question about drum physics

[Pony!]

Hi,

I've been picking up random drums here and there on ebay for stupid-cheap. I got me a catalina tom for 20 bucks and one of those pacific maple floor toms for 30 or so. I've also got some maple customs and some 80's pearl all maples. I was comparing them the other day and trying out different head combinations. I noticed that the catalina and the pacific were much harsher on the attack while the higher quality drums were much rounder and warmer.

So, I decided to look at the drums themselves to see why. The bearing edes were true and smooth on all the drums. But the big difference I saw was that the insides of the shells of the cheaper drums were a bit rougher while the higher quality ones were much smoother almost feeling like a sealer was applied to the shell.

I was talking to my boss (I work at a book store and one of the managers writes for Modern Drummer) who said that in the 70's and 60's some engineers would actually take some sandpaper to the insides of drums to warm their tone up.

So, I guess my question is... If I were to take some kind of a sealer to the inside of the shells would it round out the tone and make the attack a little less harsh?

[Greg_L]

Did you check the bearing edge angles? I don't mean a quick glance and running your finger over the edge. I mean really check the edges. Different angles and how much contact the bearing edge has with the head would probably make more of a difference than the finish of the inside of the shell.

[JuliánFernández]

In my experience, lugs and hoops can make a lot of difference too...

[stevieb]

Given that you can't easily get sealer off if the experiment is a failure, I would sand the insides of one of the harshest offenders and see what effect that had. If it was detrimental to the tone, you could more easily rough it back up than remove the sealer.

And I would devise some sort of set up so I could duplicate the conditions after the change. Something like a recording setup, in a room that you changed nothing, with notes as to setup- mics used, settings on all equipment used, placement (maybe some digital pictures) with measurements of distance from drum head, etc. I'd use very simple drum strikes- say, quarter notes, then whole notes at 80bpm, 4/4 time. Then I would A/B the recording, and listen for differences. I would also set up at least a single-blind test, where I had other people listen to the two tracks, and tell me which they thought sounded better. So much of what we think of as "improvements" are, literally, all in our heads- you should work to eliminate that as much as possible.