West Music Staff Blogs

This happens all the time in our retail stores. A parent/performer comes in with a snare drum with a destroyed head on it.

Example A:

Could we have stopped things from going this far? Warning signs do exist on such things. You just have to learn to recognize them. Let’s walk through the progression of digression.

Here is what the same drumhead looked like originally:

Clean, Un-Dented, and ready for action. The plastic film the drumhead is made from is able to be evenly tensioned across the entire surface of the head. There are no dents or holes in the film that effect what the drum will sound like.

So, when those dents start to occur, the drumhead is no longer operating as intended. You can have distorted sound, and unsatisfying performance due to how the energy is distributed across the playing surface.

If you think of the drumhead as a guitar string: the analogy will ring true. If you have a guitar string with a knot or kink in it, the instrument will not only lose its resonance, it will not come up to pitch correctly, and the potential for breakage increases exponentially. The sound will come out distorted, or flat due to how the physics of sound work. The sample principles apply to a drumhead.

SO...when those dents start to occur, the drumhead is no longer operating as intended. You can have distorted sound, a lack of sustain, and difficulty keeping the drum in tune.

SO WHAT DO I DO?

Drumheads will wear out over time. This is something that will have to be accepted. You WANT the drumheads to wear out, it beats replacing the metal or wood parts they are in contact with. When they won't tune up correctly, or start to develop craters, it's time.

MY DRUMHEADS LOOK FINE: BUT THEY STILL WON'T TUNE UP THE WAY I WANT…

This leaves 3 other possibilities:

1. Drumhead “Stretch.” This especially applies to bottom heads. If the film sits at the same tension long enough, it will develop a memory for it. If you try to bring the pitch down, and the head goes flat and looses all resonance, it's done. Time to change it.
2. Drumhead Age. Most drumheads are made out of Mylar, which is a petroleum-based product. After a few years, the chemical composition of the drumhead decays, and this does not lead to reduced performance originally -- heads over 5 years excluded -- but can reduce the elasticity of the material. This changes how the film vibrates, and for how long.
3. The infamous “dud.” It happens. Drumheads are a creation of people, people are not perfect, and drumheads are not perfect either. This is maybe a 1-100 sort of chance, but it happens.

Hopefully, this helps avoid the infamous “blowout” at the worst possible time. A little preventive maintenance goes a long way!