[This thread has been moved to a new topic so that others may contribute]
Hi Fan,
I believe I posted this somewhere else a long time ago but....
I have several Slingerland drums that are all 25 x 14 with NO internal baffle. I have actually not had a chance do own or do serious work with a larger diameter drum so I can't give any advice on those. After lots of experimenting I have come up with a head combination that works really well for me:
Top: Remo 14" Coated DIplomat - Tuned VERY tight
Bottom: Remo 14" PowerStroke 3 - Tuned quite loose with a fair amount of duct tape/tissue muffling around the edge
I find that having the looser the top head the more it interacts with the bottom head. HAving it tight gives the snare a nice range of sounds as well. There are basically 3 zones to play it. Dead center sounds a lot like a snappy tenor drum, 3 inches from the rim sounds most like a tight standard snare, and playing right at the edge with a little rim shot gives a slightly ringy picolo snare sound.
I muffle the kick so that there ius still a little bit of ring. I find that the ring really gives the small head some extra tone and depth. Adding the extra mass of the tissue with the duct tape lets the drum go pretty low before bottoming out. If your playing a small cafe or bar, the kick will actually carry and it mics really well for larger gigs. When I play at rock clubs, especially larger halls, I usually have to tell the sound guy to turn the kick down in the house. They get so excited about being able to make that little drum sound so big that they just crank it!
As far as rattle and buzz, it's not bad at all! Of course there is some but I would say not more than a lot of regular snares. What I notice more when recording is the snare bleed into the bass mic. The sound of the snares travels down the chamber plus you get a little resonance in the bottom head when you hit the top. This is also very minor and only an issue if you are doing some tight kick snare stuff in which case you may gate anyway. It's generally better if you look at it as one instrument and accept the character of the interactions. It's a cool thing!
Finally, micing. 2 or 3 mics works great. If you have just 1 go for the kick for a small medium room that the snare and cymbals will cut through, or an over head for a larger room. 2 mics I do kick and overhead (to cover my additional percussion) or kick and snare (if it's a rock thing). 3 mics, kick-snare-overhead. I have never tried stereo overheads because I don't think that it would really have much effect?!?
Hope this helps. Anyone out there want to descibe their head setup for a larger drum?
John