Trying Evans UV2

Mastiff

Senior Member
My hydraulics were trashed so I'm trying some Evans UV2, mostly just because I was curious. I'm sure my ear is out of calibration from the hydraulics, but these things seem to be resonating like crazy. They actually sound just like timpani to me, even the tuning between the low rack tom and floor tom has the same interval. My moongel is gooey and gross, so I ordered some drumtacs, but any other suggestions for taming these? I'm a novice tuner and just tuned them by making the pitch near each lug sound similar, and I have the reso head tuned lower than batter. The review I saw for the UV2 made it seem like damping like moongel shouldn't be needed...
 
Tune it very low, JAW +10%
 
To be fair, if you've been using hydraulics then virtually any other drum head will resonate significantly more. Hydraulics are extremely dead at any tuning, you'll probably get a better sound if you back the UV2's off a bit although they'll never sound like hydraulics. As you kind of alluded to you may just have to adjust your hearing to a more 'normal' sounding drumhead.

Mark
 
I was out of town this week. Last night I played with tuning the heads down, and to my ear they are booming more than ever. The drumtacs are powerless to tame them, at least to my ear. I'm not trying to make them dead like the hydraulics, but I want to be able to hear my bass drum when doing tom/bass combo fills, for example. I'm going to experiment more with the reso head tuning today, which is still quite low. They might be reinforcing themselves at the moment with similar tuning.
 
Just wanted to update the thread to say that tightening up the reso on these made a huge difference. I forget where I got the advice to tune the reso lower, but that was really the wrong approach with these. The floor tom sustains for a bit longer than I'd prefer still, but it was problematic even with the hydraulics. Might just be a cheap drum thing. Low batter, high reso, and drumtac on each batter.
 
Just wanted to update the thread to say that tightening up the reso on these made a huge difference. I forget where I got the advice to tune the reso lower, but that was really the wrong approach with these. The floor tom sustains for a bit longer than I'd prefer still, but it was problematic even with the hydraulics. Might just be a cheap drum thing. Low batter, high reso, and drumtac on each batter.
I often need to put a bit of tape on the reso heads of my floor toms, especially the 14". Even with a lot of muffling on the batter, an unmuffled reso will keep on ringing. I don't know what it is about 14" floor toms, but every one I've had resonates for days.
 
I tamed the floor tom a bit more. I was trying the cotton ball trick, and after putting about 6 or 8 of them in there, I cut a 1" x 8" or so strip from a T-shirt and shoved that in the vent. That seemed to do the trick okay. Mine's a 16".
 
As you discovered, having different tensions on batter and resonant will tame resonance. When they oscillate at different frequencies they work against each other and reduce the time it takes for them to come to rest. Conversely, the closer they are tuned the more they will resonate of course.

And yes, typically resonant is higher tuned than batter.

Also, you can wash your moongels with soap and water and they will come back to life.
 
Also, how many moongels are you trying? I watched one of those Vic Firth VFJams on YouTube last week. And this cat had 5 gels on one of his floor toms. I'm just saying, maybe one or 2 isn't enough.

They are SO different than Hydraulics, lol. They're really singin' to ya.
 
Also, how many moongels are you trying? I watched one of those Vic Firth VFJams on YouTube last week. And this cat had 5 gels on one of his floor toms. I'm just saying, maybe one or 2 isn't enough.

They are SO different than Hydraulics, lol. They're really singin' to ya.

Yeah, I only have one drumtac on top and I put one on the bottom. No doubt I could go nuts with moongel or tape and deaden the hell out of them. The new heads are so pretty I couldn't bring myself to tape them up yet. Plus, I want to train myself away from the super dead sound a bit. When I see people with normal heads covered with tape and gel and towels, I wonder why they don't just get hydraulics in the first place.
 
Also, how many moongels are you trying? I watched one of those Vic Firth VFJams on YouTube last week. And this cat had 5 gels on one of his floor toms. I'm just saying, maybe one or 2 isn't enough.

They are SO different than Hydraulics, lol. They're really singin' to ya.
If one isn't enough your doing something wrong... Its a drum, not a practice pad!!
 
Wanted to try these but I hate the plastic sounding slap and the tubbiness you get from Black Chromes and Hydraulics. Not cheap either. Can anyone here convince me that I'm completely wrong?
 
Wanted to try these but I hate the plastic sounding slap and the tubbiness you get from Black Chromes and Hydraulics. Not cheap either. Can anyone here convince me that I'm completely wrong?
I use Evans mostly but I have Ambassadors on my Yamahas currently. I don't hear a difference. I wonder if this is more about the stick/tip than the heads
 
The problem more me is that UV1 and UV2 heads have less attack. That's a total deal-breaker for me.
I test drove a UV1 on my Birch Yamaha Snare. Lots of ring and overtones. In a larger room it would sweet I suspect. In my small, dry, treated live room its too much and needs tamed with something to sound right under the mics
 
I found that these heads really do sound best tuned quite low, usually with the reso heads tuned anywhere from a M2 to a P4 above the batter (depending on the depth of the drum). Here's a video I did on them for Sounds Like a Drum:
Tuned really low is just the opposite of what I do. I know its an extremely popular approach but low tunings like that are all attack / no tone dead sounding toms to me.
 
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