Tensioning (Tuning/pitching) My Whitney Drums

Nesting Penguins	16 (soprano kit)	16 (alto kit)	18 (tenor kit)
Snare	6/14 (85 or 88fs/80-79)	6/13 (85/79-77)	6/13 (85/78-76)
Small Tom	6.5/10 (74/77)	8/10 (71/73)	7/10 (73/76)
Large Tom	8/13 (75/79)	10/13 (72/70)	9/14 (73/76)
Bass Drum	12/16 (69/68)	16/16 (69/70)	17/18 (72/75)

Drum sizes are listed first as shell-depth/head-size. Tensions for the (batter/resonance) heads are in the parentheses. These are the tensions I’m currently using on my three kits and are up-to-date.

When it comes to tensioning (commonly referred to as “tuning”) drums, I had been more of an organic tuner, in that I would find a tuning that lets the drum’s own tone come through and then not mess with it until I had to. With any luck, each drum in the kit would sound good in the context of the other drums around it.

I’m not a fan of using any dampening on my drums; so no tape, felt, or gels, unless absolutely necessary; just tuning and technique to direct the sounds I want out of the drum.

Without gigs or rehearsals during the global pandemic of 2020/2021, I had a lot of extra time on my hands (pun intended), so I decided to do some drum tuning experiments on my Whitney drum kits and see if I could get a little better at it.

I own three Whitney drum kits, a custom down-sized Penguin 16 that I call my “soprano” kit, a Nesting Penguin 16, which I call my “alto” kit, and a Nesting Penguin 18 that I call my “tenor” kit. I use the soprano kit for those acoustically live spaces with hard surfaces where I need to play at a much lower volume yet still want to have some dynamic range. I use the alto kit for contemporary music, and I use the tenor kit for outdoor gigs, big bands, and gigs where the rest of the band is amplified and the music might need me to play a little louder at times.

Those white vinyl tents that have become ubiquitous at outdoor events are the primary exception to the rule, as the thickness of the vinyl combined with the shape of the tent-top tends to reflect a lot of drum sound, and can quickly make the tenor kit feel too loud for the space. When I know it’s a tent gig, I’ll often take the alto kit.

Popular drumset drum sounds and tunings have evolved over the decades. I’m aiming for a late 1950s-early-1960s “Blue Note” kind of sound out of the soprano kit’s bass and toms, a somewhat more contemporary 90s jazz sound out of the alto kit’s bass and toms, and a kind of bigger bass and tom sound out of the tenor kit that’s still a little “CTI Records” kind of “jazzy”. I prefer a deeper snare drum sound than most of the classic jazz recordings have, and I’ll adjust the snare-wire tension from song to song, so I can change the sound of the drum a bit to go with the song, and/or sticks/brushes I’m using on each tune.

All three kits have the nutmeg finish and wood rims, so they look nearly identical unless you are a drum geek, or they are all in the same room at the same time.

I wanted some way to try and document my tuning variations so I could keep track of what works, once I figured it out, and maybe come up with some “system” that would make tuning easier in the future. In 2021, I purchased a Drum Dial. I got the analog version, and it gives me unbiased feedback about the head tension near each of the drum lugs.

After a couple of months of trial and error (lots of errors), I got the alto kit sounding pretty good and could quickly notice the difference when a drum head’s tension had slipped a bit. I was soon able to pull it right back into my desired sound using the Drum Dial to match up the drumhead tensions I had written down. Sweet success!

The tenor kit was another story though. I started with my favorite contemporary-sounding heads I’ve used in the past on other kits, and it just went from bad to worse. For several weeks I tried all kinds of different tensions. but the sound I wanted was frustratingly elusive. I had been playing Whitney drums for over two years, so I was pretty sure it wasn’t the brand-new drums. The tom and bass sizes on the tenor kit are larger, plus I was going for a different tone than the alto kit, and I was struggling to get that big fat-in-the-middle sound I wanted.

I decided to order a different set of batter heads for the tenor kit; the same ones I had been playing on the alto kit. I discovered the Remo Ambassador® Renaissance® heads after a recommendation from a great drum builder and tech I’ve known for a long time. I had always thought of them as a great straight-ahead jazz head, and it hadn’t crossed my mind to use them for anything else. I love the softer feel of these heads though, and I figured I would try them on the tenor kit too.

Before putting them on the tenor kit’s drums, I remembered that I had previously waxed the bearing edge of the alto kit’s drums, so I sacrificed a small scentless votive candle and waxed the bearing edge of each of the newer drums and, while I had them apart, I also put a bit of bearing-grease (yes like you would use for an old car) on the threads of each lug too.

While changing the snare batter head, I noticed that I had put the clear snare strap/tape in at a slight angle when centering the snare after unpacking the new drums. This tiny mistake was likely part of what didn’t seem right about the new snare drum’s sound. After I reset both straps, making sure they were pulling with even tension, the drum started playing as I preferred. Big improvement in the sound too! I later swapped the strap/tape for nylon cord. I have better luck with that.

The Renaissance heads were the missing piece of the puzzle for me. Almost immediately the drums sounded better, and it was just a matter of time before I could find the right starting head tensions for the two toms. This was not intuitive to me. The tension of the tenor kit’s deeper 10” drum’s batter head needed to be a little higher than on the shallower 10” tom on the alto kit. Also, I shouldn’t have messed with the tension of the resonant heads, which sent me down a rabbit hole of bad sounds. The 14” was also not intuitive for me. Actually, I’ve found most of my 14” toms difficult to tune well on other kits too, so this wasn’t a surprise.

Here’s what I think I know at this point. Both the custom-depth 6”/13” Whitney snares, (with the stock Aquarian snare-side resonance head on the bottom, and the Remo Ambassador Renaissance batter head on the top) sound and feel great to me with the batter head at a starting drum-dial head tension of 84. I say “starting tension” because I’ll still pitch-tune a lug or two from there. The resonant heads are a little different because I’ve had the snare bed widened on the tenor kit’s snare drum, so the lugs adjacent to the snare beds have less tension than the other four. This gives the drum a different response at some snare tensions when I want a tighter/crispier/dryer snare-drum sound for something.

One of the things I found interesting when using the DrumDial for the first time, was how different the head tension readings were from what I felt in my hand while turning the drum key. It could be that since I have wood rims and wood shells there’s some play to be expected, but I had to get used to the idea that what I was feeling in my hand might not directly translate to the tension of the drum head at any given point. I later found this great article about using the DrumDial that goes into detail about what I was experiencing. 

All the drums now sound great, and each kit’s sound works for me in the spaces I play in and the styles of music I use them with. While these drums could certainly be set up to sound more like kits from the 90s and beyond, I’m aiming for an older sound than you’ll find on your typical “backline” festival rental kit these days, and I’m darn close to getting it.