Marching head on kick?

  • Thread starter DrumminFoo
  • Start date
    • This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links like Ebay, Amazon, and others.
D

DrumminFoo

Active Member
Joined
Feb 25, 2016
Messages
26
Reaction score
0
Location
California
Hey, I'm always seeing posts warning people not to use marching heads on their snares, but I haven't seen anything about marching bass heads on kick drums. Is there anything terrible about putting a marching head as a reso head, not too tight? I like the sound I'm getting but don't want to walk up to an imploded drum.
 
Seems like it's a vintage amb style 2ply head with a foam ring...

I think you'd be better of with an ambassador w felt strips to bring out a wider spectrum of freq's
 
This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links like Ebay, Amazon, and others.
Thanks for the suggestion, using the mx2 because I have it lol. Are there problems with using a marching head though?
 
I doubt it.

Marching bass drums are still close to their drumset brothers, so to speak and those heads are mylar are they not?

Unlike those horrible modern marching snares.....
 
Marching snares a different breed -for the last 20-30 years anyway. Bass drum should be more or less normal.
 
There is no problem with Marching Bass Drum Heads for standard kit drums. They use the same Mylar. The only difference is the way they are glued into their counter hoops to not pull out during the higher tension that is used in Marching Band/Drum Corps.

The tenor heads are the same as the Bass Drum heads. with respect to gluing into the counter hoops to prevent pull out. No one cranks a tom tom like they do the marching tenors, so most of those heads will work for drumset as well.

The marching heads the warnings are about are the Kevlar heads used on modern marching snare drums. They will cave a standard snare drum shell.
 
I have the plain / no muffling single ply Evans marching heads on my Rogers kick,
because Evans doesn't want to make coated G1s in a 24 (bastards).
 
DrumminFoo said:
I'm using an Evans mx2
Click to expand...
I'm curious as to how the smooth whites would perform as tom batters, as an alternative to emperor smooths. I need to order a sample.
 
How would Kevlar heads crush drum shells? Sorry, never was a marching/line player so I don't know. I assume because they are very stiff, you really need to crank them to hell and could destroy lugs???
 
JazzDrumGuy said:
How would Kevlar heads crush drum shells? Sorry, never was a marching/line player so I don't know. I assume because they are very stiff, you really need to crank them to hell and could destroy lugs???
Click to expand...
Marching drummers want a very tight and clean articulation when they play, so they crank the drumheads really tight.

I've seen several different variations of drums being destroyed - all by overcranking the drumheads. Most of this was in the late 80s and early 90s when kevlar first came out and the drums were not built to withstand the higher tension than what they were doing with mylar. They have since remedied that with higher gauge metals in the casings, free floating systems to get them off the shells and aluminum reinforcement rings around the bearing edges.

One is where the lug casings would break from the over tensioning. A variation is the tension rods snapping off in the drum. Sometimes the casing would actually be torn off (through) the shell. NOT a good sound.

The Big damage was the drum cave in.
You know what a snare drum bearing edge is supposed to look like. Now imagine one rolling in on itself and looking about like this:
(broken attachment removed)
(not actually a caved drumshell - couldn't find a pic of any)
But actually worse, and rolled in further, and not evenly. Almost like taking a paper towel center cardboard roll and placing in in the palm of your hand and then pushing to crush it together.

NOT PRETTY. NOT REPAIRABLE.
 
DrumminFoo said:
Hey, I'm always seeing posts warning people not to use marching heads on their snares, but I haven't seen anything about marching bass heads on kick drums. Is there anything terrible about putting a marching head as a reso head, not too tight? I like the sound I'm getting but don't want to walk up to an imploded drum.
Click to expand...
I've never heard that. Wouldn't matter because I love ambassador marching snare side heads. Why? Because they're shallow. It's the perfect head for my Ludwig snares.
 
FYI, I was informed that the MX2 heads for tenors are tight, due to the different crimping process, so don't work well for standard toms because of the limited tuning range.
 
Kevlar heads were all the rage my Jr. and Sr. year of high school. Our instructor fresh out of the Cavaliers, upgraded our Yamaha snares with Kevlar heads. It last about three weeks before he heard about imploding drums. We went back Ebony Pinstripes for the tenors, and whatever we were using on the snares.

Funny thing is we found that the ebony Pinstripes would de-tune themselves if the tenors sat out in the sun too long. I think they went back to clear pinstripes after I graduated, and the heads had seen their life cycle come to an end!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top