..and don't over-compress the trap mics because it will 'suck up' the cymbal sound near it. probably won't be a problem at Electrical.

i do make a habit of playing lighter on the hats while recording, and i try to pound the snot out of the toms. In the studio I find also that using a 5a stick in the right hand helps control the hats. and i use a big vic firth american classic metal in the left. marky ramone does the same and apparently mic fleetwood use to overdub his hi-hats.

i've also experienced the too much compression problem.

do you find a tall hi-hat stand helps? my yamaha doesn't go very hi but i've always been curious as to whether a nice tall tama would help.

ps have you ever recorded with a ludwig 402 snare? (6.5 x 14 crome over brass, die cast hoops - like bonham). it's my current snare. sounds great but i've only recorded it minimally because at the time i had a coated cs dot on it, which was a mistake.

The OTHER Canadian wrote:i do make a habit of playing lighter on the hats while recording, and i try to pound the snot out of the toms. In the studio I find also that using a 5a stick in the right hand helps control the hats. and i use a big vic firth american classic metal in the left. marky ramone does the same and apparently mic fleetwood use to overdub his hi-hats.

i've also experienced the too much compression problem.

do you find a tall hi-hat stand helps? my yamaha doesn't go very hi but i've always been curious as to whether a nice tall tama would help.

ps have you ever recorded with a ludwig 402 snare? (6.5 x 14 crome over brass, die cast hoops - like bonham). it's my current snare. sounds great but i've only recorded it minimally because at the time i had a coated cs dot on it, which was a mistake.

The 402 is NOT chrome over brass- it's "Ludalloy," which is a chrome plated aluminum alloy. The thinness of this metal is what gives the drum it's crack and it's low fundamental pitch.

I record my Supraphonic LM 402 more than any other snare, and I use a coated emperor top, clear ambassador bottom on it with NOTHING ELSE. No tape, no moon gel, no maxipads or any of that weird stuff. If the head is broken in and tuned well, this is the fattest sounding snare drum I have ever recorded.

I also use fairly dark sounding hats- either my weird custom pair of two *bottom hats*- a Sabian AAX and a Paiste Sound Control - or I use my '70s New Beats (which have never been cleaned). My friend Hugo uses a REALLY tall hi-hat stand, but when I do that I break a lot of hats. I don't know that I would recommend using unmatched sticks in the studio that you don't always use. I find that using smaller sticks to play rock means that I blister more quickly. Playing in the studio, you may end up playing drums for five or six hours a day. If you're not used to that, you're potentially gonna blister.

Are you hitting a good amount of rim when you hit the snare? That really increases the volume of the snare, HOWEVER I wouldn't worry too much about cross talk between snare and hats at Electrical. These gentlemen really, really know what they're doing.

Any engineer will tell you- recording a drummer who strikes the drums clearly and firmly is a joy to record. It makes a lot of the "tools" (both pro and otherwise) redundant.

Recording Here in Aug. Need a Good ride to crash.

Maybe Sowley will let you crash his ride?

I have one of these:



It only seems to get so loud... even with serious bashing. Awesome for riding (crash-riding) on. Records well, etc. awesome.

Somebody threw a bunch of stands on top of it in our rehearsal space... broken. Bye bye Zildjian & Cie Vintage 16" crash

otisroom wrote:Maybe Sowley will let you crash his ride?

who is sowley?

my ludwig is indeed brass (with a supraphonic strainer), maybe it's just not an actual 402. the gold coloured badge on the side (not the keystone one) has the number 1070 and says "brass edition." i bought it new a few years ago. it's not the bonham special edition.

i do play rim shots almost exclusively - and it's a very loud snare. right now i have an ambassador, but i'll try a coated emp. how worked in do you like your snare heads?

Well, sonofabitch, I didn't know that Ludwig had extended the 400 series to brass.

The Ludwig LB402B is a 6.5 x 14 inch brass snare drum with die cast hoops.

Apologies.

What threw me off was the Bonham reference and the 402 model number, because John Bonham always played the Supraphonic 402 (6.5 x 14) that I mentioned before- Ludalloy, never brass that I know of.

You can see a quick tour of his kit done by his drum tech Jeff Ocheltree on Drummerworld. Jeff also gives some great tuning hints on the video, too. I tune my drums pretty much exactly like that, with the exact same heads, except for the batter on the kick drum. There, I use a Remo Powerstroke P3 head.

For aggressive playing, all of my batter heads are Emperors because I find them to be more durable.

Now, your brass snare drum is going to be more pingy and (will probably) have a higher fundamental pitch than a Ludalloy snare. It will also be louder and have more crack. You'd be hard pressed to go wrong with a coated ambassador on that head, though it will be pingy as hell in the top snare mic. It will have an amazing wallop in the room mics and the overheads, especially at Electrical. I think that an Emperor might sound pretty nice too. I'd love to have that snare drum for a day or two before you took it in there, so that I could play it, mess with tunings and let you play it and wear the head in a little bit before you had to roll tape.

HOWEVER, I live in Athens, Ga, which is a long way from Chicago.

I like for a drum head to be reasonably well stretched out before I record it, because if the glue seam and the mylar aren't stretched out a little bit, they'll loosen up some as you play. First takes are often the best takes, and it sucks to lose a take on the first day to a snare drum head that is steadily de-tuning through a song. Sometimes, by the time the bridge rolls around, it sounds like your drum kit has a flat tire.

That said, I don't think that old heads have any place in the studio. Old heads get divots in them, and divots cause the head to vibrate differently around the divot, which causes overtones that I don't much care for.

Of course, someone like Steve might love the idiosyncrasy and honesty of that tone over a perfectly harmonically balanced drum, so go with your gut (and listen to the engineer) on what sounds good. Check your heads between songs if you're wearing them in at practice, and keep tuning the top heads so that they're even. Heads that are de-tuned dent more easily!

Having one good practice, or at least really vigorously working the kit while you're getting your sounds, should be enough to wear a kit in for recording, as long as you're not hitting like a bunnypantser.


I am just getting home from recording a session right now, and I am waiting to get sleepy. Nearly 3am here. No such luck, yet.

dontfeartheringo wrote:
That said, I don't think that old heads have any place in the studio. Old heads get divots in them, and divots cause the head to vibrate differently around the divot, which causes overtones that I don't much care for.

Having one good practice, or at least really vigorously working the kit while you're getting your sounds, should be enough to wear a kit in for recording, as long as you're not hitting like a bunnypantser.

True Dat