Bass Drum hole (How to?)

marcdadrummer said:

its called the compass and a sharp pencil

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Frummer said:

1) put a can in an oven and burn thru a hole using the rims of the hot can
2)yes compass pencil....any rough edges your problem though
3)YES there is a special tool for cutting port holes....u can get them at Drums Resources

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weckl-x said:

What is ideal is if you have any old drumheads lying around, before doing anything, you can cut a reinforcement ring that prevents the hole from accidentally tearing.

I cut a porthole with a penknife using a CD as a guide, then stuck the reinforcement ring on the inner side of the reso head.

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penko said:

erm sorry ar got a newbie qn, with or without hole got what diff? =x

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myner said:

I don't get it? i don't understand what the reinforcement ring does. please explain.

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penko said:

erm sorry ar got a newbie qn, with or without hole got what diff? =x

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From The Drum Tuning Bible
http://home.earthlink.net/~prof.sound/id6.html

Holes in Your Head or Not

Here are the basic concepts:
· Any hole larger than 7” is like having no head at all on the drum.
· A 7” hole creates the feel of a one-headed kick drum, feeds more beater attack direct to an audience and provides some of the tone of the resonant head. Further, it’s easy to position a mic and change internal muffling devices, if used.
· A 4-1/2” or 5” hole, or even 2 such holes, offset, allows some relief for rebound control of the kick beater, contains more of the drums resonance so that the resonant head is more pronounced in the tuning of the drum. A 4-1/2” hole is difficult to get large mic’s positioned within (but can be done) and/or internal muffling altered.
· No hole, very resonant, creates more bounce or rebound from the kick beater. It can become difficult to get the “slap” of the beater and resonance of the drum both when miced with one microphone. The muffling remains inside. The resonant head is very predominant in the overall sound.

There are usually four reasons why drummers want a hole (or multiple holes) in the bass drum:

· It looks cool.
· They do not like the feel of the beater on the batter head surface, it bounces as a result of not enough air relief.
· They need to mic the drum from or capture the sound from the inside.
· They want more projection without using a mic (less bass impact, more beater attack presence).

For those who want it because it looks cool, there is an acoustic impact on the sound by placing a hole or holes in the resonant side. By acoustic impact I mean that the removal of head material does affect the bass portion of the note coming from the drum.

Allot of the “bass” portion of what you hear is based upon the surface area in the center of the drum. That surface area is a diaphragm working much like a speaker radiator might work, in that it will aid in moving air. Remember that pitch is dictated by the tension and the surface area in movement. So if you remove a large center portion, you lose a large portion of the bass reinforcement that gets emitted by the heads movement and tension usually has to increase to compensate for the removal of the center area. Adding holes does not increase bass content as might be the case on a tuned vented speaker cabinet would.

Thicker heads tend to stay in motion longer. With loose tension they will vibrate at a lesser rate, which all translates into lower pitch and a longer resonance. This assumes no internal muffling, or other devices to make the head stop its vibrating motion sooner.

Some want the different feel created by having air relief but still want maximum bass affect. As you remove more head area you trade off deep bass for a different feel. A solution is using smaller holes placed around the perimeter of the head. If you want the mic to capture sound from inside, you either have to resort to say the May mic system or revert to a larger hole to get the mic into the drum as you require. What you ultimately do will be based upon the balcance of all the factors that are important to you.

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classicdrum said:

By the way, I don't cut a hole in my front bass drum head, and giging with it never seem to be a problem. The sound guy may need to mix it differently but the result is always very good. It depends on how you like your bass drum sound though.

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