Snare Drum Dampening Methods

No other drum changes the overall sound of your kit more drastically than your snare drum.

When switching between genres, simply tuning the snare in different ways can make your drum sound fit the music. But there will never be enough time to tune between every song, neither on stage nor in the studio. That is where dampening your snare drum can come in very handy.

By reducing the overtones of your drum in different ways you can create various sounds without even touching a drum key. There are lots of different products on the market that serve this purpose and we decided to compare them back to back. While gel dampeners give you a rather small change in sound, the Big Fat Snare Drum products change your sound completely. Also while products like Snareweight can be switched on and off while playing, internal muffling systems like the Remo Muff’l need more time to install. All the different products not only vary in sound but also in the way they work. They also differ in terms of flexibility.

So when checking out which one of them suits your needs the most, always keep in mind how much you want to change your sound, like if you need to turn the dampening effect on or off while playing or if one single product will do the trick for you. It might also happen that you need three different options for three different songs. So make sure to always have some of them with you.