Assuming the cord and the adjustment screw are set up and adjusted appropriately, you may well be correct. We might expect a set of snares, especially if it was something like a Puresound type design with thicker copper end plates, not to make good contact on the head if they were mounted upside-down.

In my experience when changing or adjusting snare assemblies on these drums I've found that I need to loosen the snare tension knob to near the bottom of the threads (snares very loose) then center the snares and tie them to the throw and through the butt plate with pretty good tension (snare lever in the "on" position). Even with the snares fairly tight in that low position I find that I still need to tighten the knob probably halfway to three-quarters back towards the top to take out all the play in the snare cord (orange Ludwig cord). There is always a certain amount of "stretch" in the cord to take up and probably a bit of tension lost as the knots tighten up. Generally though by doing this I can end up with a good sound and still have some additional tension adjustment left if needed later on. If the snares are too loose to begin with you will run out of threads on the adjustment knob well before you get decent tension on the snares. To me it sounds like this may be the OP's problem.

Welcome to the forum, John! I agree with all the previous posts, so hopefully that helps you out. If not, you may try Fat Cat snare wires with "no pitch." I use a set of 16-strand Fat Cats (model FC1416NP) on my Jazz Fest. These are designed for snares with deep snare beds and work VERY well with my JF.

Also, if you're using a set of wires with traditional end plates, make sure you thread the cord through the top of the plates so that the cord is between the head and the plate when installed. The cord recently broke on my Supraphonic 402 (I have a set of 30-strand wires - per our sound engineer's request - with traditional end plates on it) and I reinstalled the wires and ran the cord where it would come out over the top of the end plates. I previously set it up to where the cord would be between the head and the plates, so I reversed this to prevent the cord breaking in the future (I thought the end plate had cut the cord). However, using every trick I knew (the ones previously stated in this thread by others), I couldn't get the wires to lay flat on the reso head and the drum had a terrible buzz. So, I restrung it the old way and now the wires lay flat and the drum is crisp...as crisp as you can get a drum that was not made for 30-strand wires that is.

I hope you get your drum set up how you like it.

Lynn

This is all good advice.

We need pics. :D