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Miscellaneous Tuning Ideas

Isolating the drum

In order for a drum to resonate to its fullest, nothing should interfere with the drum. The shell of a drum also resonates when the head is struck. Many large, bulky mounts actually mute the shell and prevent it from vibrating. This is where isolation mounts are needed. Many drum manufacturers today build their own isolating mounts into the normal tom mount. But if you have an older set, you can buy RIMS (Resonance Isolation Mounting System) from PureCussion. These hold the drum loosely with rubber grommets around the tension rods, leaving the shell to resonate freely.

To see if your drums would benefit from such a device, try this experiment. Mount the drum normally and hit it a few times. Now remove the drum from the mount and hold it up by only the rim. Hit it again. If it has more sustain and tone than when it was on the mount, you need RIMS (or something similar).

Lubrication

Metal parts that move need to be lubricated; bass pedals, hi-hat pedals, strainers, and tension rods. About once a year, you should remove all the tension rods, clean the gunk off of the threads, and from the thread inside the lug receiver (the "nut" part inside the lug casing). Before you replace the rods, apply a bit of grease to the bottom part of the threads. [I - and others - like to use lithium grease. It's readily available at hardware stores, and is sort of a clean grease as far as greases go.]

You should also replace any tension rods that are bent or have damaged threads. These make it hard to tune, and are just plain bad.

Also check the other moving parts to see if the grease is dirty and gritty, or has just dried up into gunk. Clean it out and reapply.

Tension rods that detune themselves

So the head of your rack toms keeps detuning on the sides towards you, huh? This is because the rod slowly unscrews itself when you hit the head, especially when you do rimshots. One solution is Lug Locks. These are nylon doohickies that fit onto the top of the rod and press against the rim. They usually work, but have been known to strip out over time.

Another idea is to apply a small drop of ThreadLock to the rods' threads after they've been tuned. This will prevent the rods from vibrating loose, but easily breaks free if you need to tune. Caution: Don't use the very heavy duty ThreadLock. You can probably figure out why.

Lug springs

Many drum manufacturers use springs inside the lug casings to hold the receiver in place. These small, seemingly isolated springs can wreak havoc on a drum's sound, especially in the studio. They cause annoying buzzes and rings. If your lugs contain springs, you have a couple options.
  • Replace them with flexible plastic or rubber tubing. Most any hardware store has an ample supply of this. (Best idea.)
  • Stuff them with cotton or other soft material. (Not-so-good idea since the springs are still in contact with metal parts.)
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    Using RotoToms live

    Improperly tuned RotoToms sound like crap when used live. Follow these suggestions for good sounding RotoToms.
     
     
  • Do:
  • use resonant heads (Ambassadors, Remo RotoTom heads, etc).
  • crank them up.
  • mic them closely.
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  • Don't:
  • use any head that doesn't resonate freely (PinStripe, CS, Hydraulic, etc).
  • muffle the head.
  • tune it low.
  • expect them to sound good if they aren't miked.
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