Andy
Honorary Member
Completed a piece of R&D this morning that I've been working on for some time. Without some pretty advanced diagnostics, I can't take it any further, but I don't need to - I've got ears. What I haven't got is complete answers, just pieces of real world evidence & some theories.
Now here's the really crappy bit, I'm not going to share most of the detail with you, it's too "hard won", & you don't really need to know anyhow. I will leave you with these basic thoughts though:
Venting - many of our drums aren't vented. In most cases, they benefit positively from this, except in some thicker/more rigid shell forms. I set about building some test drums from ply shells (mostly Keller, if you're interested, but also a couple of Pearl & an old Gretsch 3 ply too), removed all variables, then compared them to several of our solid shell forms in both snare & tom formats. The results were very revealing, with some startling differences in performance affects. In almost all cases, the ply forms were better with venting, as without, they tended to choke both dynamically & in terms of useable upper tuning range. The common thread seems to be rigidity, but I'm not completely sure.
The biggest deal for me is the missing half of the equation, drums suck as well as blow. The theory is that a vent is necessary to dispel air pressure & allow the drum to "breathe", but what if the vent can't suck air back into the drum fast enough such that it doesn't put the brakes on the head movement. Does that cause a phase delay between the heads? I found evidence that it may well be the case. There's no point in breathing out if you can't breathe in. I'm convinced that the combination of more readily excited shells with a larger resonance amplitude in some way mitigate choking on some unvented drums too, but I can't prove the mechanism.
This is all nerdy stuff that nobody really needs to know except the drum builder. It's not a better or worse factor, it just is. Drums do really suck though
Now here's the really crappy bit, I'm not going to share most of the detail with you, it's too "hard won", & you don't really need to know anyhow. I will leave you with these basic thoughts though:
Venting - many of our drums aren't vented. In most cases, they benefit positively from this, except in some thicker/more rigid shell forms. I set about building some test drums from ply shells (mostly Keller, if you're interested, but also a couple of Pearl & an old Gretsch 3 ply too), removed all variables, then compared them to several of our solid shell forms in both snare & tom formats. The results were very revealing, with some startling differences in performance affects. In almost all cases, the ply forms were better with venting, as without, they tended to choke both dynamically & in terms of useable upper tuning range. The common thread seems to be rigidity, but I'm not completely sure.
The biggest deal for me is the missing half of the equation, drums suck as well as blow. The theory is that a vent is necessary to dispel air pressure & allow the drum to "breathe", but what if the vent can't suck air back into the drum fast enough such that it doesn't put the brakes on the head movement. Does that cause a phase delay between the heads? I found evidence that it may well be the case. There's no point in breathing out if you can't breathe in. I'm convinced that the combination of more readily excited shells with a larger resonance amplitude in some way mitigate choking on some unvented drums too, but I can't prove the mechanism.
This is all nerdy stuff that nobody really needs to know except the drum builder. It's not a better or worse factor, it just is. Drums do really suck though