Pork Pie Snares?

Jankowske said:
Yep, some ugly backwards lug splay, to complement the ugly lugs and ugly shell.

Does lug splay even really matter when you have typical swivel nut lugs? I get how it would be horrible on tube lugs and the like. Is it just because of having potentially less tension rod to hoop flange surface area contact, or purely aesthetic?
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It's probably purely aesthetic in this case. I dislike it because it's indicative of a certain lack of QC. If you're willing to let a drum like that into a promotional still, what else is lurking where I can't see?

That's why I said "Nope nope nope."
 
Just ask Bill to build you a Pork Pie snare with solid brass tube lugs. No splay there, guaranteed. I have a custom-made PP maple 7x14 snare, and I requested brass tube lugs.

Bill is well known for the quality of his work, especially the stuff he builds in the USA. Tim Alexander of Primus recorded much of Primus's early famous work on a custom Pork Pie kit/snares, and Bill has fixed kits for Porcaro, to Budgie, to Chad Smith, etc. He knows what he is doing, and if he signed off on the shell of the drum (which you can tell by looking inside it), then there's no way he'd let one of his drums go out so flawed.

Go to Pork Pie's Facebook page and contact/ask Bill directly.
 
keep it simple said:
Ok. you've just baited the Andy fishing hook, & I'm being "reeled in"!

Here's my take: In terms of structural integrity, given the forces involved, it's close to a non issue. It becomes more of an issue on solid lugs. Lugs with inserts have a degree of give in them that allows the insert to align with the tension screw. In all but the thinnest shell wood drums with solid single point lugs, it has a negligible impact on either sound or shell structure. Significant splay when applied to tube lugs, can promote premature wear of the threads, especially if the screw is shallow in the lug. As for the argument that splay helps tuning retention, that's not true. Perhaps initially whilst the thread is wearing to accommodate, but thereafter, the reverse is true. The best way of assuring good tuning retention is to have a good depth of thread engaged in the lug, & lugs with inserts rarely have that.

Here's what really bugs me about lug splay. It's unnecessary! I regard lug splay as indicative of general lack of care & attention. My thinking is, if you can let something as basic as getting your measurements wrong slip through the net, what else are you turning a blind eye to? That said, I have to be careful here. Our new series drums all use M5 stainless steel tension screws. The holes in most hoops are to accommodate M6 or imperial equivalent. Due to the hoop's manufacturing process, most have a draft angle applied, & that means the screw can migrate towards the outside of the holes in the hoop. So, even if we get our measurements spot on, if we or a customer fits "S" hoops, or after market cast hoops, we could have a very small degree of splay on a Guru snare. Sacrilege!!!!! To mitigate that, we've adjusted our lug standoff by + 0.35mm. Yes, that's the level of attention we apply as standard, so why can't the big boys do the same?

A word of caution here. The number of drums out there with splay is probably less than you think. It's pretty much limited to a few sloppy engineering examples. When using a modern point & shoot camera, it's quite likely that the standard wide angle lens will give a false impression of lug splay. I'm convinced that a lot of examples I see are as a result of this.
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Andy, if I'm out of line for quoting you here, please let me know.

My previous post might be in err, and maybe at some point Bill D. might weigh in here.

Either way, with most swivel nuts a certain amount of variance is acceptable. The fixed lug (tube lug style) is more of a concern, I guess.

Also, I don't think this PP multi-wood veneer snare is necessarily a "custom" snare. PP has a bunch of mass production snares. This matters too, right?
 
STXBob said:
Of course it's lug splay. Look at the image again. Look closely at the right-hand side, where you can see white between the tension rods and the shell. Any fool can plainly see that's lug splay.

Here, I marked it for you:
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Disagreements is one thing, name calling is another. Not for sure if "fool" is quite the lingo that is accepted by respectable forum members. I started this thread and bickering back and forth is not what I had in mind. Was just curious about the snares.
 
I've seen and played a lot of Pork Pie drums and I've never seen one with splay like that. That particular drum is definitely an anomaly. I'm sure that, if the owner wants to, Pork Pie would make good on it. Bill is an honorable businessman and one hell of a drumsmith! I've emailed back and forth with him several times and it's always been a pleasure.

As to throwing around invective and just having to be right. One guy has already been shown the door for this type of behavior. If you don't agree then just move on. Everyone else is here to have a good time and hopefully learn something meaningful while they're at it.
 
I apologize for my tone and poor choice of words. My dander gets up when something which is not a matter for debate is debated. However, that's not an excuse for rudeness.

At the same time, there's "just having to be right" and actually being right. If users let fear of emphasizing fact over fiction, if they over-emphasize"having a good time," nobody will learn anything meaningful. Because everyone will be too afraid of harshing mellow to actually say anything meaningful.
 
You just have to look at a PDP Ace, which is another Black Beauty copy and looks exactly like the BoB. You'll see how much of a better build quality the Pork Pie has. I owned the Ace, but one day while in GC, I walked by a BoB and saw that it looked exactly like the Ace. So I checked it out and immediately bought it brand new right there on the spot, no questions asked. Gave the Ace to my nephew.

I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Little Squealer drum set either, or any other Pork Pie drums for that matter.
 
Midnite Zephyr said:
You just have to look at a PDP Ace, which is another Black Beauty copy and looks exactly like the BoB. You'll see how much of a better build quality the Pork Pie has. I owned the Ace, but one day while in GC, I walked by a BoB and saw that it looked exactly like the Ace. So I checked it out and immediately bought it brand new right there on the spot, no questions asked. Gave the Ace to my nephew.

I wouldn't hesitate to buy a Little Squealer drum set either, or any other Pork Pie drums for that matter.
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That "little squealer" is going to be in my snare inventory eventually. I just love that name lol. Thanks for the info as well.

Glad we can all agree to disagree without name calling. Opinions are welcomed but lets keep it clean and respectful! Thanks to all. Everyone has so much insight on this forum.
 
church drummer said:
Disagreements is one thing, name calling is another. Not for sure if "fool" is quite the lingo that is accepted by respectable forum members. I started this thread and bickering back and forth is not what I had in mind. Was just curious about the snares.
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Aw, thanks CD.

It's all good, we're all friends here. I'm not offended.

Watch now, how I can be a smart ass,

technically splay is not tension rod pulled in.

splay
splā/Submit
verb
1.
thrust or spread (things, especially limbs or fingers) out and apart.
"her hands were splayed across his broad shoulders"
(of a thing) diverge in shape or position; become wider or more separated.
"the river splayed out, deepening to become an estuary"
construct (a window, doorway, or aperture) so that it diverges or is wider at one side of the wall than the other.
"the walls are pierced by splayed window openings"
noun
1.
a widening or outward tapering of something, in particular.
a tapered widening of a road at an intersection to increase visibility.
noun: splay; plural noun: splays
a splayed window aperture or other opening.
2.
a surface making an oblique angle with another, such as the splayed side of a window or embrasure.
the degree of bevel or slant of a surface.
noun: splay
adjective
adjective: splay
1.
turned outward or widened.
"the girls were sitting splay-legged"

Hey, does this PP snare sound good. I heard it does ;-)
 
STXBob said:
I apologize for my tone and poor choice of words. My dander gets up when something which is not a matter for debate is debated. However, that's not an excuse for rudeness.

At the same time, there's "just having to be right" and actually being right. If users let fear of emphasizing fact over fiction, if they over-emphasize"having a good time," nobody will learn anything meaningful. Because everyone will be too afraid of harshing mellow to actually say anything meaningful.
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No worries Bob. Now that I've re-read this whole thread, I think you're correct.

I am somewhat notorious for having lower standards ;-)
 
I with Andy in that I think the curved lens of a camera distorts the image and that splay is not like that in real life.
 
The screw is thicker up top and your brain amplifies that into an optical illusion of greater splay-though there maybe a small amount. Take a card and line it up and you see the top thickness stick out. Hmmm bottom looks splayed though so much for that brilliant idea. Lots of camera artifact though.
 
It's possible but not likely.

I responded a little hastily and didn't look closely enough.

I have been a commercial photographer my whole adult life so I apologize in advance for a lame argument of authority.

Lens curvature as a general rule contributes to linear distortion. Even the highest quality lenses can have distortion issues. Back when zoom lenses came out, many pros like me didn't like them because the designs weren't advanced enough and with wide ranges of focal lengths you could get barrel and pin-cushion distortion that was pretty noticeable. We all preferred our fixed focal length lenses. Computer designed multi-element lenses slowly improved on these deficiencies.

If this Pork Pie snare image is distorted it would be barrel distortion. Not very likely in a studio scenario with modern optics at a relatively normal camera to product distance. The snare looks like it was photographed with a relatively normal field of view lens (i.e. a 50 mm on a 35mm camera) NOT a wide angle or a long telephoto.

If a lens doesn't perform well, you typically get barrel distortion with wide angles and pin cushion with telephotos.

I put that PP photo in Photoshop (snowed in today and too much time on my hands). The image was a little off and tilted ever so slightly to the right.

Look at the following photos with horizontal and vertical guides dropped in. The shell is pretty true the rods aren't.

OP Photo -
picture.php


Upper Barrel Distortion - Now the tension rods are true vertical
picture.php


Lower Pin Cushion Distortion.
picture.php


Also, this image doesn't appear to suffer from convergence. You know like when you point your camera up at a tall building and the top of the building is angled in because of the image plane not being parallel to the building.

Sorry if this is boring for some but I'm into optics and imaging and photography in general so I thought I would provide a little info.

So.. .. in keeping with the intent of the OP. I have only given this snare a few whacks at my GC when they had one. It appeared to be in perfect condition and I didn't notice this splay when looking at the drum in person. It sounded good and with a head swap and some tuning time, I think it would a nice choice. To be fair, I didn't look that closely. Like I said, I am not really picky.

But this whole issue begs the question. What's the deal with seating tension rods and washers on hoops? All of my hoops on all of my drums have the tension rod hole elongated to accommodate any slight variance. Do some hoops not have enough play to allow for the top of the rods to sit out far enough? Maybe so.

I was looking at one of my old Gretsch snares and one of the rods was "splayed" in a little like the Pork Pie photo. I just loosened it, nudged it out a little and retightened it. Problem solved. It would be cool if they made washers that had some small bumps or created a little more friction on the hoop so you could adjust for splay and keep everything lined up right. This probably happens because of a tendency for the rod and washer to want to sit in one spot on top of the hoop when tension is applied.

What do you think?
 
Has anyone here actually had the pleasure of playing or hearing one of these? I've yet to meet a Pork Pie snare that I didn't want for my own. I just checked at the local GC and they didn't have one in stock. Oh, and I looked at all the Pork Pies that they had and none of them had any rod "splay". A couple of the Ludwigs did however but they still sounded great and I'm RIGHT about that ( just kidding). Go try some out. That's how I discovered my Patina and it's still one of my favorite snares.
 
markdrum said:
Has anyone here actually had the pleasure of playing or hearing one of these? I've yet to meet a Pork Pie snare that I didn't want for my own. I just checked at the local GC and they didn't have one in stock. Oh, and I looked at all the Pork Pies that they had and none of them had any rod "splay". A couple of the Ludwigs did however but they still sounded great and I'm RIGHT about that ( just kidding). Go try some out. That's how I discovered my Patina and it's still one of my favorite snares.
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I am still stuck on the NAME!!! lol like the originality.

I am going to buy one sooner or later. I just keep reading all the content on this thread...
 
To tell the truth, the name threw me off at first. Then I played one at a friend's gig and it was: "Where have you been?". It was the Patina 13x7" brass shell and it is one of the most versatile snares that I have ever owned. She has enough bite and body to fit just about any musical situation that I can imagine outside of stadium rock. I did find out that she has a big sister now. The GC I went to had a 6 1/2x14" Patina and that thing is sweet! Is it wise to date two sisters? I guess I still have that death wish after all.
 
I had a Little Squealer kit for about 5 years and I loved it. The snare was probably my favorite part of the kit. 14x7 maple. I had the satin black kit with the silver powder coated hardware. I'd recommend any Pork Pie product to anyone.
 
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