.
Lastly (and I save it for last as it is something of a cop out (though totally valid)), no two pieces of wood are the same... sometimes we do have anomalies of performance in the physical world. I doubt this has much to do with your situation, however, as ply construction (lots of veneers glued together) tends to iron out such inconsistencies in practice. But I have had drums that simply didn't behave the way I expected (something I am actually experiencing right now as I just received a second identical maple snare drum to one I own (because I love the one I have and wanted another to try some modifations) and the two sound nothing alike. I'm going to mess with to see what the reason might be, but I was a little shocked by how much I don't care for the sound of the new arrival). Hmmm...
Clear as mud?? ;)
@@drumdotpizza Actually, it all makes perfect sense. I'm glad you clarified the definition of "warm" because like you, it covers way too much territory in describing something. Anyway, you definitely understood what I meant by "warm". (I couldn't say "dark" because I start thinking of cymbals and that is a whole 'nother discussion.) Using a subjective word to describe anything than it is not objective (which could be measured with numbers or other concrete terms) is very frustrating. (For example, I hate the word, "earthy" to describe food like mushrooms or whatever, because this word literally means "like dirt" to me.)
You did a very good job in answering my question. Thank you!
I have drums with shells made of maple, and others with shells made of maple/poplar or basswood. To tell the truth I've never found a lot of differences I find tonal differences are more influenced by head selection and tuning. I recently attended a jazz concert in a small jazz club setting. Sat right near the drummer he used a Sonor 'Bop' kit (the lower priced version not the higher priced version with the same name). The Sonor 'Bop' kit does not use the same wood as the higher end Sonor kits. The sound was amazing..very warm yet punchy. The bass drum sound was excellent. None of the drums were mic'd..purely the sound of the heads and shells came through. I have a Sonor 'Bop' kit I'd put it up against much more expensive drums for small venue acoustic situations, just as an example of 'lower priced drums' vs. much more expensive drums in terms of the composition of the shells. Very interesting video.
Your story is a perfect example of what I'm talking about! Thanks for sharing.
I actually have a Sawtooth brand bop kit (18/12/14) made form poplar that I am going to 'improve' for an upcoming video topic. Poplar was the thicker middle ply of most of the classic drums made by Slingerland and Ludwig throughout the 20th century that are so beloved these days. There's a lot that isn't done in the finishing side of the manufacture of new poplar drums that I'm going to do to make them more appropriate (in tradition sense) for combo jazz type music.
Gonna need to brush up some of my long disused jazz chops for the video though! ;)
Excellent video! I definitely have noticed that I generally prefer room microphones with all acoustic instruments, I do get more specific character of each type of drum, guitar etc. And yep, tuned super low, close microphone don’t worry about the wood.
And based on the poplar and maple demonstration, I would use the poplar drum in a small cafe with volume limitation as it has a smaller sonic footprint. And the sugar maple drum in a bigger room with more people.
Lastly, something I’ve talked about with band mates lately is to play the thing that makes you FEEL right. You’ll then perform better = better gig.
Absolutely agreed! I play best when I'm comfortable/at one with the drums. I'm cool with the sound of poplar drums (I do have a couple of poplar snare drums that I use for short, abrupt, poppy sounds from time to time, something poplar shells excel at), but I really don't care for the soft feel that they have, even with higher head tension.
Thanks for this. I currently have a Pearl Export ELX Poplar/Mahogany. Looking to upgrade and this subject has been very confusing. So thanks for your time and information.
Your Pearl Export can sound just as good as a DW live, if you have good heads and a good sound guy. Lol IMO
Take the drums apart and finish the interior with tung oil or polyurethane or lacquer, etc. Not a heavy, shiny coat, just seal the wood to close up the raw grain. Will make the drums more lively, brighter like top line drums. Make sure to put masking tape over all the hardware mounting holes on the outside of the shell to keep from dripping through onto the finish (and cover the finish to avoid overspray, for example). Once the seal is dry/cured, reassemble and you're good to go. Will seriously improve the quality of cheaper drums (which, unlike nicer drums, are rarely finished inside).
@@drumdotpizza Thanks for the reply. I will give this a go. Yes the inside is raw so will be good to hear the difference. Thanks again.
Hey man, really great video!
Miles (Davis) talked about one’s sound and developing one’s sound as being basically everything! And for drummers, what you talked about here is of course a massive part.
Hats off to you for taking on the challenging topic. Everything you spoke about is also a very “organic” thing. Trying to explain how to “play through the drum” to get the sound to come out nice and full and not sound thin, or we use terms like “ let the drums breathe” bla bla..
Elasticity and how the shell reacts, how the head reacts, how the stick hit marries with the head so that the energy makes the sound big and round and free with unrestricted energy.. It’s like how the hell do ya explain that?!?! Lol!!!
Anyway, I think you did a wonderful job and should do more vids like this.. Dig into the room and how the drums react to it, different mics and pre’s. Different overheads, room mics with different types of compression and how it fattens a drum mix.
Maybe a video on drums and different types of sustain, moon gels, suspension mounts, and why what and when etc!
Cheers! Myles- 👍🏼
Thanks so much for your input, Myles! I am actually going to be covering a lot of the engineering bits you mentioned (different mics, preamps, etc.) on my other channel, RecordingDotPizza (which a renamed old, original channel that I started for whatever reason back in 2012. I have only recently revived it (with the new name) to begin addressing recording related topics.
I will definitely cover much of this over there!
Very cool! Funny - I was just in the Nordic website looking at shells the other day. Looking forward to watching your video on bearing edges. Subscribed!
As a drummer, mechanical engineer, and hobby woodworker, this is the niche I am looking for!
So glad to have you here! Feel free to chime in anytime. I need smart folks like you to keep me on my toes!
I am so entralled with your channel. 65 y/o drummer. Comanche Texas. Familiar with John Zoog. Sonicz iz kewl , Sir.
Thanks so much! Zoog is a good man to know!
Would you factor in woods that can handle temperature changes say like from Hot or Cold temps also humidity from wet or dry in order to stay in round and not warp out of round ? Simply which woods can handle extreme temp. changes.
Excellent video, I appreciate your passion and attention to detail.
Totally agree with your take on how much the different wood types affect sound-as in that it does a bit, but it’s mostly only noticeable when you’re physically in the room with the drums.
I’m a Ludwig guy and over the years I’ve acquired a bunch of random misfit unmatched drums that I enjoy making jellybean kits out of. My current kit I’m using for recording with my band:
14 vistalite tom, 12 rototom, 16 stainless steel floor tom, 18 maple floor tom, 24 maple bass, and a supraphonic snare. All these different materials but it sounds great together.
I actually have a full stainless kit and to be honest I feel it’s the best sounding drum material overall if I had to pick one. Just a little more oomph in every way. Must be that elasticity haha
So you love SS, do you? I had a 24" SS bass drum at my studio years ago, but sold it when I officially closed shop.
A friend of mine (well... my older brother's friend, actually) had a Ludwig SS kit (Big Beat) that he bought new back in 1980. Still had it about 10 years ago, but I ran into him a couple years back and asked if I could buy it (I've never owned a full SS kit and want one), but he had sold it for next to nothing to a neighbors kid the year before. I was so bummed to hear that (I would have happily paid him next to nothing for it!).
@@drumdotpizza oh no that’s sad! Yeah mine is a big beat configuration as well, it’s one of the 2009 100th anniversary kits that Ron Dunnett made, I found it on eBay in 2015 and had to have it haha. It’s got the gold hardware too so it’s really nice to look at. The crappy thing was though when it arrived at my house the UPS guy dropped the box off the back of the truck. Long story short, the kit was packed incorrectly and ended up getting damaged. The elasticity of the steel yielded to the force lol. But a friend of mine was able to bend it back into shape fortunately. I also ended up getting a bunch of money off of it. It’s not perfect but I kinda view drums like vintage guitars, where it’s somewhat desirable to have it be a little banged up and have character.
Anyways, there’s a 2006 Dunnett/Ludwig prototype kit on Reverb right now, they’re only asking like 8k for it 😂
Get it and make a video on it! 😜
Poplar is a very underrated wood for drums...they sound great recorded, particularly. Whatever, keep em' cheap. They are warm, gushy, and highly tunable.
I've fallen in Love with my Ludwig Brass Snare. It would be cool to see a comparison video with different metal drums.
There are so many metal snare videos on youtube. Do we need another? Lol
But I would love to see how that Rosewood compares to Steel!
@@1VWBUSGUYI found this RUclipsr to be very educational. If he hasn't made a metal snare drum video I'd watch his.
YES! ;)
I'm planning on doing a Tama Mastercraft comparison between my various models (different shell materials). Gonna wait till I finish my Fibrestar Mastercraft clone build first, though!
Good thoughts about this subject,especially because your open for any aspect and noot have the tendency to lead or push it in certain,or wished direktion.So the result is,there is no right or wrong,no good or bad,but alot in between and it depends.....cool !
Thanx for that video! Of course it´s very specific and deatiled but thats what differs most drummers from those, who have much passion and are interrested in the details which make a difference. If a mathematic professor tells you something about arithmetics, most people would get bored. And here its the same. We are not geeks or nerds, we are drummers who dive deep in their subject which fascinates us!
Thanks so much for a very insightful video about the physics behind drum shell woods. Not being able to afford a maple set...yet I've always wondered if it's really worth buying a more expensive set or other exotic wood kits. I learned a lot. Cheers
If you want a quality maple shell kit I'd suggest you snag a Mexican-built Pacific CX, MX or LX series drum kit. They are North American Sugar Maple drums (same wood DW uses in their standard product line) and then sand the edges smooth (they were machined, but not sanded well) using 320-400 grit paper. Just lightly around the edges (go in full, sweeping circles around the edge, not back and forth in small places, as you don't want to remove too much material in one spot and therefore create an uneven edge).
Sand the interior the same way until smooth. Then seal the edges and interior (they are unfinished at the factory) with a wood seal of your choice: tung oil-type product, lacquer, polyurethane, etc. Avoid glossy finishes, but a very light satin is okay... the object here is to seal the grain of the wood to allow smooth tuning of the heads (sealed edges) and to keep the raw wood from absorbing high frequencies (overtones, 'liveliness') created by striking the heads.
Be sure to mask off the outer finish, including covering all the various hardware mounting holes with masking tape on the outside of the shell to prevent interior finish from dripping through onto the drum's external finish when being applied.
Reassemble, and you will truly have a great quality, sugar maple drum kit!
BTW, all the later, oval-lugged Pacific lines (FS, M5, X7, 805, etc.) are Chinese made, and the hardware is different (the lugs look very similar to the Mexican drums, but they're not... when you put them side by side you can tell). This hardware is not as well machined and often the threads will strip when trying to reassemble, so if you do this to one of the Chinese kits be VERY careful not to stress the threads any more than absolutely necessary. I have yet to rebuild one of those kits (3 of which I have done this to for people) without losing at least a few threads along the way.
The Mexican made, maple shelled Pacifics can be exceptional kits in terms of tone and playability (the CX wraps fade badly, but that doesn't bother me) with a little elbow grease and some wood finish/sealer. Basically this is just finishing the last bit of production that they omitted at the factory to keep costs down.
Hope that helps!
I like to think that the more you muffle the drum, the less and less it makes a single difference what material the drum is made of. The heads you choose have way more to do with perceived tone
I don’t use muffing at all I love the wide open sound
Yeah I would agree with that! But…. for example there’s no way you’re gonna get a maple snare drum to sound anything like a bell brass snare, even when heavily muffled, those super heavy metal snares sound very unique.
Right, think of it as going from rock maple to balsa wood. 😮
So, I've done this kind of deep dive and found that yes different woods have different sounds, not blaringly different but different. The important thing was the heads!! I know that a lot of people will get their panties in a bunch over what I'm about to say, but here it goes: Evans and to a degree Aquarian heads, for whatever reason, don't draw out the shells natural tone. If you take a set of Evans off one kit and put them on another they sound the same, no distinction in wood type, but with Remo I was able to hear a difference. Remo just seem to bring out a more organic sound, which some drummers don't want and that's fine, but if you want to hear the shell use Remo.
Evans and Aquarian color the sound more. Well, some people like that. Used everything, Remo is my favorite.
Understood, though perhaps a bit broad in scope...
Yes, heads and tuning/muffling will ALWAYS be more consequential than species of wood... I just want to cover all the variables (or most, anyway) that contribute to drum sound, and folks have been asking for a video on tone woods, so I did it.
As for heads, I do agree that Remo's film (compared to comparable models from Evans and Aquarian) is a lighter, more flexible film (I believe they you Dupont Mylar while Aquarian, I am sure, does NOT (their film is quite different in feel and flexibility), and I doubt Evans does either. "Mylar" is a brand name for a particular formula of polyester film made by Dupont, but all the manufacturers use polyester-based film of some make, I'm pretty sure. The Remo film seems to yield more, and does sound a tad livelier, though beauty is in the ear of the beholder, of course.
I don't care for the feel of Evans heads, and really don't care for their coating which comes off so easily (sometimes stuck to the interior of the box when you pull the heads out!). Also, both Remo's and Evans' coating is a fine particle, while Aquarian's coating is more stout, and I love the way it feels and the (I'm pretty sure) slightly greater muffling this heavier coating produces... makes for a great tone that doesn't require much muffling at all (on toms at least, and very little on snare as I tend to prefer the overtones produced by the drum).
Yes, Aquarian is a more colored tone, I fully agree... and I LOVE the color. Comparable Remo models sound thin to my ear (so I tended toward coated Emperors for batters when I used Remo, which were a bit thick sounding, but the Ambassadors were just too thin and required EQ bumps. Aquarian's Texture Coated is the perfect balance of those to my ear, and I have really fallen in love with them.
All three brands make wonderful products, and these differences aren't as significant as I probably make them sound, but after years I have become rather sensitive (and opinionated ;) on it all.
Just my long winded way of saying that I agree with you (if I understand you correctly, anyway): Aquarian is more colored than Remo, and I highly recommend folks check them out.
And no, I'm not affiliated with Aquarian (though I wouldn't mind being someday ;)
@@drumdotpizza the funny thing is I'm back to Aquarion now LOL
That's an interesting test!
I often wonder how our perception of Remo is, as a result of so many of us using them for so many years.
@drumdotpizza - Vwey interesting!
I personally find the Aquarians to be much, much more flexible. The feel under the stick is so smooth, supple, and giving - not in any way in a negative stance. They make it a joy to play.
I also find that it's easier for me to find my sound with them with out much drama from weird "noises", ringing or humming.
I feel they find the fundamental , and exploit it.
I used to use Evans all through high school. When they sold in 1995 to D'Addario (year I graduated) I went back to Remo and NEVER looked back. I did play some while I was teaching. The rep gave me a set when the 1st gen EC2 were released. They were ok. I even used a set for a recording ten years ago. I'm not too keen on trying them again.
Roy gave me some drum heads when I was teaching too. We got a set of Power Thins, and Super 2 w/ studio x ring when they were respectively released. I hated the film back then though. That dry, dull, flat hazy film was horrible. When they started using the Nu-Brite film, I was intrigued.
In 2022 I bought an entire set of Aquarians. Coated Super 2 on the toms, and it turns out I had a pretty steep learning curve dialing them in. But I haven't purchased a new Remo since then. Everything I've been buying has been Aquarian.
Right now I have clear Response 2 / Classic Clear on my working kit, and it actually sounds like I want it to. All of the drums now sound at their "ideal" for me.
It isn't quite my favorite tone wood, but it is still very good is Purpleheart. That is probably the best looking wood for drums. DW Purpleheart drum sets are really nice. I have a set of Pearl Birch, and tend to like Birch more than maple. But what I really like is the Yamaha Hybrid Oak. That is a damn good sounding drum set! I also like how Mapex does a blend of woods, and their drums sound quite good too. I guess any drum set is a good drum set. lol. as long as it isn't a toy. Enjoyed the video!
I prefer the Live Oak Custom over the regular Live Oak for sure hands down.
Great info, Thanks!
thank you so much for your time. it was awesome.
one thing you really got across great is how drums sound a lot different when close mic'd. Simply because what you actually hear when mic'd is how the drum head sounds, and how the drum set reacts to the room it is in; the actual acoustic sound of the drums would be picked up with the room mic's but those usually have less part in most mixes.
Now, when your drums sound really good acoustically, you might find that it does matter in recording, simply because you will move away with your mi's from the drums the better they sound. We see this with many productions, as with the royal blood self titled first album (and second..) - the sound engineer was so flooded by the sound of the drums in the room, it was mic'd only with room mics, so 90% of the drum sound is how they sound, in real life. Huge. Well, that recording was 10 years ago, but this way of recording has seen a revival, i just heard from a band which was already half through recording their new album, when the drummer got new drums. They sounded so much better than the also not bad sounding yamaha studio custom kit they so far used, they decided to record the first 6 songs all again after hearing the difference of the drums on the new tracks. And yes, they used room mics.
So if you are being cheap, you can say cheap drums work as well, as you can not hear much of a difference mic'd. But again, that is only true when close mic'd for all the reasons mentioned in the video.
I have customers in my showroom every day who hear the huge difference between certain drums, often when trying to capture these differences on a recording it is really hard to do so. Good example is our video about different kick drums and snares, where we used close mics and room mics, and the difference on room mics is always way more audible than on close mics, due to the fact that the mic itself plays a huge role in the sound... ruclips.net/video/Q9soErIr2do/видео.htmlsi=NDzkHROFxV55_ml5
Well, on cheap drums, you will find a few issues that might make them sound crappier. One is the quality of the bearing edge not being sharp and the shell not being flat. So there is something to be said on the sound quality of cheap drums. That said, when I say cheap, I mean low end entry level.
@@jross3680 Drums having not even bearing edges is a feature you find on all drums today, not only entry level crap. It is caused by drums being cut with cnc machines.
@@adorodrums Wow, really? I would imagine the big drum companies like Pearl and Tama would do a decent job. I have seen some of the cheap drums with wavy edges, and totally not flat. As a drum builder myself, I dont understand why they wouldn't want to take an extra minute to flatten out the shell and make sure they are using a decently sharp router bit.
@@jross3680 if a drum comes from a factory that has cnc it has issues with edges, no matter the price tag. Usually in one, two or three places of the drum, where the rotating table has the wheels. Yamaha has a video up somewhere where you see why: they cut both sides, the inside and outside bearing edge, at the same time, from top. The shell is rotated, and when there is any movement in this rotating instrument a vertical manner, that is how you get the dents, but usually they are not visible unless you test it on a flat surface, because the dents are rather smooth.
And they do know about these issues, I have told them. I told Yamaha in person bc they visit your namm and music Messe booth several times each year, and I told the goons at Gewa, who make 70% of all drums today, and (one of) the manufacturers of Tama. They could not care less.
@@jross3680 found it: ruclips.net/video/jC4idXhu1RE/видео.htmlsi=jB4hFHh5tBvkdWZV as drum maker I cannot imagine why they spent so much money on a machine that makes so lousy edges. Issue is, the first drums each day might be okay, but as soon as there are wood chips flying around, you start getting these issues. I fix such edges now for 14 years, roughly since 2010 every major manufacturer has these issues.
Gewa is manufacturing for pdp, dw, gretsch, drumcraft, Ludwig and many more.
Very good and informative video as always. When you made a video about drum sizes in a minimalist recording and now this video made me think about what value drumset would be best for the money. I think that yamaha stage custom is hard to beat. Hard and semi thick birch shell, nice durable hardware and you can get big sizes. 24x15 kick and for toms pretty much anything from 8 to 14 inch and 14 to 18 inch floor toms
When mic'd your stage custom will be just as good as a starclassic or dw IMO. But probably not a Pearl Masters lol.
@@1VWBUSGUYi was talking about budget drum sets
Sounds like a great choice!
I will be doing a video on how to modify less costly drums to perform more like expensive drums in a few weeks, so please watch out for that one... I think you'll find it helpful!
I see lots of videos on improving mid-level (and cheaper) drums, but I never see them actually addressing the true differences between costly and less costly lines. I want to show folks how they can close the gap....
Thanks for being here!
Amazing content. I really wish I could see/hear the real difference between ply, stave, and steam-bent. Is there a difference? Do wood species sound more different if the shell is steam-bent? Also I'm really curious why you can find a million stave snares for sale, but full stave kits are almost non-existent.
DW's VLT shells have a naturally lower fundamental since the plys aren't stretch perpendicular to the grain, thus the tension is way lower. Does that mean that a stave kit would have a crazy low fundamental since there's zero tension?
Stave shells DO have a very low fundamental pitch when thumped. The wood is in its natural state without the stress applied to plywood construction. LOUD drums, strong fundamental. The shells don't resonate much though... dense, hard to get vibrating. HUGE sound.
I have one stave shell (not sure which wood species) that was given to me, and I'm currently working on building some stave shells with a woodworking friend of mine. Gonna make a few based on info on the internet and see how good we can make them. Not to sell, just to mess with and for testing, etc. I have some ideas.....
Very informative video, Joel. You spoke only about ply shells. Zebra drums had made me a custom kit with stave mahogany shells and I think you can hear the warmth of that wood even through some processing. Will there be a follow up about solid shells and stave shells?
Stave and single ply (steam bent) shells are coming in a future video!
You're hearing the room and the mics and processing rather than the wood itself.
@@drumdotpizza: before you finalize this, please be sure to differentiate between stave drums made of staves of uniform thickness, e.g , Brady and many others, and those with some of the inner shell scooped out, a la Hendrix. I like stave-shells - they have have less glue, resonate very well, and can really cut through when needed. But there is a huge difference between the Brady build vs. the Hendrix; the Brady build tends to favor a higher pitch, while the Hendrix build, with less mass in the shell, can favor a lower pitch. Removing shell mass is what Chris Brady did with his baritone snares, shortly before he retired. After he retired, Rhett Hendrix built a different drum but based on the same principle.
DEFINITELY NOT BORING TOTALLY AWESOME AND EXTREMELY INTERESTING AND EDUCATIONAL LOVE YOUR CHANNEL
the birch bubinga combo is never going to let you down but i agree once you start micing up you can make any drum sound great but on it own the attack of birch and the low end of bubinga create a perfect sound for raw drums
Jeff Hamilton played Remo before he became a spokesman for Mapex. Remo shells are composite like MDF and yet his kit sounded great. I’ve been playing for 65 plus years and had many kits mainly Poplar or Luan. In my experience poplar are fine but Luan swallows up sound. I’m down to two kids now, a 2013 Sonor Safari and a new Tama Club Jam Pancake. I know the Sonor is some form of 6 ply Poplar but it sounds very good for the Jazz, Lighter Rock, Country.
It has enough jam but in some occasions I Mike the 16in kick.
The Tama Pancake has a 12x4 snare and 10 x4 cymbal stand Mount. The floor tom is 13x4 and both toms are concert/single headed. The shells seem to be Poplar (maybe Basswood ?) but have amazing projection. I swapped out the supplied tom heads with Evans Calftones and the snare batter with a Remo coated Emperor and they sound great. Personally heads are the key.
this series is awesome, feels so refreshing to see a man really digging into it and not following current brands' marketing agenda. So, I'm looking forward to more videos and also I'd very much like to hear your unbiased thoughts on cymbals and how their sounds come to be as they do, too!
Thank you for the compliments and the suggestion for a cymbal video! I have added it to my list of future topics! Cheers!
Mmhh...now that you cover the woods I'd really like to se/hear a wood to acrylic shell comparison 🤩 Great vids, bassist here but instant subscriber, your production value is top notch 👍🏼
Late 80s early 90s premier xpk birch power toms are still my favourite .
POWER TOMS!! My first new kit was a mid 80s Tama Imperialstar with power toms. I wish I still had it, actually.
Thank you Joel, that was very informative! PS. Love the shirt!
Just became a fan. This was fascinating.
Awesome! 10 out of 10! These videos are amazing. It would be stupid cool to see the same series for metal drums - aluminum, COB, steel, bronze, bell brass, copper, black nickel of brass, etc. I’ve head for years that copper is so special & sweet overall. I simply haven’t pulled the trigger yet to complete this experiment. What do you like in metal? What do you prefer? Keep up the great work! TY 🤓
I have fallen in love with heavy, steel shell snare drums in recent years. I used to poo poo them as most inexpensive snare drums seemed to be made of steel, and I (ignorantly) equated that with the cheapness of material and performance of it. But then I bought a Tama steel Mastercraft snare and have NEVER looked back.
Of course I love the classic Ludwig aluminum-based alloy snares (Acrolite and Supra) and their brass as well.
And bronze.
About the only snare I didn't love was a copper shell Tama snare that had the same strainer/butt and roller bed designs as the Mastercraft series (though later badge and 'Freedom' lugs from the later 80s). I believe Bill Bruford played this model, and I snagged one a few years back, but just never loved it. It had an odd, extremely dry (missing tone it seemed to me) character to it. Wasn't bad, necessarily, but didn't thrill me (and I do like to be thrilled! ;)
That's the only copper snare I have spent much time with, so I can't say that the copper was the thing I didn't care for -- it could have been something else, and sometimes some drums just produce odd tones for some reason. So I don't want to discourage you, but you might see if you can try before you buy just in case it was, in fact, the copper I didn't like.
Then again some folks love really dry, articulate tones!
@@drumdotpizza You rock Joel! Thank you for sharing your wisdom & experience. I'll definite heed your advice. You rock sir! Drum on!🤓
I play Tama ,starclassic ,love them ,birch .
Thank you! Maybe I missed it but I was hoping you spoke about painting the insides...like "silver sealer" or Ludwig white, or shellac. What does that do to the sound?
Good Work Joel, keep going!
Talk about a can of worms!! Like you said, head choice, tuning, bearing edge , shell thickness, re-rings or not, wood type all add to the ambient room sound of a drum. All in all play them and enjoy.
Yes! Enjoy!!
You're bouncing your feet nearly this whole video and I adore it 🤩🖤🙏🏻
I noticed this in one of your older videos and I've never been able to unsee it. 😁 I love it, never chance.
I'm ADHD off the chart, so yes, I'm always moving! ;)
Really enjoy your series. WHAT about SOLID SHELL???
Thanks
I'll be doing a follow up/part II to this video soon in which I will discuss stave and solid-ply (steam bent) construction as well. Stay tuned!!
I recently purchased a used kit, made of basswood-a Taye kit actually, why?itbwas really cheap,but sounds amazing (i ave messed with the snare quite a bit), i wonder if i took it apart and painted the interior of the shells with some type of resin,epoxy,fiberglass type-like alex van halennused to do to his huge bass drums so dave could jump off them,abd sound much better!good video and thanks for the info buddy.
The Ray Ayotte era of Taye drums had amazing workmanship and finish (inside as well as out) for virtually all there lines. The workmanship on my Go Kit was as good as on my StudioMaple kit (now my son's StudioMaple kit). I still have (and use) the birch/basswood snare drum that came with the Go Kit.
Thanks for sharing!
Have you ever looked into fiberglass. I make fiberglass shells and of course I have my opinions but I have never been in the studio with them. So what's your thoughts ?????
I have only ever played a Pearl fiberglass kit (from 70s) that I used to own. I got it toward the end of my full-time recording days, and didn't get as much time working with it as I would have wanted. Sold it after I closed my studio.
From what I remember I liked them. The inherent pitch of each shell was a full octave lower than wood shells of the same dimensions, and the tuning range was broad. I have been thinking a lot about fiberglass in the last couple of years and have been wondering about snagging the next Pearl fiberglass kit I see selling for cheap when it pops up.
I did have a Pearl fiberglass snare drum, 6.5x14, that I loved (don't know why I ever sold it!) and I have just purchased a Pearl maple/fiberglass snare from the 80s that should be arriving this week. I'm looking forward to playing that drum.
Do you sell your drum shells? Do you have a website or information I could see? I'm interested in knowing more...
For me. . . Hardwoods like maple tend to project more. I tend to use maple live.
Softer woods like birch seem to be warmer. I tend to opt for birch in the studio.
I also have MIJ Pearl fiberglass that I love overall. Of course fiberglass shells tend to have a beaded edge versus an actual sharp bearing edge.
I will say that my drums have internal dynamic microphones and I readily admit that I’m a consistently inconsistent in my playing. Thus I use tons of compression and EQ. With that said, it’s probably more of the channel strip and and the outboard gear for me. Lol
I don’t play jazz, I simply don’t have the chops. I play heavily processed rock. However, I do not employ sound replacement.
There’s nothing wrong with sound replacement. It’s like any other tool. I personally don’t care for it.
My point here is I’m sure this is heavily dependent on the music genre. Subtle music like jazz, you will definitely hear the nuance of the shell.
Hard rock and metal, probably not so much.
Excellent topic though!
Yeah man, great content! ...."It must be said"....
Very well done sir. Anything substantially unique with the steam bent shells?
Will do a follow up video to address stave and steam bent construction soon.
Short answer is the realities of the wood used is consistent with what is covered in this video, but the lack of layers of glue (much lower glue to wood ratio) in steam bent, single piece drum shells results in a shell that vibrates less than a thin, ply shell does. Higher pitch in the steam bent shell as well (thin ply shells generally have very low pitch).
The rigidity of the glue creates a shell that vibrates more (so if you like shells that vibrate easily the high glue ratio of modern, ultra-thin veneer shells is lovely).
Steam bent shells tend to have stronger fundamental punch than modern, thin ply shells, and I prefer that, personally. Shells of harder woods, particularly if sealed inside with a hard, though not necessarily smooth/glossy finish, will produce plenty of overtones, so the full spectrum is present -- a perfect canvas upon which to choose your head and tuning/muffling to create the sound you want.
Thanks for being here!
In my experience, the differences between the material of the drum greatly diminishes when you put damping on the drum. I've recently taken drum samples of three drums (copper, brass and gum) all tuned to C and D notes with coated Emperors. The differences are very minor. Completely open, however, the differences are quite vast.
Im.a new subscriber, and i can't fathom how you dont have thousands more subbs, your content is so good👍
Hopefully in time... I gotta start somewhere ;)
I am hoping this grows as I am having fun bloviating about things I love (DRUMS!!!), but it takes time to film and edit, though I'm starting to get more comfortable with it. I do hope I'll be able to commit more of my time to it in the coming months and years. We'll see...
Thank you so much for your encouragement!! It means a lot to me.
I have classic Oak Ludwig and I love it. Of course it's the best kit I have ever owned so I think its sounds amazing. But I remember I had a Premier XPK in the 90s and it also sounded great. It was a mahogany mix. But the Ludwig is just way better in my opinion. I'm sure the bearing edge makes a big difference. I have no idea of the bearing edge on the XPK. But my Ludwig is the sweet spot for me.
So many variables... hard to know exactly which one(s) you're experiencing that you like so much. Once you find a great tone, though, it's wonderful!
I had a 1998 premier APK set. Covered finish. The shells were made of eucalyptus and merante. Marathi is another species of Southeast Asian mahogany. The drums were painted inside. They sounded great!
As musicians.....drummer,guitarist etc.....
It is absolutely fundamentally Important!!!!, That we take everything with salt, even Joel's words, as none of us are exempt from being marketed to for decades....last year's amazing best wood, will get used,now companies are making stuff with different woods, and it's the saving grace of tone, all while making record profits!...
Every wood,every drum, every laquer etc, to my knowledge, has always always always been described as woody and earthy and WARMMM(my absolute fav marketing term) with low lows, and hi highs, that "cut through the mix"(what mix? The mix of cars and neighborhoods screaming?) It's mostly all bs. You can get any drum To sound good. A halfway decent set now, is ages head of back in the day. I just got a Yamaha stage custom, for 650$ and I've been blown away.theyre birch. But the construction and seem process, seems to be the biggest factor, as well as plies, and bearing edges, but more so heads!!! Heads make all the difference always
Today's inexpensive drums are light years ahead of cheaper drums a couple decades ago, and they can be made even better with a little targeted elbow grease (video on this is forthcoming in the next few weeks).
Yes, heads make the most obvious difference in sound, but the assertion that I often see (and I'm not saying you did so here, but your comment did remind me of an assertion I see repeated too often, IMO) is that good heads make a good drum sound. OR... that the difference between good and bad drum sound is in the head and tuning you choose. I do not agree with this (not meaning to hijack this as this is not what you're asserting, but your comment on drum heads making all the "DIFFERENCE" made me want to expand on that a moment).
Drum heads do make a huge difference: put an Aquarian Super Kick II on a kick drum or a single ply Texture Coated and the difference is HUGE! But either of these on a crap drum will present a crappy version of these different tones. Crappy heads on a nice drum will yield similar results. Sometimes different isn't the issue, but good and not good. The actual quality of a drum's construction (and really the fit and finish of the drum) is what matters. Many inexpensive drums are quite similar to much nicer drums in their construction (although usually with less costly veneers), but they aren't finished/completed the same way as this is costly to do. Rarely are edges sanded smooth, and interiors are never sealed, leaving the (usually rather soft) interior veneer to soak up all the high frequencies produced by the attack of the head producing a lackluster tonality (regardless of the head one chooses). This is rather easily remedied with inexpensive materials and just a little elbow grease, but too few people know to do this. These minor things drive production costs up, so companies compromise here to keep costs down on lower line products.
Anyway, your Stage Custom drums are almost certainly NOT sealed/finished inside, and the edges, while likely well machined, are likely NOT sanded smooth, and certainly not lacquered or sealed in any way. These simple touches can really bridge much of.the remaining gap between modern entry-level drums and the expensive lines.
Address these two issues (sanding edges and sealing edges and interiors), and you will TRULY be amazed by your new drums! There are other things you can do to affect their performance as well... but first things first. ;)
@@drumdotpizzaI'd be interested to see a video where you take maybe a cheapish tom or snare, and than change the heads,and tune it up,down etc, than sand the edges, play it again, than seal the interior (maybe 2 coats?) than play it, than do a few more coats, and play it. And than maybe just go nuts and do like 10-15 coats and see what the difference really is. I've never thought sealing the inside would do much(not like a different head would in terms of trimming off,or allowing high end attack, or lower end etc)
Awesome seminar. Of course, one could get lost in all the science, and try to design drums in their head, only for it to come down to hitting the thing with a stick and saying "I like this one" or "I like that one".
Another great video, Joel. I was hoping you might dig into ply orientation. Horizontal pies of wood are much more rigid than vertical plies. I know DW uses various orientations to achieve different sounds. Maybe others do as well.
The one thing that is definite is, it makes the shell stronger! It is a necessity for strength and integrity. After that, if the point is stability, anything else would be secondary. I wholeheartedly believe the type of wood and density are more important to the overall sound, not orientation, imho.
Which would you use mic'd live? a super heavy vintage gretsch maple gumwood kit or a dw collectors maple ???
Pearl does that as well.
I love good drum educational videos like these. here my 5 cent:
Shell having no impact is not true, but also, it is not as you imagine. I am a drum manufacturer who not only makes custom drums but also serial drums. Now with serial drums, you have the opportunity to observe single changes in manufacturing process: we have drums with the exact same hardware, dimensions, heads, tuning, only difference is the type of wood. Now when checking our maple and walnut sets, when tuned right, what you hear is the difference between walnut and maple. It is subtle when it comes to snare and toms, but pretty much audible when it comes to the kick. Now maple and walnut are pretty far away in the sonical spectrum, both being hard woods, but maple being way brighter than walnut. Thus it makes no sense to offer 3-4 more wood options that fall somewhere in between maple and walnut, sonically, when you can hardly hear the difference between these two woods.
why is serial drum making better for observing differences in sound? Simply because when you build the same shell with the same tools and the same glue on the same day with the same humidity and the same pressure and the same.. you get the picture- you get a pretty similar product. now when i custom make a shell, there can be variations with EVERY step in manufacturing that can cause differences in sound, and unless you have done scientific research on each, you cannot really tell for sure how big each influence is. e.g. the direction of the wood grain has a bigger influence on the outcome of the shell sound than the wood itself. So there is so many ways I can f#ck with the outcome when I make a shell, it is really hard to boil it down to "this is maple, and this is birch"... this is bolloks, and it was used by drum brands to sell whatever they have in stock, not to educate drummers on how drum physics work.
now on comparing drum woods with different manufacturers: due to the fact that each manufacturer has a different approach on how to make the shells etc, the wood might in fact be the least of sonic influence - there is no way to compare "maple" drums between, say, Pearl, and Tama, since you have no idea what exactly you compare. As mentioned, the direction of wood grain has a huge impact on the resulting tone, the thickness of the single plys, the way how the plys are being prepared (some glue them to sheets before pressing them to a shell, some use single plys that get soaked in glue end pressed at once etc).
I would wish videos like these would be done with the cooperation of a drum manufacturer who can give more insights that what a drummer can tell just from the look at a drum, but then again, drum manufacturers are just giving away informations that are supposed to sell their drums and show their magnificence, not shedding light on drum physics. So much disinformation is being spread in order to sell drums...
Hey Joel, not sure if have talked about directly mounting the Tom bracket to the Shell like they did in the “old” days compared to a Rimms mount system. Half my drums are directly mounted to the shell and sound fine. Can you do a comparison like the shorter size Bass drum video? ✌️🥁