Time to eat some crow...
I don't have the ability to do videos that would do this snare side head justice, so I'll just do a write up.
I thought this thing was going to affect the snare a lot differently than they did. Like making it sound tubby in some way.
Nope...
The drum is a 14x6 Gretsch Catalina Club with a mahogany shell. Some upgrades have been done like a die cast batter hoop, DW mag throw-off & Pure Sound wires. The shell has been teak oiled on the inside & there's no wrap. Just ebony stain.
The head does make the snares not have the sustain they once did, so the sound is much more crispy. Like just on the edge of being choked. I have an Evans Hydraulic batter head on this drum, so the overtones are not there anyway. I'd imagine a more open head will affect how this snare side reacts, but I was going for the darker-than-dark sound here.
Upon tuning it down, the sound got really loose and sloppy. Probably the result of 2 thick heads giving it a very small range of sounding good. High & combat ready is the placement for this set up. I do like the suede head as a whole, and would recommend getting one for a certain snare you'd like to sound different than any other.
I will mess with it even more now that I've had time to try it out.