I bought my second hand Tama Club Jam kit just over a year ago and it came with the original heads. These will wear out and so I was going to have to face changing them. The snare takes the hardest beating and it was really showing it with a lot of the original coating worn off.
I have changed plenty of guitar strings, but this was a new experience and so I did look for some tips. The Drumeo school had some videos on changing heads and also on tuning them. It was actually not too bad really. This is a cheap drum that only has six lugs holding the rim on. Better drums may have eight or ten to get more even tension. You need a drum key to do this job and it serves to adjust various parts of the kit. I have acquired several now and keep them scattered around. The drum itself was pretty clean with not much dust inside, so I just gave it all a wipe before fitting the new head. I went for one from Aquarian that seemed suitable for the jazz I have been playing with my friends. If I ever get another snare I could fit a different head more suited for rock.
The video suggested stretching the head by pressing down on it, but I did this quite gently as I do not know how much they can take. Once I had everything screwed on I tried tapping around the edge of the head and could hear slight differences in pitch. Adjusting the lugs evened this out.
The orange thing on the head is a gel that cuts down on unwanted ringing sounds. There are various alternatives to that. Drums are more complex than you may expect with lots of ways to vary the sound.
The demo is with sticks and brushes. The latter should work better now there is some coating for them to grip on. I am still learning about what sound I might want, so I may adjust things further. I welcome suggestions from any experienced drummers.
Audio is from my Yamaha EAD10 with a hint of kick drum triggered sample using the trigger I made.
Rock on!
▶️ 3Speak
How crazy cool it is to see your post about the care & feeding of your drum kit.
I love the ease with which you share the musician’s experience.
This may sound like a dumb question, but are you recording on your android phone? Then uploading to where to get your link to it?
My workflow to get things to 3S is broken, so I stopped making the videos. I’d make me happy to get that blocked goal sorted.
The video was from my Android, but audio was from my recording system. I had to combine them and edit it down with the stills before uploading. That has been working okay recently. Video can be a pain as there are so many formats.
Nice job tackling your first drum head change. I'm imagining it's like changing guitar strings but with extra patience. That gel thing is a lifesaver, nothing worse than a snare that won’t shut up. Keep experimenting and rocking on man
I don't expect to do it too often, but you need these skills.
great skills to have, one way I check to see how good someone is with an instrument is how well the can fix an issue and tune the sound, not just playing
I always liked that cross tuning :) Also used only Remo heads. These days Evans is very popular...
I've got to learn about what differences the heads make. I may try a different one next time. I think this one will be okay for now.
I think it might be a difficult job.
Well it wasn't so hard really. It had to be done.
This snare, I feel for it always because it's the most used part of the drum system.
It's good you had mercy on it to change it before it was completely worn out. Lol😅
Congratulations @steevc! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 710000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOP