[equipment] New Toy

Debuting on tomorrow's Diver gig will be a Gretsch 5 1/2" x 14" steel snare drum. I had been getting annoyed with the Signia snare -- the undersized shell can cause some rather unique problems with drumhead tension if you're not careful, and those problems were starting to piss me off. Basically, it's really easy for the head to not be centered, and the collar can pull under the rim and lose all the tension on one side. This tends to only happen when you change heads, but if you're changing heads while on a gig, you might not be super-careful, and I've had to fight with the drum all night on a couple of occasions now.

Plus, I wanted a metal snare for gigging, just because it'll be louder in situations where my kit isn't miked, which is to say, nearly all the time. And it's got die-cast rims, which is something I've been jonesing for pretty much forever.

I don't know if this will open any sort of flood gate on snare drums. I'm not enough of a gear-hound to collect them, but there are a couple different "voices" I'd like to have in the arsenal, with the Jimmy Chamberlin and Bill Bruford signature models being way up on the list.