Hi.
I'm Steve Albini, and I'm in Studio A of Electrical Audio, and today I'm gonna show you how to
take the dents and dimples out of a used drum head.
[clunk, clunk.]
This is a technique that you can use to get a little bit of extra life out of the drum
head. You can shrink out the dimples and, it doesn't make the drum head "like new",
but it gets rid of the dimples, which adds considerable life to the drum head.
The dimples... the biggest problem with the dimples is that they act like corrugations
and they stiffen the drum head, so the drum head doesn't respond properly, it doesn't
resonate properly. They can also, in extreme cases, like especially in floor toms, for
example, where there is a lot of low-frequency resonance, the dimples can actually sort of
pop up and down and make a buzzing sound. ...And, that's a... this technique will solve
all of those problems. Like I said, it doesn't completely rejuvenate the head, but it makes
it usable again.
So the technique is to use a heat gun... and these are sold in electronic supply shops,
and plumbing supply shops, hardware stores... things like that. It's like a hair dryer,
but it operates at much higher temperatures.
So the idea is that you wanna heat the head somewhat evenly and then concentrate the heat
on the individual dimples.
[heat gun whirrs]
You can, in a pinch, use a hair dryer. But most of the time you're concentrating the
heat so much on the hair dryer that the internal thermocouple inside the hair dryer has a tendency to pop
and fail. So if you're going to use a hair dryer rather than a heat gun, I would suggest
using one in a hotel room where you don't care if you've broken it. Don't use your own
hair dryer.
[heat gun whirrs, then shuts off]
So, all the individual dimples have shrunk out of the head now. I like to let it cool
for a minute and run my hand over the surface to make sure that I haven't missed anything.
And if I've missed a dimple, then I can go back and hit that dimple - like I missed one
right there, for example...
... A couple of other subtleties about this technique: after you've heated the head up,
the whole of the drum head is going to sort of remember its manufactured shape, which
may be different from the tension that it was under when it was tuned, so you're going
to have to - you're definitely going to have to re-tune the drum. You will have changed
the tension over the whole surface of the head.
If the drum head has a reinforcement pad, like for example, this Evan's head has an
internal reinforcement pad underneath the center of the drumhead, and the ... the Remo
Controlled Sound, for example, those have an... a reinforcement appliqué on the underside
of the head as well.
You want to wait until the drum head is thoroughly cool before you hit it, otherwise the adhesive
on that reinforcement pad can soften from the heat, and it can de-laminate when you
hit it. So you want to make sure that everything is cooled, back to normal, room-temperature
before you actually hit the drum.
And one other thing that you can do, after you've shrunk the dimples out of the head,
and you're satisfied that the head is flat all the way around, you can even out the stresses
in the head by slowly playing the heat gun over the whole surface of the head, and that
will take out / take away any sort of localized stresses that you have created by concentrating
on the little spots of where the dimples are. So I'm going to do that now, I'll show you...
...It still has the wear and the abrasion and any scratches that it had from the original
- from it's "used" incarnation, but the physical dents and dimples in the drum head are shrunk
out of it, so now it's got a flat playing surface and it's a little bit more even in
tension.
A couple of other things to be aware of:
If you concentrate the heat on one area of the head for too long, that is if there's
a dimple that - because of its shape - the heat isn't hitting it evenly, and you concentrate
the heat there too long, the plastic can craze - that is, it becomes opaque and white. And
in extreme cases it can actually sort of darken and blister. If you do that, the head is shot
because - that part of the head, where it's been crazed or blistered - is going to be
much more brittle than the rest of the head. And as soon as the drumstick hits that spot,
or anywhere near that spot, the head's gonna split. So you have to be careful to keep the
heat source moving over the surface of the head so that it's not concentrated on one
spot for too long.
If you don't have a heat gun - if you don't have a hair dryer, you can invert the drum
and use a butane cigarette lighter, and very carefully shrink out the individual dimples
- Much more prone to error doing it that way. You're much more likely to burn the head and
create one of those weak spots, but in a pinch you can do it.
The sort of flamboyant roadie way of doing this is to pour a shot of vodka on the head
and set it on fire... has the same effect, a lot more dramatic, and, you know... makes
you the king of the road crew, I guess.
So, that technique works for any single-ply, mylar drum head. There are some special drum
heads that are made out of kevlar cloth, for example, but this technique won't work on
any of those laminated heads or any of those fabric heads - it only works on single-ply,
mylar heads but it works a treat on any of those.
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