I start with the bass... I keep a relatively loose reso head on my bass... just a turn or two past wrinkled, and the batter a bit tighter. Then I move to the highest tom and work my way down... tuning each drum completely individually. I put both the batter and reso on and then start tuning. I tune the batter first... keeping the tension on all lugs as even as possible until I get a tone I'm happy with... just kindof wing it at this point. Then I tighten the reso a LOT, I want to get rid of as much overtone as possible, then i move to the next tom, and tune it to sound decent with the first... then in steps from there down on each tom.... then the snare. I like the batter head on the snare to be really tight. I like a nice pop, then I tighten the reso on the snare to be a few turns tighter than the batter... again to get rid of excess ring. Then I work with the strainer until I get kindof a fat tone, with pop. Then I spend a LOT of time tweaking, until everything works well together.
Thats the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it.
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