Drum Heads – Fitting & Tuning – Part Two
Carefully tighten the tuning rods with your drum key, half a turn at a time, making sure you tighten OPPOSING ‘rods, so the head remains level. Another tip is to tighten the head a few turns more than you would tune it for playing, as it will take any of the initial stretching out of the head prior to the tuning proper. You will hear a fair amount of cracking and crunching. Don’ t be alarmed.
This is just the drum head stretching and ‘seating’ itself. This should not result in an explosion!
Before tuning the drums; if you’re replacing the Resonant (bottom) head, just repeat the above. A resonant head will normally be a clear Ambassador (single-ply), or Diplomat (thin single-ply). The resonant head needs to be thinner than the batter head, as they project the sound of the shell and ARE NOT struck by your sticks!
If you’re replacing these, remove all the drums from your ‘kit, so you can hande them individually. It will make your life so much easier!
Next, we need to obtain the optimum sound from your drums. This is a rough guide to get a nice, natural sound from your drums:
We’ve fitted and tightened our head/s, so now we can tune the tightened and nicely seated batter head down to the note we want. Starting with the largest drum (excluding your bass drum, and snare, as these have slightly different principles and we will address these in another lesson). Slacken the heads off and find the lowest note from the top
and bottom heads before they go slack, with creases forming. Give each tuning rod half a turn (opposing ‘rods, remember.), until the head starts to produce a ‘note’ (this should only take 1, or 2 half turns on each ‘rod). (words: Glen Buck)
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