My good god. that is glorious

What the fuck?

The face looks like the dude from Godsmack.

That's nick cage.. Ties it all up in a nice bow that way

Lol my chick just said... It that your friend Snaxie? She has never seen a pic of said Eric, but knows of our shenanigans... I lol'd

What, the Nic Cage riding a dinosaur? No, not me.

That's a pretty sweet dimension for a metallic snare! As an owner of a 6.5x14" brass snare, I am totally biased when I say that.

Yes, copper is a wonderful material for a snare. I once tried a copper piccolo and I thought it was gnar. Same thing though, I didn't know much at the time, but thought that it was nice.

Recently someone posted on the Derek Roddy forum a concrete snare. It actually sounded a lot like a Ludwig Acrolite.

Acrolites are one of the best deals around in the snare world. They're basically a Supraphonic, but a hella lot cheaper. Ludwig just makes good shit, period.

A concrete snare? I'd like to hear that. Do you have a link? I'm under the impression at this point you can make a snare out of, well, anything, and it can sound good. I'm surprised I haven't heard a hardened leather snare yet. If I were a real asswhole and knew anything about building drums, I'd cast one out of lead.

I like the idea of a concrete snare, but the only one i have seen was super duper thin, almost more like a ceramic than what the concept of a concrete snare might otherwise mentally evoke, and it seems to me that at that thickness cracking would be a very real potential issue. I would think that then you would need to go with some sort of crack resistant stuff, which is usually filled with fibers like fiberglass, and i wonder what the difference would be to just making entirely it out of something like fiberglass instead, if you were going to go that way.

I suspect that the reason they go thin though, might be because a thicker concrete might not sound very good.

Which is why i also wonder what thickness the cast iron one is. My suspicion is that there is a point of diminishing returns where the shell will actually start to choke the sound of the snare, like when you run a too thick snare side head, or indeed a too thick batter. A lot of stave snares a really thick, but they are wooden, and because of the design the thickness is generally sort of a structural requirement. Also the massively lesser amount of glue and the almost complete elimination of opposing layers of grain direction would seem to make up in that design, whatever resonance might be lost by the shell being an inch or more thick.

I dunno.

Ah yes, that DW was the one i was talking aboot. 5.5mm is almost nothing, for concrete.

As mentioned in the prior post, the cast iron snare is 1/4 inch. On my friend's metal record from a few years ago that he never finished, we used a Spaun 20-ply maple snare that was really super-thick and weighed a ton. He wound up remixing some of the stuff in the recent past and not liking the sound of it on record, even though we loved how it sounded in the room; he blamed the mic. (Sennheiser e609 on top, no bottom mic.) I, alas, no longer have the tracks myself.

I've never felt I've accurately captured my drummer's giantsnare on record. We put the NTK on the side of the shell at rehearsal the other day because we didn't have enough mics otherwise (and I wasn't about to throw the ribbon on there) and he liked the punch of that. Not that it really sounded close to the drum in the room.

I remember a great Alan Parsons quote to the effect that back in the day drums were thought of as the true test of an engineer... And I agree.

I'd love to hear an inch of concrete or iron as a snare, just out of curiosity. Or something insane, like a tungsten snare or a lead snare.

For what it's worth, I thought the concrete snare sounded pretty good. Especially in the lower tunings. It doesn't ring at all, which works for that sound. It did have a nice crack to it.

A tungsten snare would probably not be do-able. Just too expensive. And it's melting point is too high and it's too hard; I don't think there would be a practical way to cast or machine it, now that I think about it. A snare made out of lead would be hilarious, even if it did sound like ass.

Why am I laughing to myself about a snare made out of uranium?

To me, the concrete ones sound too dry/dead/flat. IMO, you can get that sound from a thousand different $50 snare options, just by choosing your heads and snares for that sound and tuning it that way. I like the concept of the concrete but am not into the sound. Would also still be curious to hear a properly thick one though. I have some stair repairs to do later this spring/summer, maybe i will pick up an extra bag or two...

I would actually assume that various metals would provide a sound much more in line with my my own personal tastes are. Actually, i suppose that 13" and 14" sewer pipes are probably available in various steels and possibly copper. Anything that size would likely be fairly fuckspensive, though i wonder if it might not come out too brutal if one could find a place willing to part with only a 5-8" section of the stuff.

A properly uranium snare, would it glow in the dark?

I posted this to Geoff's Facebook and feel it must be seen here:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/pictures/130316-gastric-brooding-frog-animals-weird-science-extinction-tedx/

Frogs that give birth through their mouth are being raised from the dead. No, seriously.

Sufficiently advanced technology is, after all, indistinguishable from magic. Was that Clarke or Heinlein? I think the former.

Agreed that the concrete ones are a novelty because of the material. They do actually do a certain sound really well- like I said, I think they sound best for the lower tunings- but they are very, very dry. If I had money, I suppose I'd get one and an SPX-90 and then my drummer and I would start a Sisters Of Mercy tribute band. A thicker one would be a different animal entirely and I'd be curious...

The metal ones, I couldn't guess on the price for a length of it. I should mix down and upload the samples of the 9" (I think) steel snare. That's an interesting animal for sure. Sounds very different with the NTK on the side of the shell though; very punchy. A big condenser on the side of the shell might just be the way to roll with him. I wish I could experiment more with drums, micing the shells and how that shit sings in the room. I know guys with nice kits. Drums are a bastard of a thing to record. I've taken to liking quite a lot of ring on snares over the years, as a personal preference. I do still like lower tunings on the right drum though; there's a... Hollowness; I feel like I can hear inside them. It's all dependent on the mix though. There is a snare on an Ani Difranco record- I want to say it's off Dilate, I forget what song, that just punches soooo so goddamn hard. Obviously there's not as much going on as in a tougher sounding rock mix but that is one of my favorite aggressive snare sounds ever- one I've heard similar to live but rarely if ever hear on record. I'd love to hear that in a harder sounding mix.

A uranium snare? Well, honestly, I'd settle for lead with a glow-in-the-dark coating. Because bombarding everyone with gamma radiation is probably A Bad Idea. Still do it, though.