Comments on: How Do You Tune Two Bass Drums Accurately?

By: Jordan D

Jordan D — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:09:07 +0000

It will be pretty hard to do – to have them exactly the same. Plus, since drums are so sensitive, they will always be going out of tune from eachother. But you can check this out on tuning: http://home.earthlink.net/~prof.sound/index.html

By: John V

John V — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:58:22 +0000

By getting one bass drum with a double bass pedal.
I’m sorry to say, but even the pro guys with two bass drums cheat. Jordan from As I Lay Dying usually uses a double pedal on his right bass drum and nothing on his left drum. It’s just for show. That or other drummers use triggers. I sell alot of triggers to guys who just can’t get their bass drums to sound the same.
The reasoning behind it is because shells are made of wood. It’s impossible to get two drum shells to have the exact same organic properties to yield the same sound frequencies. So even if you have the same heads, and tune them the same, there will still be a slight difference.
If you’re not in a position to make wild investments, I suggest the following.
-Warm, pre-muffled drum heads such as Evans Emad or the Aquarian Super Kick 2 for the batter side, and an Aquarian regulator on both the resonant side heads. Pre-muffled heads will remove a lot of the higher overtones, which is good because the overtones themselves can cause the two drums to sound different from each other.
-Buy a Drumdial and get the tuning settings for each bass drum identical to each other.
If there’s still a difference after that, then you’re only course of action is either triggers or a double bass pedal to one drum. Keep in mind that in full volume while playing with a band, a slight difference in sound isn’t going to be heard at all.

By: ddrum

ddrum — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:27:36 +0000

This isn’t the answer you’re looking for most likely but if you play out live, triggering is the way to go. I started out just triggering the kick and fell in love with everything about it. I now trigger the mounted tom, floor tom and kick, but still mic the snare, hi-hat and use one over-head. It is a little expensive if you go top of the line but even the cheaper stuff like the Alesis sounds good, especially the kick samples. I use ddrum pro triggers and a ddrum AT controller. Sound checks are a breeze, no tuning and no buying new heads every time they start sounding a little dead. I paid a couple grand for my ddrum stuff years ago but they are no longer being made and can be picked up on ebay for a reasonable price.