bass drum tuning, hellllpp

  • Thread starter Thread starter N8theGr8
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N8theGr8

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i removed both heads on my pearl export 22" bass drum, made a 5" hole in the resonant, and i cant get it to sound good at all! ive got a blanket in there, ive adjusted it many many times. right now, all i hear is a thud. i also cant seem to get a good pitch, i never really paid too much attention to it before. does anyone have generic way of tuning a bass drum? (about how many turns, etc) and how does having a hole in the front affect tuning technique?
 
What heads are you using? Good/Bad/Mediocre?
I had the same problem with my old drumset, I had switched between blankets and old sleeping bags and whatever else I could find and also cut a hole in the resonant head, I even took cut a little square piece of carpet and taped it to the outside of the batter head so that the beater wouldn't make contact with the head and not get that batter thud which made my drum sound terrible. Then I got new heads, put that padding that goes underneath the carpet inside the drum and didn't cut a hole in the resonant head and it sounded great (for a Sunlite set that is). But now I've got that drumset set up as my "practice set" so I put my old heads back on it and when I busted the batter head I just took the "thin" resonant head and switched to the batter side (because I'm cheap and didn't want to buy a new one for it) and stuck a sleeping bag up against it, tuned it up really tight and believe it or not it actually sounds pretty darn good. So I guess what I'm trying to say is just experiment untill you find something that works.

I hope some of these ramblings help. ;)

-tkr
 
I agree with Tek about experimenting till ya get close to something you like. A good rule of thumb is that, unlike your toms and snare, tune the resonant relatively loose and crank down on the beater. I'm doing alot of '70's stuff right now and I'm uisng one of those big ass throw pillows. They are large which gives you mass for resonance control, but they're light density-wise so as not to get too muddy (ala thud!). Hope it helps...
 
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