I did not like it at all! The sound was flat with no life. Maple "was" the overall winner. Lately Ludwig is coming back in a big way. For the first time in my life I have a new wood of choice. The Mahogany has a fat low end with a louder rise in sonic presence and decibels.
Maytridy Senior Member. Birch is a great value. Unless you're a very experienced drummer, you're really not going to be able to tell the difference. Save your money, go with birch and spend time tuning your kit correctly. That will make a much better sound than an expensive and poorly tuned maple kit. Fat Elvis Pioneer Member. I think it matters less what wood you get and matters more of what quality of wood and thus drums you get.
With drums, quality of the wood, hardware, bearing edges, etc are what matters most. You wont ever notice the differences between the woods until you become an experienced drummer and start to run into the differences i. So my advise to you is to research the specific group of drums by price and find out where the wood comes from, what hardware advantages one has over another, reputation, etc.
I would stay far away from the cheaper Pearl kits export, etc. The wood is crap and no amount of tuning or head selection will ever change that. Ozzy Biz Platinum Member. Fat Elvis said:. Mikey Dangerous Senior Member. Definitely some stuff I agree with here, but some of it I question. When it comes to comparing maple and birch, neither are a "better" wood. It's a matter of which you prefer more. Head selection and tuning along with bearing edges will make a more noticeable impact on the sound heard by most ears.
Keeping those and other factors the same, maple is a touch warmer and sustains longer, while birch is a touch brighter and has more attack. In terms of which wood is better for recording, the quality of today's drums in combination with advancements in recording technology means that both maple and birch drums will record well. In a good room with good equipment, a good engineer, good tuning, and of course, a good drummer, both will sound amazing and you can't really say that one is better than the other.
Traditionally speaking though, it was birch that was the preferred drum wood for recording, not maple. The maple and birch woods used in pro kits is certainly of higher grade and better quality than the maple and birch woods used in mid-level kits, and that difference is definitely discernable in the sound they produce. That being said however, mid-level kits nowadays really are excellent and offer tremendous value because they are priced low and sound great.
There has been a huge upgrade in the quality of mid-level kits, especially in recent years. Yamaha, Sonor, Mapex, Gretsch, etc. Some of them even come with hardware packages included. Try before you buy is the best advice you can get. Are there any other woods that sets are often made out of?
Doof DFO Veteran. Joined Feb 20, Messages 1, Reaction score Damo Well-Known Member. The difference in sound is predominantly going to come from heads and tuning. Both will sound great when dealt with correctly. Paul, At first blush, I'd say price. I have several new Pearl BD's and toms with die cast hoops for toms and in the same sparkle finish that sound the same to me. You are welcome to hear for yourself the "difference" yourself.
Birch sounds the same to me. My 2 cents. Most people tend to think that maple is warmer and birch is more of a midrange kind of sound.
Mahogany is fairly common too and tends to be even warmer than maple. Beech is less common, and most people think it's sort of between maple and birch. With all of this stuff, YMMV. Damo makes a good point too, one I would tend to agree with. It's important to keep in mind that shell material is just one of many variables. Is it the most important variable? I don't really think so, but I don't think it's necessarily the least important either, just one of many.
Kevin O'Connor said:. I've had maple drums that have all the supposed attributes of birch and I've had birch drums that had all the supposed attributes of maple I had a mahogany set about 45 years ago so I don't remember but they were made differently then too. My glass set can sound an awful lot like maple AND birch with the warmth of mahogany You'll often hear people say Maple is a "warmer sound", while Birch has a"punchier sound" As mentioned above, heads and tuning make a ton of difference.
I've put pinstripes on my Yamaha Maple Custom Absolutes at times, and they were plenty "punchy" Maple sounds more "mapley" than birch, and conversely, birch will sound more birchy than maple. I have been playing a four piece set with two birch drums and two maple drums for about 6 years now, and so far no one has noticed any difference between any of the drums soundwise.
My current lounge set has a birch snare, maple tom, mahogany floor tom, and luan bass. I'm sure that many here will be shocked to hear that the drums in this set have gotten numerous compliments on how good they sound. There are however still many reasonably priced drum kits that are made with birch, mainly due to the wood's relative abundance.
Unlike, for example, lauan, both birch and maple are very balanced in their projection of high, mid, and low tones. Their tonal difference is down to birch peaking with both high and low frequencies, whereas maple tends to display lower frequencies. This gives birch its bright and punchy characteristics and maple its warmer, smoother tone.
To further aid your understanding, listen to these two different woods particularly and the drummers that use them. Maple, on the other hand, gives the big sound a rock drummer is commonly drawn to. Drummers can influence their drums massively with their choice of heads and sticks , but these differences in wood tone can still be heard as you develop your ear. The varying manufacturing costs are also a distinguishing factor in which wood is used for new drums.
This is due to it being characteristically softer and easier to manufacture, but at the sacrifice of tone. We hear less resonance as this soft wood absorbs a lot of sound and responds with higher frequencies and far fewer low frequencies. Lauan also creates very little sustain compared to other harder woods.
This easily manageable material, coupled with its relatively inexpensive manufacturing process, sees a lot of budget drum-sets featuring this type of wood. Both vintage and modern drum kits use this combination of wood often along with maple to create that distinct tone associated with the drum sounds of the past and the genres and musicians that featured them.
They are still sought after and just as relevant today.
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