First things first - grab your free transcription here.
Gear video! It’s been a hot minute.
And in this video, I was min-maxing for an occasion to announce my formal partnership with Aquarian Drumheads and a video that Johnny Public would nonetheless enjoy sitting through. Such is the sausage-making process.
So I decided to tackle the question - “how much do good/new drum heads matter”, (answer: a ton), and its corollary - “if drum heads are such a no-brainer to improve drum sound astronomically overnight, how come nobody’s talking about them?”
Because if I want to go from a “found object” studio kit to a Star Bubinga in a single day, yes, that’s going to improve the sound quite a bit. It’s also going to set me back a cool $4.5 grand. But you can make the equivalent improvement by spending $90-120 on new heads. And they last a long time, too!
The folks at Aquarian reached out last year, via their emissary, Eric Moore, to offer me a bevy of new heads, with literally zero strings attached. In the ensuing year, I tried heads of all the major makers before deciding that, indeed, Aquarians were my favorite. So I have a brand new shipment of my ride-or-die Modern Vintage heads, which gives us a super-useful side-by-side comparison.
Old heads.
Year old modern vintages. (From the Eric video.)
Brand new modern vintages.
And indeed, the year-old ones still sound great. (And it’s not like we haven’t put them through the ringer. I may be a jazz drummer but my roommate plays in multiple metal bands and hits hard.
I also review a model that might be my fave going forward, but which I wouldn’t necessary put on a shared kit because they’re a little more delicate: the StudioXs.
So we explore how much new/good heads can improve your drum sound, and how durable the Aquarians are, but also…
…a little on how I like to tune…
…and, finally, the “hot licks” I was using to take them around the block, the bulk of which are transcribed for you above.
Hope you enjoy!