For the drum thing, forget the retracking. Topo many people here like to blame that for every problem. However, I own a studio. I have clients. They aren't goign to want to haul back in to retrack the drums for a snare sound, and then going to have to retrack everything else because of that. Sometimes ther is just NOTHING you can do during tracking to get it just right. Sometimes the desired sound for a track doesn't truly reveal itself until after the fact and now, as engineers, we have to dig into our tool bags and use some knowledge, experience, and yes, even some gear to make it all happen. If everything were as easy as just track it right, there would be no mix engineers.
Now, for your actual problem at hand.... Try making a drum mix without the snare track. Pretend it didn't exist and use your other tracks as if they were the only ones you had to make a mix out of. One trick that I like a lot that a lot of people never think of is to compress the overheads some. get a medium attack and a fairly long decay and you will be surprised at how much compression you can get away with without pumping like mad. You will also be surprised at how much it will actually affect the snare sound. When you are done with drums minus snare mixing, take a good listen to your tracks. How much snare is it missing? Good chance it will still need some. Now we get to add the offending snare track back in. Instead of soloing it, bring it in to the whole mix slowly. As soon as you start hearing something you don't like, stop bringing it up and start with some parametric EQ cuts. Once it starts sounding good again, start bringing it up some more. Keep doing these last two steps until your snare is loud enough for you and sounds right. When all is done there, personally I would bring the track down another 3db from where you ended. Its just my own superstition that when you make big EQ cuts and boosts to keep that track a little lower than you think you might otherwise just in case you start hearing adverse effects at a later date
Hopefully some of that will help. I am an advocate of getting things right the first time. However, I also understand that sometimes those things just don't and won't happen no matter who you are. Even George Massenberg has to make some fixes in mixes. The truth is, some of us at least are engineers and do it for a living. Sometimes, we have to employ those skills. Those who manage to do it better generally have better careers. Flexibility is important in this industry. If you are just recording your own stuff you may have the otpion to just retrack anytime you want. But some of us do have clients and those options don't always exist.
