Opinions on Piccolo Snares?

[Uladine]

Whats your opinion on piccolo snares? Do you generally like their sound or do you preffer a deeper, fatter sound? What is your favorite snare sound? I know everyone has a way they love to tune their snare drum. (Or how they want their drummer to tune their snare.) Just curious.

[Salabim]

I think Piccolo snares give a real nice tight crack. i have a fairly fat sounding snare on my kit, but i like to keep it as tight as possible. i would love to get a nice piccolo (i just need the damn mulah)
I think that they are best suited to some styles of music i think. Stuff like ska, some real heavy stuff, and stuff like Live and RHCP, but of course thats just my personal opinion.

Tim

[Tim Brown]

I HATE Piccolo snares...to me they don't have enough "body" to them....the smallest I would go is a 5"x14"....and then I'd crank that down for a Stewart Copeland/Police high pitched "crack".

One of the best snares around for recording is a Ludwig ACROLYTE (It's a cheapo Cast Aluminum Snare) you can pick them up used all day long for $50 or less, and cranked down that's an incredible drum.
Kenny Aronoff (Smashing Pumpkins, John Cougar) swears it's his favorite snare to record with, and I'd agree with him.

I use an 8x14" Brass Free-floating Snare made by Pearl, myself.

Tim

[mikeh]

I have a 3x13 maple and 3x13 steel. I get several comments on how good the 3x13 maple sounds. I personally like my 6x14 maple better, but since I got so many compliments on the piccolo I started using it more - I finally got a chance to hear a live recoring of a gig, and it did sound good.

I think funk/R&B, reggae/ska and certain pop works best for piccolo, and rock lends itself more to a deeper snare (although I see more and more rock setups with a piccolo).

Although I can understand Tim's dislike for piccolo (his posts have indicated that he prefers very big drums) I don't know if I completely agree with trying to tighten a bigger snare to get a "piccolo" sound.

Almost all drummers like the snare to be pretty tight, but I try to avoid getting any drum so tight that you choke the life out of it. I find you can actually tune a good piccolo down (a little) and get a fairly fat sound (and still get a crisp attack - without choking the drum).

[KaosTheory]

I am trying to record a piccolo and the SM 57 just doesn't seem to capture the crack of the snare like I want. I used a AKG C535eb but it picks up too much of the HiHat. I EQ'ed the hihat out but lost some crispness of the snare. I have it sounding ok for now but I want it to sound better. Any suggestions?

KaosTheory

[Emeric]

If your micing ok, i.e. pointing the dead side of the mic towards the hi-hats, within micable and mic stand, and drummer comfortable reason, then maybe the drummer is just thrashing the hell out of the hi-hats.

Tell the drummer not to hit the hats so hard.

[KaosTheory]

He does hit the hihat pretty hard. Thanks for the info.

[nezpierce]

The ACROLYTE snare drums are cheap and end up sounding really good if you are using them for rock. I used to have a Pearl free floating aluminum snare (too loud for recording anything but metal/industrial) and the acrolyte was my second snare. It ended up being the best purches I made drum wise after the lovely recording customs, that is..


The one I used was a blue-ish gray but this is the current offering:
http://www.ludwig-drums.com/products...lacrolite.html

Do beware, this thing has lots of clang if you don't mike it right...

As for piccolos, think they are great but I would stay with the wooden ones (maple, birch) not the metallic shells.

nP