Vintage Series shell bank complete!

[DaveInNZ]

I personally found that produced what I can only describe as 'god-awful' note on these Vintage Series, though obviously, that's with two different thickness heads. Whether that would work with Ambassadors both ends for instance, no idea.

But I did that initially with the coated Emperor and coated Ambassador pairing and genuinely wanted to give the kit back.

[Jack]

I just checked back on my spreadsheet (for better or worse I have a spreadsheet covering every bit of music gear I've ever bought) and the original kit I bought (second hand) was a 2018 build date. No memory locks on those spurs and I'm not sure what bass drum head it would have shipped with as it was minty, but second hand when I got it. That was the 22x14 and still has the coated PS3 on it from when I bought it. The new 18 and 20 bass drums are coated PS3 but the 24 has a black dot, I haven't looked closely enough yet to see what type of head it is beyond the dot.

Intersting - I wonder if it was a forgotten item? The head's are all Remo Powerstroke 3 variants - coated or coated black dot are the models.

For heads I'm going straight to what I know has worked very well on the original 12/13/16/22 kit - coated Emperors over coated Ambassadors, tuned to the same frequency via the Tunebot. I'm anticipating needing to use a trick I developed on my Pearl kit which is to use a varying number of flattened cotton balls inside the floor toms to achieve the same length of sustain on the note. On the Pearl kit it was two cotton balls in the 14FT, four in the 16FT and six in the 18FT. This theory is yet to be proven... I'm also not 100% sure whether an Emperor on top will kill the 8 and 10 toms down too much, but we'll see.

I'm not anticipating ever having it all set up at once beyond maybe a novelty, so I guess setting it up as a starting point and then adjusting it to whatever project I'm working on.

Sure- I've had emporers on the kit. I run coated Ambassadors all round now, clear on bottom, and love it. Not dampening at all (unless I'm in a situation that needs it) minus the bass drum which has a remo muffler and a felt strip. I have a tune bot also, but I don't really use it to tune with (oddly) and more of a take the readings so I can replicate and keep consistent for FOH.

note on the interval tuning - I've never had much success with it in being a one fits all blanket approach for all the drums. Minor 3rd may sound great on this particular 12 for example, but doesn't seem to carry across the drums the same, speaking from my experience. They're could be uglies when applied to the 14FT for example, with a different resonance or tone. I approach each drum as it's own thing. Apart from a nice sound from the individual drum, I like to have a similar tone and resonance from the other drums whilst holding a reasonable spacing of pitch between the toms thats pleasing.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1EcanidvAqU You can hopefully grab the general vibe, though I don't play the 16. D505 snare FYI.