Originally Posted by
pastor_bob
So, as background, when I was first taking lessons my teacher had 2 kits set up, and on his kit he had a set of overtone control heads on his toms (if I remember correctly, they were Remo Pinstripes). Now I loved the sound of my Catalina kit right out of the box, with single ply clear heads. I tuned it, and got just the sound I wanted - shear heaven. In contrast, my teacher's toms sounded a bit plastic, and I really didn't like the sound at all.
Today, I will admit that the Catalina kit probably could have been the worst sounding kit, but I would have loved it. What did happen to reinforce my opinion of the sound of my kit, was the compliments I got from other drummers that played the kit. As I describe it, my kit just "sings." Over time, I did change out the clear heads for a slightly warmer, with coated single ply batters, but basically I have always like the open sound of my kit. That was until the band did a gig in my church's gym. When I heard the recording of the gig, I was shocked at how thin and trebley the kit sounded.
So, I decided to get some Evans EC2 SST 360 batter heads for the toms, just in case I ever did another gig with open, reflective walls. Of course, I wanted to hear whether I would really like the sound from behind the kit, so I put them on before band practice yesterday. I just got them tuned (my usual 4th apart tuning) when the first bandmate arrived, so I only had the first impressions before I started playing. I did go through the toms a couple of times, just to get used to them, and I was surprised how much I liked the sound. When we started playing, I found myself finding reasons to run through the toms all the way to the 16" floor tom, and that's something I rarely did, but I was really enjoying the sound I was getting from the toms. Well, by the time practice was over, I knew that I'd been in sonic heaven, and I was getting good feedback on my playing.
All this time, I have been avoiding the controlled sound heads, because of a single experience. WHAT WAS I THINKING?
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