ANNOYING snare drum overtones

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Drummerdude1989

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hey guys, my old snare drum was a piece of crap and had reaaally annoying overtones that i couldnt get rid of no matter what unless i put like a full 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper on it to like muffle it, so i just bought this new snare drum, but it also has some bad overtones. I've tried tuning it like crazy, and it has a brand new head so i know it's not that. I should prolly try putting some of that electric tape or w/e on the head but i just feel like i shouldnt be having this problem. any tips?
 
First, do a search here for the Drum Tuning Bible. If tuning doesn't help, try either a Zero Ring or some MoonGels.
 
What kind of a snare is it? What head are you using? What was your old snare? It is most likely a tuning issue ore you are just using the wrong head for the snare (or both)
 
you can get a lot of overtones with a thin plied head.

If you are looking for minimal overtones, check out Remo EmperorX coated. It's a super heavy coated 2 ply head with a black dot underneath.


I don't like my drums very ringy by any means, but I've found that a lot of drummers are overly concerned with ring. And when their drums are recorded they sound like cardboard. A little ring is good, but most ring will be covered up by a lot of the instruments such as guitars in the mix. Exactly how much ring you need is sometimes difficult and you can't really tell until you start getting other instruments in the mix. You can always affect the amount of ring with compression and gates as well.
 
drum ring

Try a external muffler or sometimes I use those big strip bandaids around the edge of the head, looks like I hurt the the drum head?
 
I controll the ring of my snare by loosining one of the lug bolts.
The more you loosin it the more ring goes away and the more you tightin
it the louder the ring gets. You have to tune your snare kinda high
for this to work tho but it works fine for me.
 
I will repeat the good advice given allready:

Thin heads exaggerate the ring ,thicker heads (particularly the coated) tame the ring.

Dont kill all the ring... What sounds horrible to you solo'd gives a little life to the snare in the mix. A dead snare sounds like you are beating a box of crackers.

If you have to tame an out of hand ring, bite the bullet and get a $5 box of moon gels. Stick one or 2 strategically, and your problem is gone. I dont particularly like detuning one lug, it seems to make the heads stretch funny and wear out faster, plus I am allways concerned it might make my thinner shelled snares go out of round.

To each his own.

Tom
 
thanks everyone for the advice, i think i probably am getting a little obsessive with eliminating the ring, it actually sounds not so bad when i record it. To answer Farview's questions it's a pearl maple shell with a remo ambassador head. The old drum i bought used, i have no idea what it is cept that it's pretty old and doesnt have a name anywhere on it, it also had ambassador heads.
 
Drummerdude1989 said:
thanks everyone for the advice, i think i probably am getting a little obsessive with eliminating the ring, it actually sounds not so bad when i record it. To answer Farview's questions it's a pearl maple shell with a remo ambassador head. The old drum i bought used, i have no idea what it is cept that it's pretty old and doesnt have a name anywhere on it, it also had ambassador heads.
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It is the ambassadors that are killing you. You need to get a thicker head on your drums. An evans genera hd dry will get rid of the ring, for instance. But even an emperor will be better than an ambassador for what it seems you are trying to accomplish.
 
really? i always thought ambassador's were pretty coated, thanks alot, i'll check the heads you mentioned out.
 
Gate's work wonders for fine tunin' drum recordings and eliminating unwanted artifacts!!
 
MOONGEL. it is a god, you get the snare tunde as you like it and slap moongel on a voila the snare sound you want with no overtones. in your not good enough to tune the overtones out or so they're nice then moongel is a git from hevan. enjoy.
 
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