Moongel or Ring dampers?

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reshp1

reshp1

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Which one would you recommend for controlling ringing and unwanted overtones.

Plus a couple questions from a drum newbie....

I just got my first real kit, a Yamaha Rydeen. I like the kit, the hardware and drums seem to be very nicely made. Anyway, after messing around with the tuning all night I still couldn't get the toms to sound right. The snare and bass actually sound pretty good. The batter and resonant heads were all in tune with themselves and each other, but now they resonant FOREVER. I was talking behind the set, and the damn things would resonant from the sound of my voice for a few seconds after I stopped talking! I'm guessing it's the stock single ply heads which I'm planning on replacing, but which ones? Pinstripes? Should I replace batter and resonant heads, or do you think changing just the batter side would be good enough.
Thanks for helping a newbie out.
 
Ok well moon gels would bee the way to go I think, I don't use them but I use to use the Aquarian studio rings and they work good, but sometimes in the middle of a song one of my rings would just fly off!, making that one tom sound way out of balance with the rest of them, so if you are gonna muffle them I would try the moon gels first.

Also for those resonating toms, yeah atleast some double ply for the batter side, singles on the bottom are good if you want a very open sound like Bonham, which I use to try and get, but my currewnt band is more metal hardcore and requires me to be more attack focused, so I use pinstripes, top and bottom. I have a set of swingstars so the quality is comparable to the Rydeens, and the results should be similar.

When I tune my drums I TUNE the pitch with the bottom head, and the amount of response (bounce) with the top head, my batter side is tighter than my bottom head,BUT for the final ultra fine tuning I will tweek my top head just a little, it's finding the sweet spot for me, a compromise, but my top head is still tighter.

But I have only been drumming for 5 years and am self taught, plus i seek little advice, I just prefer to learn on my own, so my techniques may come under fire from more knowledgable people here.

If you don't have cymbals yet, try some Sabian B8 pro's for a starter set, they are really quite good and will take a beating from newbies :)

But for the record i don't need any mufflers these days. Once you learn to play and tune effectively, you won't need them, as long as you use proper heads for the application you are working in. I don't muffle my bass drum either, I use to, but have ceased as I have gained expirence.
 
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If you experiment with the tuning of your drums there will be a point in which the overtunes will work with the bottom and top heads and the ring will be lost. I use nothing to dampen my drums not even the bass drum and there is no ring.
 
Moongels are really cheap and work for other uses (you can throw them on a ride to change its sound, many other things), so you might want to try them first. They have a slightly different effect on the sound than the rings do, but they still dampen.
 
I like the sound of ring as long as it's well tuned (not phasey or crappy) and suitable for the style of music. Sometimes no ring=dead. Good, well tuned ring can give the drums a lot of volume and power.

As for getting the endless BONNNNGGGGGGG out of the drums, it's because of how you tuned them. If you get the heads to cancel each other, you can get some strange sounds happening, like a weird pitch shifted note with very fast decay and no ring.

Here's a decent link for drum tuning:

http://www.drummingweb.com/tuning.htm

I haven't used moongel before a couple of days ago, but I really like it. If you don't want to buy mylar rings, you can cut your own from old heads as you acquire them. The mylar damper rings tend to take all of the ring out of the drum, especially snare drum. It chops the sustain on toms. What I like about moongel so far is that I can take a piece of it and tear 1/3rd of it off and just use that. Where you put it makes a bit of difference, but it doesn't kill the ring like a mylar hoop. (marching snare sound) but it can turn it down just a tad if it's overbearing for the style of music and sound you're going for. Both dampening methods are pretty handy to have around.


sl
 
Moongel/Studio rings....if you have too much errant "resonance"....try using one then the other.....mve the moongel around to find different sounds.
DUH!
 
reshp1 said:
The batter and resonant heads were all in tune with themselves and each other, but now they resonant FOREVER.
Click to expand...

That is exactly what they are suppose to do. They're drums.

Don't get me started on muffling, please. In my opinion, drummers muffling their drums at home is one of the most unfortunate misunderstandings of the modern recording age. It is because we believe what we hear on a CD is what we should make our drums sound like when we are at home. In truth, its the microphone and recording gear in the studio that makes the drum sound fat, and muffled. Mics don't hear the decay that our ears hear.

If that's the sound you want at home, go with the moongels. Also, if you replace the heads, only replace the batters first and then decide later if you think you need to change the reso's.
 
He is right about the muffling. Unless you are going to a Ringo Starr or Levon Helm sound, don't do it.
 
I used to be a huge fan of dampening until like last week. Haha. I just got some home studio gear, and everytime I recorded my drums they sounded horrendous. They sounded like they were always too quiet, in the background, or plastic. I decided to finally listen to everyone, took off my e-rings and tuned my drums so I got some depth and feel and a decent tone (I used to like them to sound like Lars' do on CD.. man was that a mistake) now, when I play them you can't even notice the overtones with the rest of the kit.. they blend. And they sound very good and powerful when recording!


If you're scared of tuning, pickup a DrumDial. They work good. I use mine all the time.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions. I stopped in to GC on my way home and picked up a Evans Hydraulic PrePack. Well, that definitely killed the ringing, if anything it deadened the toms a little too much. Plus it's now hard to get the top and bottoms the same pitch because of the difference in tension needed, so I think there's some cancellation going on there too. I dunno, I think I'm going to try pinstripes next time and try to find a good middle ground.
 
The hydraulic heads vs. any other type are a matter of preference. You should try different ones to see what you like. I'm a fan of coated ambassadors or similar for batter heads these days. Clear ambassadors or even diplomats for resonant heads. Depends what pitch you want. The hydraulic ones are darker.

Again, if you want to tune the batter & resonant heads to the same pitch, they ring forever. One approach is to tune the resonant head to the shell and have the batter head tuned higher (or lower). As long as each head is in tune within itself and the harmonics of both heads don't fight each other, you'll get ring & sustain that sounds more natural, but the decay won't be endless. You've got options.


sl
 
Moon gels if you must but with proper tuning & good heads you shouldn't have to. Rings take ALL the life out of a drum. Learn how to tune!!
 
Spitfire, don't be afraid to hit your drums when recording. Lot's of guy's think you have to play at a lower level when recording. WRONG!! Give the engineer plenty of signal & let him decide what level to set the faders at.
 
Tuning then moongels. The gels allow for much more subtle dampening that rings do.
 
I

I recomend aquarian studio rings, they work really well, idont know what the guy up above was talkin about when he said they flew off, mine have never flown off, but maybe he is a hard hitter, and as far as heads are concerned ive oinly had pinstripes and evans g2, if ur playing rock and classic, i recomend pinstripes, for metal maybe i would recomend the g2's

- cubanorocker316
 
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