Snare splurge

I splurged today and bought myself a high-end and somewhat rare snare drum. It's a Peavey Radial Pro 1000 14x6 maple snare. What's unusual about it, besides being made by Peavey (they're better known for electronic products, monitors, speakers, etc. and not drums), is that it has this bridge system with a built in bearing edge. The bridge, consisting of 8 solid pieces of maple glued and pinned together into an octagon, is glued to the snare shell, eliminating all lugs, holes, and other tone robbing hardware. I got this info here. It's also the same kind of snare I've been playing on at Mountain Music where I've been taking drum lessons. I've always liked the snare's crack and stick response and the store had this snare on sale for a few weeks now, so I finally took the plunge and bought it.

The snare is somewhat rare since Peavey doesn't make this kind of drum anymore. From my little bit of web research this is probably due to poor sales of the drum which is likely due to the drums' unusual appearance. That bridge system gives the drum a kind of strange fat, bulge, or "spare tire" around the shell. This particular snare also has a dual snare strainer, which I think is also a bit weird. This means you can half-tension the snares by clamping one lever and releasing the other. It provides two different sounds.

I put on a Remo Ambassador drum head (compliments of Mountain Music, thanks!) on the drum tonight and gave it a quick tune. There's still a bit of a buzz with it but I think an Evans Genera head would take care of it (I just don't seem to have good luck with Remo heads). Either that or maybe my trick of putting a batter head on the snare bottom may also dampen the buzzing somewhat. That seems to have worked for my other two snares. The cheapo Pearl Rhythm Traveller snare actually sounds fairly decent now, and my other Gretsch 14x6 also got fairly well dampened by this approach.

Update: I put on an Evans Genera Dry head and that seems to have taken care of the buzz. Both Genera heads have the built-in dampening ("overtone control") ring that takes the ringing out, but at the moment I prefer the Genera Dry for its vent holes. I think these somehow give more of a crack than the Genera. Both the Genera and Genera Dry are single-ply heads; I thought earlier that one was two-ply, but that's the G2 head, which I don't have on any of my snares. I'm not sure how a G2 would sound on a snare, but the Evans web page seems to suggest that the G2 is more appropriate for toms than for snares.

So now I have two "show snares". I think I can crank up the Peavey a bit more than the Gretch (maybe due to its different bearing edge?) to give it a bit more of a firecracker sound. I think it'll stand out more during gigs. Furthermore I now have a spare snare. I've always been paranoid about busting a snare head during a show, and now if I do I can just plop my old snare on the stand and be ready to go. I just need a 15x6 or maybe a 16x6 drum bag to carry the Peavey around. I'll try out this new sound at Spittoono next week. Somehow we got in Tanglewood's spot. I'm not quite sure I understand the full story, but it may be that we're actually subbing in for Tanglewood, backing up that band's singer. We're playing on the 23rd, then on the 24th we have a gig at 356 again. So the new snare will get tried by fire next week. Should be fun!