It's in your head because the marketing got in your head. They did their job well.
... or a drilled bass drum?
Is there a big difference, sonicly? I keep craving one thinking that it sounds so much better, but does it?
Is it in my head?
Is it marketing?
Kevin
DW Performance series - Gun Metal Metallic Lacquer
24/12/16 6.5x14
Sabian AA/AAX hi-hats & crashes
Sabian HHX Evolution ride
Drummers can be very tempomental.....
It's in your head because the marketing got in your head. They did their job well.
Thanks, Tom...
It's so tough to tell, especially when I go into a GC and it's a big open space and I go back home to my basement and its 15x15 of sheetrock and cement floor. LOL
Not that my kit sounds bad, it doesn't. It sounds really good. I love it.
But I keep thinking that I want something "better". I dunno...
Kevin
DW Performance series - Gun Metal Metallic Lacquer
24/12/16 6.5x14
Sabian AA/AAX hi-hats & crashes
Sabian HHX Evolution ride
Drummers can be very tempomental.....
I agree with Tom on the sonic comment. But, I do love the look of virgin kicks over drilled.
Tex
I put a blanking plate on my kick because I wasn't using the mount anyway. When I switched to 1 up 2 down, I mounted my rack tom off of a cymbal stand. The bass drum mount wouldn't have given me that perfect spot. Plus it just looks a lot better.
Anyone can make the one I did below. I basically flipped the mount upside down. So the mount is inside the bass drum and the plate is on the top. Of course it had the big hole from the tube, so I printed a paper Ludwig logo and cut out a piece of a clear bass drum head I had lying around. So on the top of the bass drum, you have the plate, then the logo, then the clear head, and voila!
Last edited by FlyByNight; 01-17-2017 at 09:05 PM.
I've seen a few different variations of this, I like how this came out.
I'm sure on a some oscilloscope you can register the difference between a mount and none, but to my ear there's other things that make a bigger difference- heads, tuning, beaters, port or solid head, the room...
The last kit I had was a Yamaha Maple Custom Absolute in the same finish as Zack's. I had that Yamaha 3-hole mount with 10 and 12 toms and a splash. Once in a blue moon you could barely here the splash jiggle when you played the kick.
Really the biggest thing I noticed was it was easier to move the kit around with the kick not having anything on it, so if you had to drag it to the side of the stage it was a little easier.
Aside from aesthetics, it was easier to get the kick in a soft bag without the mount snagging it.
A simple, elegant design is good engineering.
Axis | Ayotte | Evans | Gibraltar | Ludwig | Pro-Mark | Remo | Roc-N-Soc | SKB | Taye | Vic Firth | Whitney| Yamaha | Zildjian
Last edited by CycleDude; 01-17-2017 at 09:52 PM.
Kevin
DW Performance series - Gun Metal Metallic Lacquer
24/12/16 6.5x14
Sabian AA/AAX hi-hats & crashes
Sabian HHX Evolution ride
Drummers can be very tempomental.....
I agree with Tom. It's marketing BS.
As for me, I prefer a little experience.
I think it definitely makes a difference in sound, albeit a very small one. Maybe if you're playing by yourself at low volume. I tried setting up for gigs a few times by hanging the toms off cymbal stands (mostly for the look), but it was way more hassle than it was worth. I determined it was way quicker and easier to just use the bass drum mount.
-Brian
"Too many crappy used drum stuff to list"
Play the SONG......not the DRUMS!!!
"I think that feeling is a lot more important than technique. It's all very well doing a triple paradiddle - but who's going to know you've done it? If you play technically you sound like everybody else. It's being original that counts." ~ John Bonham
+1. I feel it's a lot better to have all separate pieces. You don't have all the weight on the shell from the 2 toms. (I know you've heard this a million times before.) while I don't think there's much difference in sound, the mount just doesn't work for me. It's kind of like mounting a tom directly from the shell instead of using a rim mount. You might get a little less resonance when you have the bar going in the tom. With a rim mount, it can resonate freely. Like the kick, without 2 toms hanging off of it, you get a better resonance.
"Like the kick, without 2 toms hanging off of it, you get a better resonance."
Like MrB said, you might be able to discern a difference with the right equipment to measure.
The moon moves away from the earth 1 1/2" a year. Outside of scientist, how many people do you think notice.
The moon at 1 time was~14,000 miles from earth, now it's ~1/4 of a million miles away.
I wonder if that ape at the beginning of 2001, stopped beating on those bones, looked up, and said, "Yo, Harry, the moon is moving away from us. I wonder how that happened." Harry: "Hey Fred, how can you tell?" Fred: "I could hear it".
It doesn't matter to me if the mount is there unused. Last week I decided to try once again mounting my 50 pound ride off the kick using the the mount. The advantage is 1 less stand to deal with and no stand tip over. The disadvantage is height and angle. It's sitting quite a bit higher this way. Test run will be at practice tomorrow
RDM/Damage Poets
UFiP TAMAHA Zildjian
REGAL TiP
AQUARIAN
If you seriously put a sound test to a virgin kick with toms mounted on stands to a bass drum with the toms mounted directly I guarantee you there's a sound difference.
Now being a bass drum is it enough to notice greatly? No not really. The thud of a kick will still sound like the thud of a kick regardless.
But none the less having that mount and stands and vibration carry into the toms that will also resonate if you did a real comparison test you'd here a difference because I can tell the difference on of my kits myself.
As for me I love the clean look of the virgin bass drums. I was super excited to finally get a kit with a virgin bass setup. I don't think mounting a tom to a cymbal arm is any harder than mounting it to the bass drum. Sure it's a little more hassle moving it around but if you mark your stand locations on your rug then it's no big deal.
There's just no way, in a real world application that one will be able to notice a difference, in my opinion...if you're playing in a band, there's just no way you're gonna hear a difference. I do like using my Mapex Orion kit, since it has tom mounts on it, as Slinky said, eliminates a stand or 2, but its design is such that there's no hole drilled through the kick to hold the mount.
Gretsch USA & Zildjian(What Else Would I Ever Need ?)
My take on it is this...
If the drum came with the mount installed...great. All the afore mentioned advantages come into play.
If the drum is "virgin" then for Gosh sakes don't go drilling holes into it yourself.
As for sound difference...see Rick's post about the moon! LOL very funny BTW
all the best...
Kevin
DW Performance series - Gun Metal Metallic Lacquer
24/12/16 6.5x14
Sabian AA/AAX hi-hats & crashes
Sabian HHX Evolution ride
Drummers can be very tempomental.....
I like undrilled kicks solely based on aesthetics. I just like the look of a drum kit set up with a virgin kick better. As far as the sound difference? IMHO, I don't think any difference (if there is any) is audible to the human ear. I would challenge anyone that says different. Put a blindfold on.....listen to both and my bet would be that they couldn't consistently tell you the difference.
I like virgin bass drums purely for the aesthetics but if a kit came with a tom mount, I'd use it but if there were alternative mounting options (i.e rack or stands) available, I would prefer to use those instead of the tom mount.
I think on your higher end kits with the superior mounting hardware you won't notice much of a difference... but on your cheaper kits you absolutely will. I don't think it will make A HUGE difference, but it does make a difference.
Too Much Stuff.
I used to have cymbal stands mounted in the kick drum tom mounts and when I'd hit the kick the cymbal would ring slightly so there's obviously going to be vibrations..not sure how much it would affect the toms mounted.
I've always just loved the looks of a virgin kick...or two.
My old Premier kit has a 3/4" tube receptacle in the center of the tom mount tube. I install the top section of a cymbal stand with splash cymbal. Every time I kick the pedal, the splash would jump and ring. I figured out that when I plugged the end of the cymbal stand tube with a piece of foam, it would stop. So...it wasn't the vibration of the bass that caused it, but rather the air pressure traveling up the tube that was making the splash cymbal jump & ring.
-Brian
"Too many crappy used drum stuff to list"
Play the SONG......not the DRUMS!!!
"I think that feeling is a lot more important than technique. It's all very well doing a triple paradiddle - but who's going to know you've done it? If you play technically you sound like everybody else. It's being original that counts." ~ John Bonham
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