I only have one kit and have had it since '78. A mid-70's, Gretsch SSB#1, walnut kit (24, 13, 16, 18 with matching 5 x14 snare and optional natural maple 6x14 snare). I have made this kit work pleasantly with my prog, swing, blues, jazz and rock projects. With the appropriate skins and playing dynamics , I achieve what's necessary for the genre.

Must be nice to have specific kits for specific projects.

B

> Must be nice to have specific kits for specific projects.

Hey Bill, I think only guys like Charlie Watts can afford to feed that kind of fantasy. But wouldn't it be nice though!

The closest I've come is, owning a club date kit and a regular size drum kit at the same time. Last 20 years or so all I've been playing is Rock or Blues, any regular kit will do for either of those styles. No real need for an arsenal of drums.

John

I have a bit of an interesting question: does anyone else find it more difficult to tune a 14" tom than other sizes? I am not asking guys who use a 12 up and 14 down as that is different. I am probably not asking guys that use a 14-16-18 set up either. I am thinking more along the lines of a multi tom set up with a 14 in the middle such as 10-12-14-16 or similar. I was re-heading a couple of kits in that configuration and noticed that, while one had a 10.5x14 drum and the other had a 14x14, in both cases the 14 was the hardest to tune. I started thinking about it and it occurred to me that this is the case with all of my kits including:

DW 10-12-14-16 with a rack depth 14

Spaun 10-12-14-16 with a 14x14

Spaun 12-14-16 with a 14x14

Slingy 12-14-14-16 with both a rack and floor 14

Pearl 10-12-14-16 with a rack depth 14

I think I find it difficult to not have the 14" tighter than the other drums which gives it a "harder" timbre. Has anyone else noticed this or is it just me?

The 14" RT has got to be The Most frustrating tom in the mix! I even resorted to buying a Planet Waves Full-Function Tuner and Metronome. Even then It always ended up being pitched too high. I finally gave up on the size entirely and kept all the rack toms at or under the 9x13". They work great as a single 10x14" RT with 16 & 18" FTs, or as a 14x14" floor tom but I could never get them dialed in as rack tom in a prog run.

I will be interested to see if anyone else has that issue. If so, I wonder what little bit of physics is involved here?

Has anyone had 1st hand experience or better yet does anyone own a set of the Ludwig Legacy Classics Series? How would you rate them in terms of overall performance?

Squint - how are you tuning the toms? In fourths? To get a decent spread you need to be tuning in (at least) intervals of fourths and if the 14" is sitting in the middle of the tom spread, it's going to be 'higher' in pitch than maybe you'd like it. When it's on the floor, it's only one step (fourth) above the 16" so it's easier to keep in a lower register. Moving it up the rotation to the rack toms puts it two, maybe three steps up from the lowest floor tom. Ergo, it'll be tuned to a much higher pitch in order to fit into the spread. The higher up the tom set-up the 14" is, the higher the pitch it'll have to be tuned to. The lower it sits in the set-up, the lower the pitch. That is, if I understood you right and the 14" is sitting in a three tom (rack toms) set-up.

It's all just Physics. Music is very mathematical. Follows a strict logic.

John

Purdie,

Very good point. What I do to achieve a pretty typical, modern, "wet" sound from toms is to start bringing up the heads to the point where they will begin to produce a tone. In other words, I tune them to more or less the lowest pitch the drum will produce. This is typically determined with batter head as I use two ply over single ply heads. A single ply will usually be able to produce a tone with less tension than a two ply head so that is why the batter sets the pace as it were. If I am looking for maximum tone and resonance, I tune both heads to the same pitch. If I need more "punch" (whatever that means) I'll raise the resonant head a minor third. At this point, every drum should be producing it's lowest possible pitch and, theoretically the timbre should match from drum to drum.

I think your point is well taken and is a more eloquent pronouncement of where I am running afoul. In my mind, once I have tuned this way, the pitch spread on the kit should also be pretty consistent. Without really sitting down to map this out from kit to kit, it seems to me that there is a decent spread between the 10" and 12" of roughly a third to a fourth, then there is a pretty drastic drop to the 14" and lastly the 14" and 16" sit very close together in pitch. My assumption is that I am raising the pitch of the 14" to fit into the tonal range of the kit and therefore changing the overall tone quality of the drum, generally with negative consequences.

I can say that when listening to kits from front of house I really prefer wider intervals the lower the pitch as it becomes much more difficult to discern pitch differentiation the longer the wave form becomes. As an example, play a complicated riff on a piano using half steps and whole steps in the upper register of a piano and then play it again in a much lower resister. Easy to discern each note up high but it becomes muddied down lower.

So....is there something about the nature of a 14" diameter drum that somehow causes it to not tune in "sequence" with other drums? I did notice this weekend that I had a 16" floor that bottomed out at an "A" but the 14" wanted to land on a "B". Meanwhile the 12" tuned nicely to an "F" and the 10" to an "A". Those were the lowest pitch starting points for each drum. In other words it was a M3 between 10" and 12", a tritone between the 12" and 14" and whole step from 14" to 16". Now that I think of it, Bob Gatzen mentioned tuning his 14 and 16 a step apart and I thought that was really strange for the aforementioned reasons.

I'll be interested in hearing any opinions on this subject. Are we off topic?

> Are we off topic?

Don't worry about it... I'm the original poster. Gives me almost God-like powers in the thread.

If you're tuning LPP (Lowest Possible Pitch) then your method is fine. The size and *composition (*See? I found a way to keep it 'on-topic!') of the drum will determine its LPP (fundamental). That's where you're getting stuck.

DW goes out of its way to pitch-match drums when they assemble kits. When drums have been matched for pitch, tuning LPP will automatically create a nice spread on the toms. It just sounds like the fundamental of the 14" doesn't fit into the pitch sequence of the other toms. Alternatively, if you were tuning the drums to specific notes, (as in; tuning in fourths,) then -you- are in control of the 'note' that the drum will produce when struck.

Sounds like you either; need to pitch-match the drums in the kits (mission impossible) or use an alternate tuning method that puts pitch under -your- control. I can pretty much make a crappy set of drums sound 'good' just by tuning them to specific intervals/note sequences. I know that that kind of tuning (musical sounding drums,) doesn't go over real big with the Rock crowd, but the drums will sound good nonetheless. That's the bottom line really, the goal is; finding the right tuning for each individual kit. Maximizing what is there to work with. It helps if the chosen tuning is repeatable from kit to kit. That's why I always tune in 4th's. Guaranteed great spread on the toms every time, and it lends a real ear-pleasing 'musical quality' to the drum set as a whole.

For LPP continue to do what you do, but get 'matched pitch' drums if you want to guarantee a good sounding spread. Matching the right sizes is a big deal/contributing factor, too, but this post is already too long. I don't want to scare away the non-geeks... Mind Blowi

John

I got to play a Legacy kit that a buddy of mine owns and it sounds great! Every bit as good as any quality vintage kit. I thought the toms on the kit sang and the bass drum was responsive and 'live.' The only drum in the kit I didn't care much for was the snare. I was kind of looking for a FAT, woody J-fest sound and it just sounded a little boxy, hollow for my taste. I almost don't like to say it, but the snare just sounded like a 'cheap' MIJ snare drum. Everything else about the kit justifies the heavy-duty price tag. Great drums. Just not too crazy about the snare. I -know- what a good, old J-fest sounds like, maybe I was just expecting too much from it.

John