Troy's Drum Tips for Young Drummers: Drum Tips - Bass Drum Tuning

Troy's Drum Tips for Young Drummers: Drum Tips - Bass Drum Tuning: "Drum Tips - Bass Drum Tuning
Heads

Good heads are essential part of good tone. If you have a dent from the beater wearing into the batter head of your kick drum you are overdue for a head change. The resonant (front) head needs replacing much less often - but once in a while it's not a bad idea to replace it too.

Drum heads are actually much stronger when they are very tight. Bass drum heads are generally at a much lower tension than any of the other drums. Low tension makes the bass drum head more prone to damage and it does suffer when you kick it over and over in the exact same spot with every stroke!

Mic Hole

A hole in the front bass drum head gives access for microphone placement and changes to any internal mufffling. It also changes the sound of the drum.

The air stream generated by striking the batter head will bounce back and forth better with as much of the front head remaining as possible. A small hole will leave plenty of surface to provide the sound and feel of a full two heads. 4' to 8' is pretty good size - depending on the size of your bass drum.

I would use no more than a 4' hole in the front of an 18' bass drum and no larger than an 8' hole on a 22' bass drum. Keeping the hole off-center - with one edge of the hole around 2' from the edge of your bass drum - will also help to maintain the sound and feel of a double headed drum.

Preparation
Remove the old heads. Check the bearing edges - be sure to remove any dust, stick debris, old spilt beer residue, or any other strange growth that you might find. This is also a great time to clean and polish the rest of the drum as there are no tension rods or hoops in the way.

Seat the heads
Place the head onto the drum and make sure you have a nice clean contact all around. Tighten the tension rods until they just make contact with the hoop.

Batter Tuning
Place the drum with the front head flat agai"