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!!