How's the head fit? If it's tight, the drum's probably out of round. Have you tried other heads? You can get bad heads. Tune one side at a time to try to isolate which sides the problem. Bearing edges? Gouges? Get it on a good flat table top and check for flatness. I'm against changing edges, but if all else fails, I'd get someone to redo the edges to original angles. Or, sell it to me!

The drum seems like it's in round. The heads look like a good fit when they're just sitting on the bearing edges. That's my uneducated assessment, anyway.

I tried two sets of heads. G2 coated on top and G1 clear on bottom, then Coated A on top and Clear A on bottom. Both sets of heads displayed the same issue.

That's a great idea about trying each side individually, I'll give that a shot tonight. I'll make a quick video of it and post on YouTube, which might help get to the bottom of this.

Thanks for the reply!

I agree. It sounds like you have a good handle on tuning so I would pull the heads off and place the drum on a glass or granite (an absolute flat surface in other words) surface and see if it is squared up. If it looks close then put a light bulb inside the shell and look for light leaks.

Next, simply place a head on the shell with no hoop and see if it will rotate. If not it may be out of round. A measuring tape from lug to lug will tell you.

Next visually inspect for defects in the bearing edge.

You do occasionally find lemon heads, but it sounds like you have ruled that out.

Have you tried the entire tuning range of the drum from lowest possible pitch up to choking with the heads in tune with one another? Sometimes a drum will have a very narrow sweet spot in which it really works. That is a drag when that happens and keeps the drum from being versatile, however if the sweet spot is a great sound, it might work for you.

I have found myself occasionally having to back a head off to zero tension and starting over when I wasn't having success with a drum that I knew I should have success with. I believe that is generally a case of getting the head a little crooked with a drum that has some play to it such as a modern double 45 edge.

Don't give up too quick. Those 14's are worth it! Good luck and let us know what you have learned, or at least what you have ruled out.

Does it sound equally bad if you pick it up, hold it by the rim and hit it? Sometimes when the tom couples to the floor through the legs it does bad things. Those cheap Gibraltar isolating feet work wonders.

Steve

Are all the lugs the HEAVY ones,with felts inside?

I put LIGHT Fullertons once on a FT,and IT sounded horrible!

Just a thought....

VERY good point!!

My vote is with out-of-round and/or poor bearing edges.

Another possibility is delaminated plies in the shell. This can kill the best of drums... But the old Rogers drums are quite thin and not usually a problem in this regard.

I stay with the bearing edges/roundness issues. These are most likely- particularly the bottom head as it was not uncommon to run these with no bottom head.

It seems to me that this might be a good case for an internal tone control being used to just barely kiss the underside of the head. A second best thing to try would be a small piece of Moon Gel applied to the top head. try it in several different location---just the one small piece moved to various location. For either method, first tune the drum to the desired interval with the other tom and the snare drum with the snares disengaged.

Hi everyone, thanks for all of the great ideas and replies!

I started off with crash's suggestion of removing the reso entirely and tuning up the batter. The head fit nicely and it sounded good (as good as a single-head setup is going to sound).

I then followed tnsquint's advice and hunted around for the optimal tuning range. It was actually higher than I expected, but with one head on I found a really (really) good tone at 3G#.

Next came the reso head, and the problem. The shell is obviously slightly out of round on the bottom. There's a point where the head pinches on both sides, and I can rock the head back and forth on that fulcrum. I can then push the head down into position, but it's tough to rotate in place, and it's obviously catching on the shell's oblong ends.

So where does that put me? Is there anything that can be done with an out of round shell?