The Disappearance of the 13-Inch Tom – and what we can learn from it.

How a superstition solved the wrong problem — and what the drum world quietly admitted without ever saying it out loud.

At some point in the last twenty years, the 13-inch tom quietly left the standard drum kit. No announcement was made. No industry body convened to discuss it. No clinician stood at a PASIC podium and declared the configuration obsolete. It simply stopped appearing. Drummers stopped requesting it. Manufacturers stopped leading with it. And when pressed for an explanation, the answer that emerged — from players, dealers, and builders alike — was essentially this: thirteen is an odd number. It looks wrong. The kit feels more balanced without it.

That explanation is worth sitting with for a moment. Because it is not an acoustic argument, or an ergonomic one, or even a purely aesthetic one in any rigorous sense. It is closer to superstition — a vague discomfort with asymmetry dressed up as preference. And yet it landed. The 13-inch tom, a size that appeared on professional kits for decades, that was played on countless recordings, that bore no particular acoustic deficiency simply by virtue of its diameter, has been effectively retired by a feeling.

The irony is that the feeling was pointing at something real. The problem is that nobody followed it to the right conclusion.

The Syndrome That Was Named But Never Diagnosed

Middle tom syndrome is a term that has circulated in drummer communities for long enough that most serious players will recognize it, even if they cannot define it precisely. It describes a specific tuning difficulty: the middle tom of a standard three-tom configuration — most commonly the 13-inch — resists sitting coherently between its neighbors. It can be tuned up or down, tightened or loosened, and it still tends to sound like it belongs to a slightly different instrument. The voicing is off in a way that is difficult to articulate but easy to hear.

The syndrome was observed accurately. The name stuck. And then, almost universally, the investigation stopped there. Middle tom syndrome was treated as a fact of life rather than a symptom of a cause — a quirk of the instrument, like a particular guitar string that never quite intonates, something you work around rather than something you solve.

What was not examined, or at least not examined with any seriousness in mainstream drum culture, was why this particular tom, at this particular size, in this particular position in the kit, behaved this way. The answer requires a short detour into how drum sizing actually works.

Two Parameters, Two Functions

A drum has two primary physical dimensions: diameter and depth. In almost every other percussion instrument, these parameters are treated as governing distinct and separable acoustic properties. Diameter primarily determines pitch range and fundamental frequency. Depth primarily determines tonal character: the relationship between attack and sustain, the speed of the decay, the dryness or openness of the voice.

These are not interchangeable variables. Changing the diameter of a drum and changing its depth are not two ways of doing the same thing. They are two different interventions with two different sonic consequences. A deeper drum of the same diameter is not simply louder or more resonant — it is a fundamentally different voice. It decays differently, speaks differently, sits differently in a mix. And if that is not enough, it also plays differently: usually it takes more energy to make it sing.

Diameter sets the pitch. Depth sets the character. They are not the same lever.

Standard drum kit tom configurations, as they crystallised through the 1960s and became conventional by the 1970s, coupled these two parameters together. As diameter decreased across a tom run — from floor tom to mid tom to rack tom — depth decreased proportionally. The 16-inch floor tom was deep. The 13-inch mid tom was shallower. The 12-inch rack tom shallower still. The visual logic was coherent: the drums tapered in both dimensions simultaneously, and the kit looked balanced and intentional.

The acoustic logic was considerably more complicated. Because depth and diameter were changing together, the tonal character of each tom was shifting alongside its pitch. And here the physics run counter to intuition. Larger drums do not simply produce more sound — they must set a greater mass of air in motion, and that air in turn damps the shell more aggressively. The result is that larger toms, despite their authority and volume, produce a sound in which the attack transient dominates and the sustained fundamental tone is comparatively muddled. Smaller drums, moving less air, sustain more cleanly and speak with a clearer fundamental. This is not simply a matter of higher pitch — it is a matter of fundamentally different behavior. A well-tuned 13-inch tom in a standard configuration does not sound like a higher version of the 16-inch floor tom. It sounds like a different species of drum.

This is the actual source of middle tom syndrome. The 13-inch tom, at standard depth, sits in a particularly acute version of this inconsistency — shallow enough relative to its neighbors that its tonal character diverges noticeably from the larger toms around it, yet large enough in diameter that the self-damping effect of the air mass begins to muddy its fundamental. It falls into a gap that is not really a gap in the scale of pitches, but a gap in tonal consistency.

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But it is worth noting what it represents: an acoustically capable drum being deliberately degraded to compensate for the limitations of its neighbor.

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Tuning can address this to a degree — a drum has two heads, and the relationship between batter and resonant head tension is a genuine variable that affects sustain and resonance meaningfully. But the effort required is asymmetric. The smaller tom arrives at a coherent, tonal voice with relative ease, because the physics are working in its favour. The larger tom requires considerably more work to approach the same coherence, and the physics impose a ceiling on how far that work can take you. A common practical workaround runs in the opposite direction entirely: rather than pulling the larger tom toward the tonal character of the smaller one, the smaller tom is dampened down — moongel, gaffer tape, you name it — to reduce its natural sustain and meet the larger tom somewhere in the middle. It works, after a fashion. But it is worth noting what it represents: an acoustically capable drum being deliberately degraded to compensate for the limitations of its neighbor. That this has become routine practice, unremarked upon, is itself a measure of how thoroughly the underlying problem has been normalized.

The Wrong Cure for the Right Symptom

So the drum world did, in its way, respond to middle tom syndrome. It removed the middle tom. The 13-inch gradually disappeared from standard configurations, replaced by setups built around the 12-inch rack tom and the 16-inch floor tom, sometimes with a 14-inch floor added for range. The tuning problem was resolved in the most direct way available: by eliminating the drum that caused it.

But the explanation attached to this change was not acoustic. It was numerical. Thirteen is odd. The kit looks better without it. This is the part of the story that deserves to be called what it is: a community arriving, by instinct and accumulated frustration, at a correct practical conclusion, and then constructing an entirely incorrect rationale for it.

The diagnosis existed. The symptom was real and named. The cure was applied. And yet the underlying cause — the coupling of depth and diameter across a tom run — was never publicly acknowledged, never corrected in the fundamental architecture of how drum kits are designed and sold.

This matters because the cure, as implemented, is incomplete. Removing the 13-inch tom does not solve the depth/diameter coupling problem. It simply sidesteps the most conspicuous instance of it. The inconsistency in tonal character across a standard tom configuration remains. It is less obvious without the 13-inch sitting in the middle of it, but it has not been addressed. The next generation of players will tune their 12-inch and 16-inch toms, find the voicing inconsistency less dramatic, and conclude that the problem has been solved. It has not. It has been managed.

The Acoustic Solution That Was Always Available

The alternative has existed throughout this entire period, and it has been consistently rejected. If the problem is the coupling of depth and diameter — if tonal character changes across the tom run because depth changes alongside diameter — then the solution is to decouple them. To choose a single depth for the tom family and vary only the diameter. To treat depth as a deliberate design decision made once, for a specific tonal character, and then held constant while diameter alone defines the pitch range.

This is how most other percussion instruments are built. It is acoustically rational. It produces a tom family in which each drum is genuinely a higher or lower version of the same voice, rather than a series of instruments with progressively different personalities dressed up as a coherent set. A matched tom run at consistent depth would tune more easily across the range, sit more coherently in a mix, and behave more predictably under the hands of a player.

Drummers, by and large, have rejected this approach. The objection is almost always visual: a tom run at consistent depth does not taper the way that feels natural. The larger toms look too shallow, or the smaller toms look too deep, depending on which depth is chosen. The visual grammar of the drum kit — established over sixty years of conventional design — makes the acoustically correct configuration look wrong.

This is not an irrational response. Visual consistency matters to players, particularly in live contexts where the kit is also a visual statement. But it is worth being precise about what is being traded. The drum world has, for six decades, accepted a fundamental tonal inconsistency across its most basic configuration in exchange for a visual convention. And it has done so largely without acknowledging that a trade was being made at all.

Why This Moment Is Different

There is a reason to believe that this conversation is now more possible than it has been at any previous point. It has to do with where the drum sits in the contemporary sonic landscape.

For most of the period during which these conventions calcified, the drum kit operated in an environment that concealed its acoustic limitations. In a live rock or pop context, drums were buried under electric guitars producing sustained walls of sound and bass guitars filling the low midrange. The drum was rhythmic punctuation in a dense texture. Its tonal inconsistencies were masked by everything happening around it, and what leaked through was managed — compressed, EQ’d, gated, layered — by the sound engineer at the desk.

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With guitars [or any other acoustic instrument], the suggestion that dead spots could be managed with compression in the mix would be received as either a joke or an insult. It would be nuts.

With drums, this has been the daily reality

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The studio context was even more permissive. Multi-track recording allows each drum to be treated as a separate problem. A tom that does not sit well acoustically can be replaced, layered, or processed until it does. The acoustic properties of the instrument became largely irrelevant to the recorded result. And so the feedback loop that might have driven acoustic improvement was broken. Drummers heard well-produced recordings, attributed the sound to the drums, and continued buying kits whose fundamental design had never been seriously interrogated.

No other acoustic instrument outsources its design flaws to post-production. No one tells a guitar maker to add compression.

Consider the equivalent in any other instrument category. A guitar maker whose instruments had consistent dead spots — notes that choked and died while the surrounding notes sustained — would face an immediate and serious commercial problem. Players would identify the fault, the reviews would reflect it, and the maker would have to address it or exit the market. The suggestion that the dead spots could be managed with compression in the mix would be received as either a joke or an insult. It would be nuts.

With drums, this has been the daily reality. Acoustic problems that are inherent to the design of the instrument are addressed at the desk, in the room treatment, in the choice of microphone placement. The instrument itself is not asked to be acoustically coherent. It is asked to be visually familiar and rhythmically functional, and everything else is someone else’s problem.

This is changing. The contemporary live context — particularly in smaller venues, in acoustic and semi-acoustic settings, in the growing culture of recorded live performance and direct-to-room recording — places the drum in a very different position. The guitars are often quieter, or absent entirely. The bass sits lower in the mix. Loud monitor speakers were replaced by inear-systems, giving each musician now a convenient customizable perfect sound. And the drum, increasingly, is the loudest instrument on the stage. Its sound matters in a way that it has not mattered for fifty years. The engineer can still help, but even if the engineer overpower the acoustic sound for the audience, as long as he can run the system loud enough, in smaller venues this becomes less and less desired.

Drummers are beginning to hear this. The conversations about drum sound — about fundamental pitch, about sustain and decay, about how a kit speaks unamplified — are becoming more sophisticated. The era of the drum as a rhythmic utility instrument that exists to be processed is quietly ending. And with it, the conditions that allowed acoustically questionable design conventions to persist unchallenged are beginning to dissolve.

What the 13-Inch Tom Was Trying to Tell Us

The disappearance of the 13-inch tom is not, in the end, a story about a drum size. It is a story about how communities process information that they do not yet have the framework to articulate. The players who stopped buying 13-inch toms were not wrong. Their instinct that something was acoustically uncomfortable about that drum in that position in that configuration was entirely correct. They arrived at the right place. They just explained it wrong.

Thirteen is not an odd number in any sense that should concern a drum builder. It is a diameter that, at standard depth, produces a voice that sits uneasily in a conventional tom run — not because of the diameter, but because of what the convention demands accompany it. The fix was never to remove the size. The fix was to question why depth had been allowed to become a passenger of diameter for sixty years without anyone demanding a reason.

That question is now worth asking. The tools to answer it exist. The acoustic principles are not in dispute. The listening culture that would allow serious drummers to hear and value the difference is, gradually, developing. What remains is the willingness to look at a convention that has been invisible precisely because it has been universal, and ask whether it was ever really the right way to build a drum.

The 13-inch tom is gone. The problem it was pointing at is still there. Naming it correctly is where the real work begins.

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.

He wrote:

“Playing live we always have different sound guys. Many with limited skills. So I’m looking into having my own mixer so I can mix and taylor my own sound and just send a left and right to the main console. Have many of you tried this kind of set up ? Any thoughts on a mixer? Thanks”

Now this is a good question, and it sparked some suggestions all focussing on the technical side of mic’ing. But I think this is the wrong attempt. Instead of mixing your own sound, try something revolting: have a great acoustic sound that no sound engineer can mess up*. Drummers treat their drum set as semi acoustic instrument, and the most essential part of the signal chain is the sound engineer.

*) ok, some will say “challange accepted”. But there also is the saying “shit-in, shit-out”; let us pretend that sound engineers are not all incapable of doing sound for the sake of our sanity here, ok? 🙂

A real acoustic instrument has no signal chain. It is simple – the instrument is the original sound source. Now when mic’ing, the job is a different one: to simply capture what is there, as true as possible. Now if drums were built to sound best acoustically, our article would close now with some suggestions on getting a decend drum set and you’d be fine.

But:

Most drum kits on our stages usually are not acoustic. Don‘t get me wrong, each individual instrument might be, but not the whole set: especially the snare and cymbals usually are way too loud, so they need to be mic’d to be adjusted in volume (meaning, kick and toms louder than snare and cymbals). Then we rely heavily on proximity effect, this means the mic’s are so close, they alter the sound. And we want the extra compression and bass boost it gives to the instrument.

To give you more hints on the fact that drums are generally not treated like an acoustic instrument, look at the choice for microphones for drums: they usually are dynamic, placed close (or even inside) the instrument. This both is a huge no-go for any instrument, as it is a flawed technic which alters the sound of the instrument dramatically. Thus built in mic’s and piezos at guitars usually are only used on stage, due to volume issues (ironically usually caused by loud stage drums) which prevents a regular mic’ing with a good condenser. This and because the guitarist might be moving around.

Also we want a good signal seperation with our drums (and less room sound), thus we use close mic’s. This is done primarely to be able to tweak the sound as much as possible without interfering with the other instruments mic’d. But also, because we want that extra punch and compression proximity effect gives us. Placing the mic’s further away would demand different microphones (dynamic mic’s are used to blend out other instruments that are further away in progressive way).

Now mixing a drum set that is not really meant to be played acoustic (and while many disagree with me and call me stupid, it still is common sense to mike drums no matter how small the venue, to get a good, well balanced sound…) is one of the hardest task for a sound engineer when miking a rock band.

But when your drums are matched and tuned in a way that they lack nothing when played just acoustic, mic’ing is simple. A single microphone can already capture the whole set (let it be a stereo mike, maybe a stereo ribbon mike, for nice recordings too), and close mikes can be seen as optional add-ons for more control.

How do we get there? Can any drum set become a real acoustic instrument?

1. Learn to listen.

First, learn to hear your instrument differently. Have someone else play it, while you listen to it from different positions in the room. Recognize how much our ears compress volume when we are close to the set, while the imbalance stretches and snare and cymbals suddenly seem unbearably loud compared to the rest of the set.

2. Tune for the room, not the mic – warm tuning

Learn to tune for the room, not the mike. Get a warm, full sound by tuning the bottom heads higher. Most drummers here try to get the sound with both heads tuned low, but this will not sound powerful acoustically. Already a few feet away the low end will get lost, and all that is left without miking is the brutal attack, the sound of your stick on plastic. Not sexy. (More details on this here)

3. Pick the right Instruments for the gig.

Next, learn that larger diameter of your drums actually makes the sound thinner, as it increases the attack. For a full and rich sound, depending on your playing style, chose smaller drums with more or less shallow sizes (deeper when you tend to play too loud, shallow when you can play less loud too). In general, the larger the drums you play, the more you will depend on being mic’d. But when you play a drum set that is well balanced and sound good, making them louder becomes optional, not to improve but amplify the sound.

Large stages yearn for large and loud drums, but a drum set is not just stage prob, it is an instrument. And if you want to sound good, you might have to reconsider what instrument you end up using, and how to play it.

Try smaller snare drums and avoid steel or brass shells. Just a smaller, less loud snare will already give you a way better stage sound. The less volume your drums have, the lower the stage sound, and the better the venue sound.

Same for cymbals, but here larger cymbals give you what smaller drums offer: lower sound, warmth, well controlled volume.

When you set up your drums, keep in mind that usually the snare is way too loud in context, while the toms have too much attack the larger they get. Part of learning to listen is to recognize the volume differences and set up the drum set accordingly. Generally spoken, cymbals are always too loud in setup, so you cannot go wrong with making your cymbals sounding as musical and dark as possible. Getting those and the snare down in volume already will have decreased the need to mic’ the set – because when the snare is too loud, all you can do is make everything else louder.

4. Avoid muffling

Only muffle as little as possible to control overtones. Muffling takes away sound and enhances attack, so using muffling to reduce volume is a bad idea. A good sound engineer knows how to bring back the tone, but it will never sound as good as when you actually know how to tune well. Surprise your sound engineer.

5. Use the right heads.

Many drummers have double ply heads on their toms. While this might be okay for your sound, please consider that thicker heads have a smaller tuning range and tune less low. Yes, they might sound deeper, but in fact that is just the extra muffling they have, which gives them less overtones. So if you want to go lower in tune, single ply heads are your tool. Overtones can also be absorbed with muffling.

6. Play less loud

Using single ply heads on a well tuned, sensible drum set will make you sound better when playing less loud. Drummers usually believe the myth that playing loud and hard improves the drum sound, but that has rather been an adjustment to bigger drums, which also take more whacking to sound good. I’d say the smaller your drum set, the less loud you have to play them to sound good, and they will sound better in general. But also, being less loud on stage improves your stage sound a lot – and this improves the sound of the venue too!

With a drum set that sound just awesome – and it will when you learn how to handle it as acoustic instrument, and not just as „loud work out tool“ – a sound engineer cannot do (much) wrong. Learn to appreciate good sounding drums.

Afterthoughts…

Why is this not common sense? Why are drums built semi acoustic?

Be warned… this is nothing taught by many pro‘s. Why should they? They do have their sound tech. Drummers who master the technic of good acoustic drum sound are usually those who won‘t get mic’d, not those who play the largest venues. Which also explains why this issue is so controversial… the most clicked tuning tutorials are not those which explain how to tune drums to acoustically sound well, but to sound ok on the mic or in recordings. They treat the drum set as just a part of the signal chain, not as a real acoustic instrument. Thus most tutorials about drum sound are tutorials about how to mic, not how to tune.

The reason why drums became semi acoustic can be found here. Long story short, first (guitar and bass) amps got insanely loud, then drums followed. Then came affordable mixing consoles with plenty channels and cheaper mic’s, and we kinda got stuck with the drums which now were simply mere replica of the loud drums we had in the late 60s to battle stage volume.

The past 20 years now have seen stages getting less and less loud. The Who, a band that was ground breaking for many drummers due to Keith Moon’s energeting playing, is now using e-drums to keep the volume down on stage (Nope, we are not kidding!). While volume used to be the most integral part of being a rock band, this is shifting, especially during the past years of pandemic. We have seen numerous streamed concerts played in small locations, and many drummers have found out the advantages of having a drum set that is being optimized for a room, not a stage. Still, many drummers are stuck in the 60s and 70s, but we have to realize that we try to solve problems we do not have anymore. So what is left is the visual appearance, and when drummers pick large and loud drums today, it is usually not because they want them to sound the way they do, but because they want to reference the drummers from that time and honor them.

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.

But some sizes aren’t as perfect as others. This is called the “middle tom syndrome“, as the middle tom is typically the problem. Why? Because sonically it was not designed to be a middle tom. It was designed to be louder.

Confused? Let me explain…

Did drums always have varying shell lengths? No.

By the early 1960s, a typical drum set included one high tom and one low tom. If there were two high toms they were often the same size (Keith Moon played three, all 12″ x 8″) or of different diameters but the same depth (10″ x 8″ and 12″ x 8″). But if congas, bongos timbales and tympani have differing diameters but identical depth, why is it that the smaller drums in a drum set are shallower and larger sizes deeper? Does a deeper shell produce a deeper sound? No. Depth is achieved with tuning, or when the head of a larger diameter drum is tensioned as tightly as a smaller one. Tune 10″ and 12″ toms to the same tension and the larger diameter of the 12″ will ensure it sounds lower than the 10″. So, why longer drums?

Length? Blame it on volume

When the Beatles hit the scene in 1962, rock ‘n’ roll became more rock than roll. In fact, it was called Beat Music (thus BEATLES). Ringo, whose kits up until 1964 were 20″ 12″ and 14″, switched up to 22″, 13″ and 16″ (a 12″ was added in 1967) to be heard above the screaming fans. By late 1966, with the Who, Cream, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience cranking up multiple 100-watt Marshall stacks, drummers were being overpowered.

But the arrival of Carmine Appice in 1967 with Vanilla Fudge saw the ‘bigger is better’ mantra applied to drums. His four-piece red sparkle kit with a 26″ bass and over-sized toms also confirmed bigger as louder.

When he later debuted a maple set with 2 x 26″ bass drums, drummers including John Bonham wanted the same. So, manufacturers designed louder drums. How? Larger diameters, thicker shells, deeper sizes. Instead of an 18″ or 20″ x 14″ bass with 12″ x 8″ and 14″ x 14″ toms, the standard setup became 22″, 13″ x 9″ and 16″ x 16″, with many rockers moving up to 24″ or 26″ bass drums (still 14″ deep), 14″ or 15″ high toms and 18″ floor toms.

Then, inspired by session ace Hal Blaine’s Monster studio kit, Appice played a multi-tom Octa-Plus setup which included eight high toms running 6″ to 18″, with each increase in diameter – including ‘odd’ sizes 13″ and 15″ – seeing an increase in the shell length. This is where the ascending tom concept – high notes down to low from drums whose increasing shell lengths ascended further down – really revealed itself.

Choking on too much air

Now, a deeper drum is not just louder; the sound is different. Because air filling the inside – about 1.3g per litre of shell size – causes resistance against the air movement created when the drumhead is played, a deeper shell (which contains even more air) is less resonant, making its response drier and more percussive than a shallower one. This is a tone ‘choke’ factor means that with 12″ x 8, 12″ x 10″ and 12″ x 12″ toms the most resonant and toneful would be the 12″ x 8″; its shorter shell offers the least air resistance. Thus, in a 12″ x 8″, 13″ x 9″ and 16″ x 16″ setup it is harder to get that middle tom to sound as warm, tonal and resonant as the smaller one. This is middle tom syndrome.

Still, multi-tom setups with shells descending an extra inch or more with each successively larger head size seemed legitimate. Like those tubes descending downward on a vibraphone, surely there was some musical reason for the additional length of those toms? But no, we were mistaken: the idea that additional length lowered the tone is a myth. Even I am guilty, because 12″ toms I produce are about an inch deeper than the 10″, simply because longer toms somehow look “right”. With the arrival of deeper bass drums, some 20″ or longer, drummers also believed they too sounded deeper, despite the opposite being true. Sigh….

Floor toms are different

Now, what about floor toms? They are quite much longer than high toms, typically with a length matching their diameter (14″ x 14″, 16″ x 16″) and we expect them to perform differently, not like a low-pitched high tom. But how different? Unlike a high tom suspended from one point (external bracket, bayonet mount, or isolation rim), a floor tom stands on legs that transfer resonance vibrations into the floor, thus reducing sustain and creating a drier response (which also happens when a high tom is placed in a snare stand). Drummers using large mounted high toms in place of floor toms often say the sound is too boomy and lacks definition. That is because without legs to reduce their vibrations, these drums resonate more fully with low-end tone, causing stroke definition to get ‘mushy’. So, the longer length of floor toms is not to lower the pitch, but to increase the volume and dry down the resonance so notes retain definition.

Building two floor toms so they sonically fit into a setup would mean making them the same depth (e.g., 16″ x 16″ and 18″ x 16″).

The future is acoustic

The idea is to create drums that sound great on their own and are compatible with each other. Some drum makers now offer various diameters that are either close to or match each other in depth. This is good. I build 8” and 10” toms to the same depth, as making the 8” any shorter would make it significantly less loud compared to the rest of the kit.

It is possible that deeper drums were originally popular because players associated large sizes and loudness with masculinity and rock ‘n’ roll. But let’s face it: drums no longer need to be loud. Not only have stage volumes come down (20- and 30-watt guitar amps have replaced those mighty Marshalls), there are microphones. Lower stage volumes mean better sounds for the soundman to work with out front, and for the audience to hear. Mic’ing the drums might become a thing of the past.

The reality

The effect of Covid on the live gig scene means that post-pandemic, things could be different for months, maybe years. Bands should prepare for smaller venues and maybe no instrument mic’ing. That means taking control of the stage sound , especially if that is all the audience will hear out front. Just as guitarists have cut back on amp power and now focus on tone, drummers might want to play drums that suit the gig. No longer is it about being loud; it’s about dynamics, tone quality, and a balanced response from drum to drum.

As usual, while big brands focus on what sells most, boutique builders are the ones getting drums back to the reality of what sounds best. As an independent maker who cuts down a lot of longer 1980s and 90s “power” shells so they have more tone and sustain, I’ve seen many players surprised that while their newly shortened drums might be a little less loud, they sound better. So I assure you; shorter shells are nothing to be afraid of. Longer toms may have looked cool in those 1980s MTV videos, though looking back it could be said that were merely stage props.

It is now 40 years since those MTV 80s: drums no longer need to be long and loud. There is no need for descending shells. It is time for drums to once again not only sound great acoustically on their own, but sound balanced in terms of volume, tone and sustain within a set, even when not mic’d. And that starts with shorter shells and avoiding the “middle tom syndrome”.

Be smart: Choose with your ears, not your eyes.

EDIT: One reader pointed out that it should be “ascending”, not descending. Or even “variable depth”. Makes sense. Blame it on me being no native english speaker. I changed this in the article, but as the link has already been shared a lot, you can still find “descending” as link path.

Also it hs been asked where I am working as drum builder. I thought that was obvious, but as the article is also shared outside this blog, I will share my company here as well: adoro-drums.com is a german drum manufacturer focussing on drums for acoustic purpose. And I write articles like this because most drummers do not realize that most drums are _not_ built for acoustic purpose, but loudness. And yeah I get it, large and loud drums draw drummers magically. Doing the right thing though needs a lot of explaining…

Recently we designed the silent sticks which make drums less loud. In advertisement we say 80%, but it is actually 800% or up to 8 times less loud than regular sticks. For such sticks, having a smaller, more sensible drum set is a huge plus for a great sound. In combination with our worship series, the volume difference is up to 18dB! So if anybody asks if drums can be played less loud and still sound great, the answer is yes… this is our main field of expertize!

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.

Playing drums at room volume? On a normal drum set? Silent Sticks from Adoro make this possible. And thanks to innovative design features they provide an authentic feel and defined sound.

With Adoro Silent Sticks you can play drums much quieter than you ever thought possible – and without having to compromise the way you play! Adoro Silent Sticks are specifically designed to preserve the feel and sound of conventional sticks as much as possible, but at a significantly reduced volume.

Robust but lightweight high-strength materials include a hollow polycarbonate shaft that reduces the amount of energy transferred to the heads, while the tip of two twisted nylon inserts (Dual-Twist Reflex Tips®) simulate the rebound feeling of “real” sticks.

This concept works so well that Silent Sticks let you play without compromising on technique or feel, even on normal acoustic drums. Silent Sticks are not only suitable for a quiet practice at home, but also for all acoustic concert situations, as fellow musicians and singers need not play or sing louder when their drummer uses Silent Sticks.

Compared to rods or brooms, Adoro Silent Sticks sound more defined in terms of attack on the drums. This definition is also clearly noticeable on cymbals. Plus, Silent Sticks enable a transparent drum sound that makes even fine ghost notes dynamically audible.

Facts

* individually handmade in Hamburg, Germany

* much lighter than conventional wooden sticks

* due to light weight, extremely low volume is possible

* feel and rebound like “real” sticks

* clearly defined sound on drums and cymbals

* stable and playable without signs of wear

Published by www.sticks.de
Silent Sticks can be purchased at www.silent-sticks.com

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.

Sure, 1940s big band jazz was a sweeping sonic experience, 1950s rock ‘n’ roll could get raucous, and the Beatles and Kinks could shake it up in the early 1960s. But there was a moment in time when drumming got loud. Really loud. It started in 1965, took hold in 1966, and by 1967 a full-fledged assault by high-decibel, ear drum-busting volume was underway. And it was here to stay.

This matter of volume arose soon after the arrival of the Marshall amplifier, most notably the Marshall 100-watt ‘stack’ (there was also a 200-watt stack and a 50-watt half-stack, both also lethal), which the firm of Jim Marshall, himself a drummer (he taught Jimi Hendrix’s Mitch Mitchell), developed with input from Pete Townshend and John Entwistle of the Who. Their idea for a massive 8-by-12 speaker cabinet (8 x 12 “speakers) proved to be much too big and heavy for the Who’s roadies, so it was cut across the middle, creating the much revered – and reviled – Marshall 4 -by-12 cab.With all that Marshall power cranked to the max, Townshend bashing his guitars into the realm of intense feedback and Entwistle playing basses strung with piano wire (Rotosound’s roundwound strings were his idea), stage volume not only drove the meters into the red, it shifted the balance away from the drums, as the beat was getting lost in the churn of screaming six-strings and rumbling low-end bass. That was because drums were not mic’d at the time, so even with the drummer bashing harder and harder they were no competition for the air being shifted at full volume through those 4-by-12 stacks. It would be several years before the arrival of on-stage monitors, so, paradoxically, they played even louder just to hear themselves. And with Keith Moon on drums, The Who were plenty loud before the amps were even switched on.

A year later, by the end of 1966, blues-rock trio Cream had arrived. With Eric Clapton on guitar, Jack Bruce on bass, and Ginger Baker drumming this was three of London’s hottest players. They too had Marshall stacks. There was one for bass and one for guitar. Then there were two for bass, so there had to be two for guitar. Drummer Baker, whose double bass kit was – as with Keith Moon’s – inspired by seeing jazzer Sam Woodyard of the Count Basie Band at a London gig – was furious about the volume, claiming it was deafening and forcing him to bash his drums, not play them.

Despite selling millions of records the band split after only a couple years, due in part to Baker constant arguing with Bruce about the bass being much too loud. Even after the band’s sold out 2005 reunion concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall and New York’s Madison Square Gardens, Baker was still furious about Bruce’s volume. To him, the bass-playing Scotsman was moving too much air.
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Cream in 1968: Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton…with Marshall stacks

But as 1966 advanced into 1967, the volume of the Who and Cream took hold. And those Marshall amps, well, they looked and sounded so cool that soon Hendrix, the Jeff Beck Group, then Led Zeppelin … all the major British bands had stacks lined across their stage. In America the trio Blue Cheer led the revolution. They were so loud that it was necessary to record part of Outside / Inside album with their Marshalls out on Pier 57 in New York Harbor. It cost them over $ 1,000 per day to be there … and be loud. 

By now, the late 60s, with bands playing outdoor concerts and bigger venues, microphones were being used to make those amps even louder. Drums too, as mics, typically two or three, started to show up around kits. One for the bass drum, an overhead and maybe one on the snare. Everything was now louder than loud, with some drummers following the likes of Carmine Appice, the archetype of heavy rock drumming, and going with bigger drums (Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham’s played a kit based on Carmine’s) and cymbals. Others removed the bottom heads of their toms and stuck a mic inside, something started by session ace Hal Blaine but popularized by Appice. Same with the bass drum –stuff a pillow in it to make the sound punchier and add a mic to make it louder. With Beck, Bogert & Appice, Carmine had two massive monitors,one on each side of his kit – a Fender Dual Showman stack and a Marshall stack with him stuck in between. Crazy loud.

By the mid 1970s, with bands playing much bigger venues – 20,000 to 80,000 capacity arenas and stadiums had entered the picture – high-powered sound systems took over from big amps in terms of music projection. But the big amps and big drums stayed, even in small clubs – they’d become a token of coolness. Single- and double-headed power toms, bigger and longer bass drums, deeper snares, thicker heads with power dots or EQ rings, and larger and heavier cymbals on heavy-duty hardware were the things to have. Sticks got bigger and heavier too, with some being made of virtually indestructible fiberglass or carbon fiber. There were also carbon fiber drums. And harder, non-porous synthetic shells including phenolic and fiberglass, which sounded bright, cutting … and loud. Hayman tried a metal liner for its bass drum as a means of increasing volume, though later settled on high-gloss urethane paint for the same purpose. Other companies including Asba and Ludwig created metal drums of stainless steel. Carl Palmer of prog trio Emerson Lake & Palmer played a stainless steel kit that included gongs and even a church bell that weighed in at a reported two-and-a-half tons. Volume had become the currency of rock ‘n’ roll. Indeed, Loud had become big business .Embed from Getty Images

Mahavishnu Orchestra with Billy Cobham drumming

And it stayed that way through the eras of hard rock, soft rock, arena rock, speed metal, the MTV 80s, the LA ‘big hair’ bands, the grunge of the 90s. Even jazz got loud when in the early 1970s Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever and Weather Report, with the double bass drum kits of Billy Cobham, Alex Acuna, Chester Thompson and others, the blistering guitars of John McLaughlin and Al DiMeola plus the soaring synths of Jan Hammer, Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul emboldened the spirits of Bud Powell, Grant Green and John Coltrane with high-wattage energy. Call it jazz-rock, call it fusion; it was quite a few notches up the volume ladder from bebop. Even Miles Davis, inspired by Hendrix, got kinda loud.

Volume ran rampant and unchecked for about forty years, until around 2005, when, inspired by 1950s amplifiers, some guitarists started to downsize their wattage and develop their tone. Instead of 50- or 100-watt amps, they went with 20 or 30 watts, often with the ability to switch down to 15, 10, 5, even 1 watt. The ‘lunchbox’ amps, tiny terrors that fit on a dinner plate, gave visual meaning to the reality that the game had shifted from the power rating of the amp to the tonal quality of the sound it projected. It was no longer about being loud, it was now about having tone. A less powerful amp enabled more dynamic playing within a tighter volume range: there was no need to turn it up to eleven. Spinal Tap loudness and amp stacks like Stonehenge had met their match.

In the drum world, because audio techs and recording engineers had trouble dealing with so much sound, some drummers had tried various accessories and techniques to reduce their volume without actually having to hold back on their playing. Rubber mutes, pads and gaffer tape deadened the response but killed the resonance and tone in the process, leaving only the sound of a wooden stick hitting a plastic head. Thwack, thud, thunk. Ouch!

For those seeking some serious control there were electronic kits. But those aren’t the ‘real thing’, are they? They don’t resonate. They don’t have tone. And with rubber pads, electrics to plug in, cables to connect, and the need for amplification, they’re like the karaoke of drums in that they attempt to be like the real thing. But they’re not the real thing; they’re synthesizers.

Still, the rapid rise of electronic kits did spark drum and cymbal companies into doing something for those who out of necessity or choice wanted drums with which they had more control over the volume. It was easy with electronic kits because like guitar amplifiers they have a volume knob and a headphone jack. Real drums and cymbals have neither. Instead, drummers must choose their gear and adjust their playing dynamics to suit each situation. For many that is inconvenient, difficult, even impossible. “The drums are too loud … don’t play so hard,” is commonly heard (or thought) by band members, families and friends. So what’s a drummer to do?

In their effort to compete against electronic kits drum and cymbal makers came up with smaller drums, cymbals perforated by hundreds of holes, rubber or silicone drum and cymbal mutes, plus various head types to either bring down the volume of soften the attack. One cymbal brand’s marketing said ‘Don’t Hold Back’. But largely it was about choking the volume, killing the tone and, well, offering nothing positive sound-wise. Indeed, hose options compromise sound for the sake of keeping the volume down in practice and rehearsal situations but offer little if anything when performing or recording. How can a drummer have their own personal sound when there is no resonance, tone or dynamic range to be had from their ‘turned down’ gear?

* * *

Like guitarists, drummers are now recognizing the benefits of less volume and more tone. I long ago developed my own concept of volume control by combining smaller, brighter sounding drums with small, darker sounding cymbals, so I could play softly and get crisp articulation, or bash away and only be as loud as those small sizes let me be. But not everyone wants to play an 8 “top tom, 12” snare, and 10 “hats; they are more about dynamic limitation.

Which is why, when Adoro’s Stefan Korth told me he designed Worship Series drums to excel within a lower volume range I took note. “They can get loud when played hard, though not as loud as other drums,” he told me. “I made tone the focus of the design, not volume.”

Wow, drums designed specifically for volume-sensitive venues including churches, schools, concert halls, clubs and studios. Also, because they’re not too loud they must be great on big stages, where they can be mic’d and the sound be more easily controlled by the audio tech. (Loud drums get turned down in the mix; quieter drums can be mixed into the sound.) 

Stefan also noted that, “In addition to drum design, suspension mounts ensure the shells resonate freely, to produce a warm and round tone that blends into the music happening around it. Tune higher for brighter, more cutting responses, or lower for deeper, darker and more funky and soulful sounds. ” The vibrancy of the shells – the catalog says Maple for brighter tone, Walnut for darker responses and a tighter volume range –  means that anywhere dynamics, tone and musicality matter, Adoro Worship Series drums deliver the acoustic sound of a well-balanced, amplified kit with perfect volume control. Volume-reduced drums. Intriguing, right?

How well do they do this? The catalog notes that readers of Germany’s Drumheads magazine voted the Worship Series Dream Drum Set of the Year . In America, where Adoro is known mainly by tone aficionados, music instrument retailers nominated it for the MMR Magazine Dealers Choice Award . (The firm’s City Lights drums has also won Dream Drum Set of the Year awards.) Like perfectionist auto makers Maserati and Porsche, Adoro’s design-driven strategy puts their drums in a class all their own.

So, in a world where excessive drum volume long ago became a serious challenge, there is finally an answer that doesn’t mute your dynamics, kill your tone or take the fun out of playing. With Stefan Korth’s volume reduction design, Adoro Worship Series drums let you play as you normally do, sound great, yet never be too damned loud. Beat that!

Wayne Blanchard

Wayne Blanchard is best known for his 24 years (1987-2010) with Sabian Cymbals, where his creative marketing strategies, design concepts and branding techniques shot that firm to world prominence. (Dave Weckl called him ‘Sabian’s marketing genius’.) Since 2010 he has been independent (www.waynebmarketing.com). He also writes for drum, guitar, style and music industry publications. Having resided in Germany, England, Scotland and Canada, and with interests ranging from fashion and architecture to socio-cultural matters and music, his perspective is more universal than most.

A drummer in an 8-piece pop-rock band with a horn section, Wayne is also well known as something of a musicologist who likes to share insight, information, opinions and ideas, which is what he does here.

Warm tuning means you tune your resonant head about a third higher than the batter head, resuting in overtones an octave below the fundamental tone. This makes your drums sound huuuge. Thus, warm tuning.

Many drummers want their drums to sound phat and warm. Their solution is to pick large drums, and tune them as low as possible. Cannot go wrong, right? After all, the majority of drummers tune that way, and get taught by online drum tuning tutorials which have millions of views to do so.

Please. Don’t.

I will show you a more excellent way, and it starts with the propper tuning for a really phat and warm sound.

There are only three possible ways to tune a tom:

1. resonant tuning: tune batter and resonance head the same
(why this is a bad idea I will explain later below)
2. flat tuning: batter head is tuned higher than resonance head.
(This results in a sound too high and too thin for our desired sound, so forget about that too)
3. warm tuning: Resonance head tuned higher than batter head.

Most drummers actually tend to use the resonant tuning, it is by far the most popular way of tuning. But it has disadvantages:

• Tuning both heads on the same frequency makes the tom sing longer, often uncontrolable. In order to shorten the sustain, one head would either have to be tuned higher or lower (warm/flat tuning), or we have to use tools:
• Muffling the drum with moongel or other stuff gives us control over the length of sustain with a resonant tuned drum, but it also enhances the attack, which we don’t want to hear, and it muffles the actual tone we want to hear. In result, the drum sounds dull and lifeless.
• Dull sounding drums seem to work great for live situations, and in fact, when amplified, due to proximity effect those drums can impress. BUT – when played back at regular volume, the drums still sound dull and lifeless, which explains why live recordings sound so much differend from studio recordings even when the band plyed really well.
• the biggest disadvantage is though that the drums don’t really sound as warm and low as they could possibly sound, because when tuning resonant, and really low, the heads never really move in perfect synchronisation. So what often happens is that the low end, the bass, is canceled out due to phase shiftings. You won’t recognize on your close mike, but from a few feet away the drums sound thin and noisy, not phat and warm, as you’d expect. This results in big issues with bleedings. This is so common, it is common sense today to have the drums in a different room when possible at recording studios, and use screens and full enclosuresn on stage to keep the bleedings from other mikes.

So let’s see what warm tuning can do…

Warm tuning gets it’s name from the effect you have when you tune the bottom head signifficantly higher than the batter head, about a 3rd above. The closer you get to the Third, the more low end you get into the sound, thus the name, warm tuning.

What is actually happening here? As said before, most drummers try to get a low drum sound by tuning all heads as low as possible, but this results in a rather dull and flat sound. Usually now the batter heads get muffled to get rid of overtones, to sound lower. When tuning warm, we use physics: we all know power chords on guitars, I suppose. Thats a fundamental tone and the fifth, and the harmonics to this happen to be exactly an octave below the fundamental tone. As a drum has two membranes combined with a tube, we get the same effect at a different tension, thus the 3rd. Why it is not the fifth is a highly complicated issue which Nils Schröder (another GUest author here) can explain way more eloquently than I. So bear with me and trust me here…

Imagine we have a floor tom tuned to 100hz, and the resonance head to 130hz (the 3th). You will now also hear the overtones in harmony at 50hz, which will give your drum a lot of low end. This will let especially smaller dums sound huge and pretty awesome.

But what happens when you mike the drums and amplify or record them?

When close miking the drum, it will pick up the 100hz and give you a nice boost of that frequency and everything above. This is what most drum engineers want live. But the drum produces a warm overtone of 50hz which we can only pick up with mikes when a bit further away from the drum. That way you get the 50hz picked up too, and your drums sound well balanced. This is the reason why in studios sound engineers today mainly use the room mike, and only add little of the close mikes.

Too few drummers know the physics of drums, and try to get low end by tuning large drums low. Actually this works best with smaller drums though. Perfect sizes are 8-14” for toms. You can also use warm tuning for the Bass drum, but when not miking, tuning it to the room node (a room frequency that makes the room resonate) might be more effective if not loud enough. But that is something we can focus on in a different tutorial.

The larger the diameter of a drum, the more attack you get from it, and we have trouble hearing differences between them, big toms tuned low, kinda all sound the same.

So how should I mike the drums now?

When the drum kit sounds good acoustically, miking becomes easy: forget all you learned about miking drums, and imagine you mike an acoustic instrument which you want to capture as it sounds, not modify the sound. A single condenser mike on second tom position pointed to snare and bass might already be enough to capture the whole instrument well balanced. Overhead mikes usually have too much cymbals in the mix.

When miking acoustic instruments other than drums, you have to at least be a foot away from the instrument with the mike, if you are closer, you risk altering the sound. With drums this is usually what we want, but only when dealing with semi acoustic drums (stage drums). We use proximity effect to add low end to the sound. But now we have added an octave below to our tom sound, and to capture this, we have to actually treat it like an actual acoustic instrument!

The only instruments you mike close, or even internal, are semi acoustic. The sound we get from those close mikings is a lot different from the acoustic sound of the instrument. Trust me, any decent instrument builder that has put a lot of effort into making a great sounding acoustic instrument will frown uppon any internal mike. It turns any acoustic instrument into a semi acoustic one.

Now with this in mind, we have either miked drums all wrong, or drums generally were treated as semi acoustic instrument anyway. This might be okay when the stage sound level is high, say, at an ac/dc gig. But we have come a long way since the 70th, we got smaller guitar amps, amp simulators, in ear monitors, and often the drums are the only instrument you can still hear on an else silent stage. The way we used to tune, “for the mike”; was disrespecting the actual room sound, you treat the instrument as semi acoustic and not mike it to simply make it louder or pick it up for recording. Now, when we want low volume on stage, we do not have to mute the drums all together, we simply have to admit that the drums are being played in a room which we have to take into the calculation. Tuning the drums in a way that they sound full and rich in a room, making mikes optional, means actually trwating your drums like an acoustic instrument.

Next step would be to get cymbals that match. Less loud means larger, darker in sound. And while we are at it, I mentioned that smaller drums work better for warm tuning. In general, the acoustic instrument has a pretty tight tolerance when it comes to dimensions. Certain sizes work best for the desired sound, and some sizes make it nearly impossible to give you a great sound acoustically. We were so used to work around that fact and worship large drums, we need to realize that when we play acoustic, small drums rule. And I can explain why:

While when tuning larger drums lower, we might get them maybe a third lower than a smaller drum, but using warm tuning on small drums gives you a way more defined tone plus an octave below. Now when moving away from optimal acoustic drum sizes to bigger sizes (with toms starting at 16″, which happens to be the most popular FT size for decades), we get less definition, and might end up with the octave harmonics being too low in volume or in an inaudible frequency.

Warm tuning, especially in combination with small acoustic drums, will put a smile on the faces of your band members and your audience. And once your sound engineer learns how to handle it, he will love it too for the simplicity.

Stefan Korth

Stefan is a drum maker and entrepreneur. With his “silent drums”, he has his own approach to drum building: he has specialized in building drums that are actually played acoustically. In line with this, he created and very successfully sells Silent Sticks, drumsticks that are 80% quieter, as well as Heritage Heads, attack-reduced drumheads for acoustic use. He is married, has 5 children and lives with his family in Hamburg.