Quick Snare Tuning Questions

Recently, I got a new pork pie big brass snare drum. Until now, I had just used a crappy old pearl steel shell. Being new to using a high quality snare, I was wondering some basic questions about tuning it.

When tuning this new snare, I noticed that some of the lugs were harder to turn than others in general even when they were at the same tension and pitch on the drum. Is this normal???

My second question is whether the overtones of this high quality snare can be tuned out without the use of a moongel, an o ring, or any type of muffling? Thanks a lot!!

Congratulations! I almost got the same snare! A lot of the time you'll find stickier lugs on different parts of the drum, even straight from the factory. You can get lug lube for really cheap and fix that. For overtones, tuning can only do so much. On a big brass you're going to have to learn to love your overtones. What you can do, however, is get a two-ply head, a snare strand with more snares, and tune the reso head a little bit lower than the batter. Other than that you'll probably have to go with at least a little moon gel.

There is one lug which is especially troublesome. No matter which tension rod I use, it still is hard to screw it in (I can't screw it in with my finger like the others). Is this what you mentioned as a "sticky lug", or is it something else. All of the tension rods are well oiled.

DDC, is there any chance that the tension rod is cross threaded in the lug?

Perhaps the position of the rim of the drum affects the cross-threading for the tension rods. I figured out that I could actually finger screw all of the tension rods if I pulled the rim toward that side.

Are all the tension rods going straight into the lug? That might be causing the problem. Otherwise I agree 100% with every C1P said.

Yes. All of them go straight into the lug but like I said, after I screwed in some of the lugs, I had to pull on the rim to screw the tension rods in the last few lugs in. There is no problem with lubrication.

Apparently there is a problem with the rim or the shell because I have to pull it to one side. I will try to exchange the drum itself for another one.

I would assume that the hoop is bent or out of round a little. Its pretty rare to see a higher quality snare shell out of round straight from the factory, where as hoops can go out of round much easier.

The thing is, I have to do it (pull it toward the lug) on both the top rim and bottom rim of the snare drum.

is there any tightness if you just screw the lugs in without using the rim?

No. I don't think so. Only when the rim is on the drum do I have trouble.