Drum head tuning

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103 Members, Created 2/7/2011 -

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From xixiant on 9/13/2011 8:40:44 AM

I was looking into tightening the Renaissance head on my new-to-me Tradesman. The banjo is a couple years old and I'm guessing the head's never been tightened--the bridge sinks into the head about 1/8" to 1/4". Anyway, looking for info on the optimal degree of tightness lead me to this extremely nerdy link:

http://www.astroshow.com/banjo/banjohead.html

It's pretty much all Greek to me, but I'm fascinated. Has anyone played around with tightness like this? Any opinions?

3 Comments
	gnatman says: 9/13/2011 9:42:15 AM Very interesting. I was planning on changing my strings and doing this analysis banjohangout.org/group/banjone...blog/1601 by recording some sounds and doing a Fourier analysis. Now I guess while I'm at it, I'll play with the head tightening as well. I have a Nechville, so the head is dead easy to adjust, and should allow me to try several different settings very quickly.
	BanjoFris says: 9/13/2011 9:45:30 AM Interesting web page! A nice tone analyses but like the author said at the beginning , personal preference comes into play. The only thing that troubled me before with head tension was a very loud B note compared to other notes. I believe it's called "wolf note". A simple tightening of the head fixed that problem. My Deering Goodtime Special has a renaissance head and after installing a skin head on a different banjo , I realized the tension on a Renaissance head shouldn't be to tight. If you tighten it up to much , you might as well stick with a standard plastic head. The Renaissance head was designed to sort of mimic goat-skin sound.
	xixiant says: 9/22/2011 12:59:17 PM As an update--I did get the head tightened to where I want it. The tone I get is a little shy of a C. I agree--the Ren head does sound better, to my ears, a bit looser than a traditional head. It would be cool to do a complete analysis some day!
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