An acoustic drum set is not what most people think it is. We introduced microphones in the process and by default close mic drums in nearly every situation (professional drummers often even when rehearsing). So we lost the touch to the instrument profoundly.
To make things worse, drum marketeers use this fact to confuse drummeres even more, to get them to dislike the drums they HAVE, and want, what they don’t. Trends were introduced to make drums more disposable, especially because the drum industry, after a huge gold rush in the 60s, saw their shares shrinking since. First it was the Japanese drums with the much better hardware that threatened the shares, new music styles seemed to call for different drums (let’s not further question that here now for simplicity), and then finally the rise of smartphones seemed to kill all interest in young musicians to start playing, and the numbers of drums sold kept shrinking and shrinking.
All effort was placed on telling you what brand of drums to play. Each manufacturer has plenty of drum series, I once tried to find out what all these different series are about and talked to the then CEO of Sonor about their new introduced lines. He tried to explain to me which wood they had in which line, that the cheaper lines have less options, in sizes but also in colors, and if you want most options in color and wood, you’d take the SQ2.
What I took away from that was: if I can see myself playing a regular sized black drum kit, i could simply take the cheapest.
Jokingly I asked if they had any drums for acoustic purpose, and he got mad at me. I would make fun of them, all their drums are acoustic.
I think you could have the same or similar discussion with most drum manufacturers. They often even don’t know why they build the drums the way they do, it is simply the way they have always done it, and people demand it that way.
Since modern drums are by default closed miked, they are actually semi acoustic. We do not even hear how they sound acoustically when recording them, we just focus on the batter head, just as a magnetic pick up would only amplify the strings of a guitar, not the sound of the whole instrument. So even if the drums would sound great acoustically, just by how we tune, play, mic them, they are staying behind their optimum.
Also….
A good drum is a muffled one…?
I keep saying, and this is a hill I will die on, if muffling improves your instrument, it was not a good instrument to begin with. This is something I have learned as drum builder. When, as drummer, I try to get my sound by muffling excessively, the drum builder inside me questions the process and asks what is wrong with the instrument that we need to muffle it so much to improve the sound. If it would be a violin or a guitar, everybody would say I am right, but with drummers, muffling has become a second nature, especially when we play acoustic.
I just think there is a more excellent way. And I want to take you with me on that journey.