Taking a little break from work to share recent activities.
This past winter, I got a Sonor Bop kit. It was a little bit of a fiasco to finally get all of the parts shipped to me, but that was a while back.
So yesterday, I did some trading with a colleague of mine.
What I traded:
20" Sabian AA rock ride
18" Zildjian A-series medium thin crash
What I got:
20" Zildjian A-series medium ride
A nice boom stand (Tama, double-braced)
New, single ply coated drum heads (12" remo ambassador, and two 14" Evans single-ply coated heads, comparable to remo ambassadors)
He's also taking my slightly cracked Sabian AA 17" medium thin crash (my favorite cymbal before my A customs) to a guy who has a great machine shop and having it cut back to about 16" crash. My colleague had a cymbal there that had actually been cut back, and you couldn't tell anything had been done (no weird cuts or anything). He has a tool that he's going to let me borrow that cuts a perfectly round circle
In addition, he also showed me how to sand down the super-rough edges on one of my toms to get a good edge. I know that this makes some people cringe...the thought of sanding an edge yourself; however, these Sonor edges were ROUGH. Anything would be an improvement. I plan on doing this before installing the new heads in addition to doing this on the reso sides of my kick and toms as well.
In essence, this weekend I'll be hanging out inside doing some well-overdue maintenance on these Sonors to see how well they clean up.
Unless they are attached to a bottle of nitrogen glycerin, what is the fear of sanding a bearing edge?
all the best...
The danger is that folks are afraid that sanding will cause the edge to no longer be "true"; in other words, the edge may become lower on one side than the other, thus making them impossible to tune. What my friend showed me yesterday was to go at it (with very fine sandpaper) from the actual angle that it was cut, not straight at it on the top. I'm just wanting to sand the rough spots out really gently because they are pretty bad as it is.
I've done a lot of research into bearing edges and shell dimension tolerances. From what I've been able to find, new Keller shells with bearing edges professionally cut are typically within .003" to .005" of being truely flat. This is based on people who have actually measured their new shells on a precision polished granite machinist's block and height gauges, accurate to within well under .001". For reference, a sheet of computer printer paper is typically somewhere around .003" thick. IMO, as long as you don't concentrate in just one area, but rather go all the way around the drum lightly with a fine grit paper just enough to smooth it, you should be fairly safe. If the edges are really rough, then it's probably at least .003" out the way it is.
I don't see what good it would do to sand the inside bevel, since the head never touches that part. The actual top of the edge and outside bevel are what the head touches and needs to be able to slide smoothly and evenly over these surfaces to be tuned easily. This is just my personal opinion based on my observations....
Last edited by N2Bluz; 08-15-2013 at 10:50 PM.
-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
.001 tolerances are overkill, yes it is good to be accurate. I use a marble slab, but machinist tolerances are not required, plastic drumheads have much more forgiveness than that. When you are done, if you want fluid smooth edge you can rub a little bees wax onto the edge. Or if you want more stable tuning, maybe dont. Alot of the stuff we do is at best, maybe helps but doesn;t hurt, much like performance add ons to your vehicle. Most times, no improvement is felt or noticed, but hey, it cant hurt.
click to see my kit re-veneer/finish
http://www.drumchat.com/showthread.p...168#post379168
One of the tidbits of info I found was from a noted quality custom drum builder. They said that for an intermediate level shell, being able to pass a single sheet of paper (again, approx .003") under the bearing edge in a few locations around the shell (especially two spots 180* apart) is not uncommon. Two sheets is borderline, but acceptable. They also said on a beginner/budget kit, it's not uncommon for the edges to not be sanded...and if you can only pass one sheet of paper under the edge in a few spots then you snagged a good one, LOL! For high end shells, they said the edges should be pretty close to exact.
I think this all pretty much falls in line with everything. I know my old XPK shells fell within the "intermediate" parameters, and they tuned up easy and sound good. I can't wait to install my new Evans "360" EC2 heads and see if the tune as easily as advertised.
-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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