Review: New Online Drum Lesson Course

I just tweaked it a little. Feel free to edit or make suggestions. I covered some of the different drive mechanisms and did a little explaining about how they are different. I'm not sure I should go too far into adjusting since that could get outdated in a few years. I was trying to make my write ups non-dated. I might actually leave that part out. What do you guys think?

Thanks for the encouragement Ballistic.

Attached Files

Bass Drum Pedal Basics.doc (27.5 KB, 344 views)

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I got three kits. Maple, birch, and ash. Shell material don't matter that much.

After covering the various shell materials that are being used in drum production, I felt it necessary to say a little bit about how you get that drum off of the floor and into a playable position. For the purpose of this article, we are concerning ourselves with the modern drum kit. This in no way is meant as a be all end all or to cover marching or symphonic percussion. I'll start with the following because there aren't many differences between the manufacturers:


Well obviously, bass drums use spurs. There are different schools of thought as to the elevation of the front rim but there is really no unversal right answer to that question. It all comes down to whether the drummer who plays on the kit hears any odd modulations in the sound of the drum. If it bothers you, change it. If it doesn't, don't.

As far as I know, there are only two exceptions to bass drums that would call for a suspension. The first is in the case of gong bass drums. They are typically outfitted with a bracket of sorts where the spurs would be and then mounted on some form of a two-posted stand.

The other exception is in the case of elaborate rack and riser configurations. From time to time there is an undersized platform used on the riser. A tube is inserted into the tom mount on the bass drum and then bracketed to the rack tubings. This creates a suspension of sorts while still affixing the drum in its traditional position.


Basically, floor toms use legs. There are times when suspension is used for 14 to 18 inch toms but for the sake of brevity, we'll lump those in with rack toms. The legs of a floor tom can be affixed by a bracket that is either drilled to the shell or fastened to an isolation ring that traverses the entire circumference of the drum and is attached at the tension screws on the resaonant side of the drum. Isolation mounting is fairly uncommon for floor toms as there is not as much need to enhance sustain. This is due to the naturally high level of sustain that floor toms contain as compared to other drums on the kit.


Similarly to floor toms, there isn't much variation here. Snare drums are mounted on snare drum stands. Typically the stand contains a tripod base and a three armed fork at the top meant to secure the drum. I tried to think of something clever to put here but failed because really there aren't many nuances to this.


Now that those are out of the way we need to cover the most varied of all.



At first this post was going to compare and contrast the different mounting types used by the "major" manufacturers. The scope changed while I was researching them after discovering that with the exception of Pearl and Yamaha virtually everyone is using omnisphere to L-rod to isolation mount arrangements. That meant that I would have found myself typing the same thing over and over again and how exciting is that? Mapex, Sonor, DW, Ayotte, Taye, Ddrum, and Gretsch are all using this mounting style. While the fastening of the isolation mount varies from case to case, I believe that the differences are essentially for the sake of cosmetics and brand individuality. Whether mounted by the tension screws or under the lugs, my ears cannot hear any characteristic differences that this causes.

Which brings us to the odd balls. Pearl uses a tube style arm that mounts into a female bracket. Once upon a time, there were no isolation mounts and there was widespread criticism pointing to the problems with having so large of a hole bored into the shell of a tom. Nowadays the tube enters the female bracket on an isolation mount. Also, the lack of an omnisphere style ball in the tom arm was complained about due to it's apparent setup limitations. However, if you restrain from mounting the toms on the bsas drum bracket, which I highly recommend, then you shouldn't run into these issues either.

Lastly, Yamaha drums use the YESS mounting system. This is a hexagonal post that is affixed on the hardware side to an omnisphere style mount and on the drum side enters a female bracket directly fastened to the drum at the point where it has been determined that there is the least amount of vibration. There is still no use of isolation mounts and a as a player of a Yamaha kit for the last 8 years, I don't find this to be a hindrance.

Whatever your personal preference for the suspension types, the one thing that I can say will cause the most impedence to the sound of your kit is to mount the toms directly to the bass drum bracket. Toms will hum every time the kick is struck and vice versa. Additionally, the added weight to the kick drum will alter its sound due to the droum being pressed further out of round. Other than that, it really seems to be about all about what looks best to you.

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Albums I'm listening to non-stop these days:

Opeth - Ghost Reveries
King Crimson - Red
Primus - Fizzle Fry
Nile - Icthyphalic
New Model Army - Thunder and Consolation

Good job Enomai. It just needs a spell check and change "tension screws" to "tension rods" under floor toms.

Just a note, in case anyone does this..... don't type a huge post in the browser window. Type it in word or whatever and copy/paste. I guess it's only an issue if you have a 'back' button programmed on your mouse.... I lost a few pages of text one day like that.

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I got three kits. Maple, birch, and ash. Shell material don't matter that much.

We will now start to edit all of this section and get it ready for it's final posting. Thanks to all who have helped with it.

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