A Guide on Bearing Edges

[@jonathanbormann5077]

1:44 2:30 3:27

[@HR2635]

ok.. goes to show ho different you hear things... on my monitors the 45 degrees have LESS sustain than the 30 degree edge. That is .. the sustain or length of the fundamental attack tone...Which is also my experience as a drum builder.

[@seppoinnanen5577]

Actually, that 30 degree edge sounded with the longest sustain... intended or unintended. Thank you for the comparison

[@HR2635]

yep... it did.. and that is my experience from building drums for 20 years.. rounded.. short and meaty woody sound, 30: more tone and longer attack with body, 45 more and sharper attack, faster decay than 30 but also less tone, 60 degrees have the least sustain and the most attack.. actually you almost only hear the drum head and the ood type has close to no real impact.. I doubt that you could hear the difference between 60 degree maple and 60 degree mahaogny.

[@pawelmorrison]

Great idea for a video, very informative. A shame that you didnt A-B them without any talk in between by the end tho. Still, much appreciated, thanks!

[@stdrumsgmbh]

thanks for the feedback! You are right! We will try to add A-B as you described in future test-videos :)

[@jonathanbormann5077]

I just time stamped it, except for the 60 deg edge.

[@westbrad6808]

Its like different between a knock and a tap. The sharper the edge, the sharper the note and attack. The sustain comes from the bottom heads bearing edge, I suspect as it's usually tuned higher

[@disf5178]

It's pretty obvious if you think about it. Most resonance will come from largest area possible with least contact between head/shell= steep edge towards outside of shell.

[@alanpassmore2574]

Very subjective, once you put the drums into a mix with gating, compression and eq

[@TheRoomboom]

Seems like there is one mic per tom so not the same microphone for each - what would be actually interesting is to show the time-frequency plot, or decay plots of fundamental and overtones. There is a common misconception in the way that bearing edge affects sound in that it would change the shell radiation participating to the sound. The shell probably radiates less than 10% of the total sound - however the damping mechanisms from coupling to the shell does affect head vibration and sound. Also the geometry has a direct impact on the mechanical impedance of the edge, therefore the boundary condition of the head.

[@CarvedDrums]

Ich persönlich war etwas enttäuscht vom generellen Sound der Toms. Viel Sustain war bei keiner der Trommeln zu finden. Daher frage ich mich, ob da auch der Tonumfang der Trommeln richtig ausgetestet wurde....wovon man ausgehen könnte bei dem generellen Aufwand....oder doch nicht? Da is in jedem Fall mehr drin....

[@stdrumsgmbh]

Danke für den Kommentar. Ziel des Tests war es nicht unbedingt einen real brauchbaren Sound aller Toms mit möglichst viel Sustain zu zeigen, sondern eher welche Sound-Unterschiede sich bei einer möglichst gleichen Stimmung durch die Gratungen ergeben, also sprich: was die Gratung letztendlich bewirkt. Im längeren Video haben wir am Ende das "runde" Tom jazzig und das 60° Tom eher "metalhaft" gestimmt, allerdings hatten wir für die Aufnahmen im Studio beim Dreh nicht genug Zeit alle Toms in mehreren Stimmungen zu demonstrieren. Das Sustain kann daran liegen, dass die Toms auf Snareständern stehen. Auch die Auswirkung der Mikros auf den Sound und die geringe Menge an Makeup Gain kann eine Rolle dabei gespielt haben. Wir planen ein Nachfolge-Video zu filmen indem wir das Thema nochmal aufarbeiten und andere Tests zeigen und etwas mehr auf praktische Einsatzmöglichkeiten eingehen werden. Wir werden versuchen dein Feedback da einfließen zu lassen!

[@jooplin]

Hättest ihr Lust mal die Tympanic Bearing Edge von Guru Drums mit in den Vergleich aufzunehmen? Die haben eine 10er Tom ordentlich zum schwingen gebracht und die setzen die auch bei ihren Drum Sets ein. Ist natürlich unmöglich zu beurteilen wenn man keinen Direktvergleich hat :)

[@stdrumsgmbh]

Danke für den Kommentar! Eine gleiche Tom mit zusätzlich einer anderen Gratung zu bauen und einen weiteren Teil dieses Videos zu drehen steht vorerst leider nicht auf dem Plan. Ich kann mir schon vorstellen, dass sich diese Tympanic Gratung nochmal anders auswirkt. Aber ob der Unterschied zur normalen 45° Gratung mit rundem Gegenschnitt wirklich so krass hörbar ist wage ich anzuzweifeln - ich kann es aber natürlich nicht sicher behaupten :)

[@Rob18230]

I am missing a few steps in the progress. You guys jump straight to the second test. To compare the edged you should fit the other toms with a coated ambassador and the emperor. You jump straight to the conclusion that the ambassador sounds good on the roundover with high tuning and the ambassador sounds better on the 60 degrees with low tuning. I’d like to hear those on the other edges too.

[@stdrumsgmbh]

Hi Rob, in this video you only hear clear ambassador heads on all of the toms. To us this was the most transparent choice to pick sound differences. In our other longer video we switched the heads on tuning and heads on the round bearing edge and the 60° drum just to show the extreme ends of the spectrum. It was just an idea to show how you could use those tom sounds in a musical context, but it is not a part of the main bearing edge comparison. To check the main difference of the impact of the bearing edge itself, we focused only on the clear ambassador sound.

[@xenprovence6126]

It’s not beering edge like drinking a beer = it’s bearing edge like a running from a bear

[@stdrumsgmbh]

well in germany we prefer the first option 🤣 but thanks for the feedback! I will try to pronounce it more accurately in the future!

[@xenprovence6126]

Ich bin ein Berliner 1967-69 und mit Cock Robin 1986 auf de Alabama Hall, anyway… in America it’s “bearing edge” because the drum shell “bears” the drum head as a counter force or to “bear” the weight of the something. There must be a word for this in German that I don’t know, but I do know that Germans use English words, especially in the music world.

[@stdrumsgmbh]

@@xenprovence6126 I was just joking because we prefer drinking "beer" in Germany😁. We normally say "Gratung" for bearing edge. Even lots of german viewers corrected my pronounciation 😅

[@afonsoserro6834]

a guide on beering hedges

[@terrydavis5915]

Ockt to lieber snichzell. Undt drummer?...study??

[@Hootcifer]

Mega interessant! Danke für die Info! Und jetzt alle möglichen Kombinationen von verschiedenen Gratungen an Schlag und Resoseite 😁

[@jamescassidy4045]

Cool! I would have used the same mic for all of them, but thats just me. I find 421's are always different from each other. I know a dude thats had nearly 50 421's, and he said no two were alike for the most part hah. Anyway, still, cool video. My question was going to be, were they all tuned exactly the same, (and the batter/reso relationship) for the most part? Did you use a tuner, or did you just tune them roughly to a similar pitch, and weren't really concerned with them being the same? If they were all tuned to basically the exact same pitch, and relationship, were all those differences (in pitch, and bend), just from the bearing edge? So for instance will an angled bearing vs a rounded edge actually raise the pitch of a drum when its at the same tension?

[@stdrumsgmbh]

Thanks for the comment! regarding the tuning: The heads were tuned to the same pitch by ear. We didn't use a tuner for that, but actually we are currently working on a second episode on this topic where questions like this will be answered and also a more objective test will be included, without having to rely on different mics. But to give a quick answer: the same tension on the tensionrods should normally result in roughly the same pitch of the head no matter the bearing edge. But we can say for sure that the frequency content of the tone is changed by the bearing edges. Similar to a low pass filter, a round bearing edges muffles the top frequency for example. But in "real life" you would definately tune the drums to different pitches, because the different frequency content will result in a different sweetspot for each drum :)

[@jamescassidy4045]

@@stdrumsgmbh Thanks brother!

[@mentalitydesignvideo]

Guys, it's bear-ing edges, like a bear, not bier-ing, like beer.

[@stdrumsgmbh]

thanks for the comment. please watch out signature/performer video - we addressed the issue there ;)

[@powbobs]

Round

[@Tyl-Fiedler]

Super danke ❤️

[@krusher74]

they sound awful!

[@sawdustcrypto3987]

Haha

[@brianchisnell1548]

Splitting hairs here. Just tune them up and play man

[@Riddim4]

Um, no. The video exists to delineate what kind of effect different kinds of edges have, given the same type of shell, heads and tuning. It’s the first place I have seen this done objectively and scientifically.