Excessive snare buzz

major_panic

Senior Member
Hi all, just a quick one.

I'm having an interesting problem with my Copper-Phonic. At any tuning, with different sets of wires, I'm getting an excess of snare buzz every time it is even lightly tapped. There seems to be a very, very light snare bed to the drum, so it's probably not that. It's not a tuning issue - I have never had a problem with getting drums to sound how I want - nor is there anything loose on the drum.

Before anyone asks - no, I haven't had time to replace heads yet. It has brand new heads on it (an Aquarian clear reso and an Aquarian Texture Coated with Dot) and I've tried it with both the stock Ludwig and Puresound Custom wires. I've even tried it with both grosgrain ribbon and snare cord.

The snare has a P-86 in case anyone was wondering about that.

I'm at a complete loss here, so any suggestions are appreciated!
 
I have an 8 x 14 snare that was driving me crazy. I put on a dryer batter and that reduced the buzz a bunch
 
My first suggestion is to crank the reso head almost until you fear it may be stretching.

A loose reso head will vibrate like crazy. If you tighten it up, it should buzz much less. Tightening the wires helps too, but you may not like your wires so tight.

Also, listen to what drum is making your snare buzz the most, and try tuning that drum differently.

Snares will buzz when the note the snare side head is tuned to.... is played by the bass, or another drum. You can't escape snare buzz completely, and it's one of the imperfections that make live music so interesting sounding. When talking about audio, IMO perfect is boring. Much more personality in imperfections.

But excessive buzzing can be remedied with a little experimentation.

With drums, any little thing like snare buzz or wild overtones gets lost in the din of the other instruments, it's only the drummer that obsesses on them.

Tightly tuned snares that have tight wires don't buzz much, loose tuned snares with loose wires buzz a lot. It's part of the charm of a sloppy tuned snare. Meaning good sloppy.

You just have to find your personal happy spot.
 
One thing to check is whether the snare wires/cord are even on the butt and strainer. Every time I reassemble a snare drum, I always seem to end up having to attach the wires twice to get it perfect.

Can you turn your drum upside down with the strainer engaged and take a pic of the wires?
 
I would say its an issue of improper bed width and depth for the wires you are using. Too flat of a reso head (ie. no bubble for the wires to ride on) will lead to excessive snare buzz. I'm guessing this was intentionally designed in to the drum. I sure hope Ludwig put some thought in to the build of this drum and didn't just phone it in. If that's the case, and you want less snare buzz, try using a 20 strand or less snare, crank up the reso to get as much bubble as you can get (even try a hair dryer, if you have to, to emphasize the bubble a bit more), and go from there.
 
What's this bubble you speak of Tommy?

I'm not following.
 
What's this bubble you speak of Tommy?

I'm not following.

The resonant head on a snare is really thin (2 or 3 mil depending on the head), so the head deforms and contours very easily when compared to something like an Ambassador weight head (10 mil). The snare bed is designed to help deform the snare resonant head so the head contours to the indention in the bearing edge. These indentions (snare beds) make two "low spots" on the head opposite each other with a high spot in the middle. Effectively a "bubble" for the snares to ride on. The deeper the snare the beds, the more pronounced this bubble is. The wider the bed, the wider the bubble is (which works great for 42 strand snares). There are certain design limitations where cutting a really deep or really wide bed actually negatively effects the drum. However, well cut snare beds will allow the musician to use less tension on their snares and have a less sympathetic snare buzz when playing the rest of the kit.

On something like a metal snare drum, with rolled bearing edges, its kind of difficult to get a nice snare bed on them. The only way to do it is by over bending the lip so it pulls just the slightest amount of more material over and makes a bit of a dip in the edge. A custom drum builder may spend more time on the roller trying to shape the bed a bit more, but a big company is just going to have the machine do it and move on to the next drum. On something like my Tama Rockstar steel shell, there is hardly any snare bed and its rather narrow so the drum is buzzy as hell no matter how much tension I put on the wires.

As I mentioned above, I hope that Ludwig put some effort in designing these drums so there is a well designed bed on them. Or, perhaps they designed the drum to intentionally have a shallow bed to give more sympathetic buzz.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone - I ended up overcranking the snare reso (I usually have it fairly tight, but I really went to town this time), retuned the top head, and cut down the snare wires - removed the outer 2 on either side and 4 from the centre. Much better! It is quite a lively drum, so that definitely accounts for some of it.
 
Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone - I ended up overcranking the snare reso (I usually have it fairly tight, but I really went to town this time), retuned the top head, and cut down the snare wires - removed the outer 2 on either side and 4 from the centre. Much better! It is quite a lively drum, so that definitely accounts for some of it.

I was going to say it put 12 strand wires on it, seems like your onto it. I wouldn't crank the reso too tight but also not too loose especially each side of the snare beds.
 
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