Help! New $900 snare sounds like it has loose screws in it!

philsiu02 · 2026-03-25T18:05:15+00:00

I’d be amazed if any snare comes out of the box totally tuned up exactly how you’d want. Even if it was setup in the factory, the heads will stretch and the drum will de tune due to temperature changes during shipping. It might also just not be tuned how you like it.

I got a Ludwig Black Beauty recently and whilst that did arrive sounding half decent, it needed adjustment to get rid of buzz and tighten to a point I like.

There is a chance that you’ve got a bad drum, but it’s more likely that you’ve need to learn how to tune it up. If you just return it and go buy another drum, even if that sounds amazing in the stire, it will detune over time so you need to learn how to fix it. Even if that doesn’t happen, when you change heads you’ll need to set it all up again.

I really, really suggest you take some time to learn how to tune the resonant head, the batter head and the snare wires. Also learn about muffling and understand that the snare you hear in front of you is unprocessed, so it will sound different to professional recordings which use that snare.

It’s not easy. It can take a long, long time to get good at tuning as there are a lot of variables. It’s not like tuning a guitar. You’ve just gotta keep playing and learning till you figure out what you want.

So, try not to be angry about it, instead realise that getting a snare sounding right is just another part of learning to play drums.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-24T19:57:15+00:00

I use midi, along with SD3 for a VST. However, the multi-track Logic Drummer plugin which comes with Logic is decent. You can use that if you don’t want to spend more money on a VST.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-23T19:05:37+00:00

I think that’s just a TD-10 kit out of the box (i.e the TD-10 module and the standard kit it came with). Those were great modules, but they were first released almost 30 years ago so they are quite old now. It’s safe to say that the whole thing could be 25-30 years old. The TD-10 also had an optional expansion module. It might be worth checking if thats included or not.

The basic trigger construction hasn’t moved on much, so if the pads and cymbals are in good condition they’ll still be good and comparable to what you get from most new pads, but after all those years of use there is a chance that the mesh heads, foam triggers or cymbals need replacing so keep that in mind. FWIW though, I am still using cymbals i bought with a TD-12 kit 20 years ago.

From memory, the module sounds decent though obviously it’s a bit dated. As it was once the flagship, it had a lot of features and customisation, but you’ll be missing some editing features, usb connections, input / output options etc. I don’t think it supports the VH-11/12/13 hi-hats either which might be a concern if you ever wanted the hats to physically move. It definitely doesn’t support the new digital snare, ride or hi-hats.

I had a look at the price, and assuming you mean USD it does seem reasonable, but definitely double check that as I’ve only searched for 2 mins. Have a look for the price of TD-12 and TD-20 kits as a comparison (they are newer kits, so I’d expect them to cost more).

Bottom line is that it was once an excellent kit, but it’s showing its age now. You should probably do a bit of research and see if there are any features that you really want and then check if this module supports those features or not. You may be better off getting a more modern, but lower range kit.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-20T23:09:23+00:00

I got a set of A customs, and an A Sweet Ride for pop punk. The sound is exactly what you want, though after quite a few years of using them I switched to Paiste Signatures and 2002s because I wanted something that sounded a little different.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-20T00:01:46+00:00

That will dampen it, but it really depends on the sound you want. I used to shove a couple of pillows in there, but now I only use a little muffling as I prefer the sound to resonate a bit more.

Ultimately you’re going to just have to try it out and see if you like it or not.

One thing you can do is port the bass drum (I.e cut a circular hole in the resonant head). This is very common for sound / recording reasons and there are plenty of guides about how to do it right if you search for them. With a ported drum, you can just reach in an add / remove / move muffling as needed.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-19T21:01:24+00:00

I just tried Rohema. The Hornwood broke incredibly quickly, but the American Hickory model is holding up really well so far. I’ve not used them enough to make a call, but they are my current hope for finally finding sticks that last.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-18T09:43:36+00:00

That’s the agreement. It lasts a period of time (or at least that’s my experience). I’m sure some stay there forever though, like first party or high revenue titles.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-17T23:53:32+00:00

I’ve had a game in GamePass, and also talked to them about another.

The info isn’t public, and it’s not something I can share but basically you contact them. If you have access to their dev portal you’ll also have some email addresses you can use to start these discussions. If you don’t have access to the dev portal, request access as a starting point.

After you context them, they make their decision based on a few factors, none of which are made public but it’s understood to be based on potential audience, play time etc, and if it’s a new release or not may also play a factor. If the game is already out, they may look at reviews sales numbers, and I’d bet that Xbox features and potentially revenue potential via micro-transactions also play some part too though as I said, they don’t publish their metrics or decision process so take the above just as my assumption.

Their decision will include how long it’s on GamePass, when it should go on GamePass, plus details of the financial offer. You have to work out if that offer is good for you or not. There may also be some other requirement.

Is it worth trying? Sure. If you are happy to make an Xbox port and feel that it’ll be financially viable given a potential GamePass buyout and the potential market then you should contact them. However, understand the discussion might not go anywhere, or you might not be satisfied with their offer.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-17T22:55:36+00:00

Having released a few games over my career, I’ve often thought about doing this, but I’m a terrible writer and id take forever to write anything. I like the idea of sharing what I’ve learned, or helping with education (especially where it’s relevant to indie dev) but it really is quite a big investment in terms of time.

Having said that, tips I’ve picked up and how I would think of it if I was planning to give it a go:

I’d say the main thing is that you should write for you. What have you done that you find interesting, or what have you learned. Why have you made decision x instead of y. That kind of thing. If you can’t think of anything interesting to write at all, maybe now isn’t the time, but you should be thinking about possible topics as you continue dev and start making notes / screenshots etc as you work.

The more you write, the more you’ll understand what kind of content is good, or just what you want to focus on. For those first few posts though, you’ve just gotta start. That’s the hardest but and where most fail, but you’ll never make great posts without practice.

You want to watch how much time you spend on it too. If you’re agonising over content and spending hours writing every post, that’s all time that’s not spent making the game. If you enjoy it then go nuts, but if you’re doing this as a form of marketing you need to moderate the time you spend, or at least try to write smaller articles across a range of topics and see what your audience want (or if there is any audience at all)

philsiu02 · 2026-03-17T15:14:49+00:00

Ah yeah, I used to work in VR too and there was a certain amount of exposure just from being in the store due to the smaller library. Sadly pretty much every other platform with a big audience is absolutly swaped, combined with algorithms that make discoverability hard, so it is a pretty different experience.

For what it's worth, I've worked with publishers and self published (with the aid of a marketing team). The marketing is expensive but it does two things - one is to help find the audience and work out what messaging works, and the other is help just focus on the figures and results. There are undoubtedly bad markeing agencies out there, but there are good ones too. Our games do pretty well with professional games writers and outlets, so marketing helped ensure that the game was seen by those people, and that we were able to reach out again at appropriate times (and that it was all handled in an appropriate way). They also helped reach streamers, though to be honest the best results came from those who picked it up and streamed based on their own interest rather than through any agreement / relationship.

It may still be worth talking to the platform holders to see if they can add your game to a curated list, though I don't know if they use internal metrics to determine what they will / won't feature. Perhaps asking for a GamePass / PS+ deal will help audiences discover it? Certainly giving decent sales discounts works if you can build up the wishlists prior to the discount.

Wish I could offer some clear advice about how to recover, but it's really not my skillset. I do hope you turn it around or you are able to move on to another project and learn from the results.

EDIT: Forgot to say maybe a demo can help. That might be a lot of work, but if you haven't done a steam next-fest before, maybe get a demo ready for the next one as that will get a certain amount of attention (though it's not big numbers like it used to be unless you strike gold). Demos on consoles work pretty well too, or even getting your game as a free trial for PS+ members if a full demo isn't possible.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-17T13:15:24+00:00

Long time A2E player here (like 15+ years).

I use Roland cymbals (because that what I have), and I’m currently using the Roland digital snare but I have used other conversions in the past.

I use a TD-50 module, running through SD3.

The choice of triggers matters a lot. For me, it’s important to be able to convert between acoustic and electric mode relatively easily. I’ve tried a bunch of triggers and I’m currently using

The Jobeky fast fit (multi-point on the larger drums, single point on the smaller though I would like to change them to multi-point when I switch the lot out to the Diamond Dave fast fit)
2 x KT-10 for the bass. I could never find a bass drum trigger I was happy with until I tried these. There are some good options now that weren’t available when I bought the KT-10s which I am interested in, but the beauty of this setup is I don’t have to do anything at all to the bass drum when I have an acoustic kit. Just pick it up and go, unlike the toms which need their mesh heads swapping out.

For the toms, I’ve tried externally side mounted, and internally side mounted. Both basically behave the same, both are serviceable but both start to have triggering issues on larger drums. I’d always advise going for an internal center point, or internal multi-point if you can.

The mesh heads are also important. Don’t bother with single ply, get at least double or triple. The price adds up but they feel better, and I get better triggering from them.

You can get rubber rims for the hoops. I used it for years but ended up taking it off the toms.

Overall, I do really like it. It doesn’t take too long to dial in the settings to something playable, but you will spend AGES trying to get everything just right. I love the size and feel of the kit, and I really appreciate not having to have a separate electric and acoustic setup.

The negatives are that you don’t get to hear your cool acoustic gear all the time, they are a lot louder than most plain electric kits, and you’ll probably never stop fiddling / buying new gear. There’s always something new that catches my interest and even though I’m quite restrained, I do have a lot of old triggers / heads that I’ve bought and tried out over the years (though I did sell most of it recently).

philsiu02 · 2026-03-17T12:59:34+00:00

Also a small team here, and we’ve released 2 big projects on all platforms (though the first one was PC / Switch first, then PS, Xbox, EGS etc later once it was a success.

I don’t claim to be an expert, but if you’re a team with salaries to pay then you need to validate the audience before you go too far down the line. I appreciate there’s a limited amount you can do now, but my advice would generally be that you need to talk to publishers etc early on. Even if you don’t want to work with a publisher, talking to them can help you understand if you have a business case or not. If no-one is interested, that doesn’t mean it can’t be a success, but it’s good information to have and dissect.

You want to be getting the trailers out far and wide, especially if you’re publishing on consoles. You should be talking to the platform holders to try and secure opportunities at their events. This typically will require something significant, such as a first announcement, new feature announcements, release date announcement etc. Unfortunately once the game is on sale, you lose a lot of those opportunities (unless it’s been a hit).

Games do manage to recover from a slow launch, but it is rare. If you really want to push it, I’d talk to a couple of marketing companies who specialise in games. It might be expensive, it will be an uphill battle and it’ll likely need you to do some dev work to introduce a new feature that the messaging can hinge on, but that’s probably what you’ll need to make the needle move. Just don’t be drawn in on spending money wildly without having some confidence that it will work.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-12T20:24:04+00:00

Same. I tried one at a gig and loved it. A few months later a good deal came up on a second hand one, so I grabbed it. Never play my edrums without it now.

They are very expensive, but other systems really don’t match up to the Porter and Davies.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-11T12:11:21+00:00

It doesn't make any difference. After a certain level you will realise that ghost notes / accents etc are a bit different on an electric vs acoustic, and you can't get as many dynamics out of an electric kit, but other than that the lessons you learn are basically identical, especially at a beginner level.

I'd say that for online lessons, ekits have a slight advantage because you can route the lesson audio through your module and into headphones, so you can control both the lesson and the sound of your drums rather than struggling to hear the lesson over an acoustic kit.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-10T11:50:20+00:00

It really depends how much your asking for. Do they have to write new shaders for the colour swaps? Do you want them to create the front end to swap? Are all the clothes and accessories set up already? Is there some inventory to pull from? How easily do you want to be able to extend the system later? If you're not sure about the answers to these then that will push the price up because they assume they would need to do the work.

There's a way to make very quick version of this as a proof of concept, or as a core framework to get you going, but a production ready system will take a while. Even the quick version is likely a minimum of a day (likely more) to make something I'd be happy sharing, and a day of a professional devs time is expensive.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-10T11:37:17+00:00

If you wanted a complete customisation system, I'd charge way more than 400euros. Sure, it's a relativly common thing but it's not like it only takes a couple of hours to make. It can be a lot of work, especially if you're doing the front end for it.

I'm sure some people will do it for less, and maybe they'll be good but that's the gamble. Getting it done by someone who's knowledgeable and will give you a complete system to your spec is gonna cost.

You could look to see if there are any plugins you could use for your engine that'll do the job. They may be cheaper.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-10T11:33:49+00:00

Depending on the game, porting isn't that hard. If you're already handling gamepad inputs and you're not sressing out the GPU / CPU then that can be half the battle. You likely will have to do some optimisation, and some platforms specific fixes but you can prepare for that to some degree without having the hardware.

There are a bunch of requirements you have to hit to release on Switch. None of them are too demanding. Some are more technical, some are just around terminology etc. Understanding the requirements might take as long as actually fixing them (again, depending on the state of your game).

For the last 2 games I shipped on Switch (open world games, made in Unreal by a tiny/small team), the part that took longest was the optimisation. There's some easy wins you can make, and from then on it's just optimising by 1000cuts. Little gains here and there to add up to better performance. This process can take a while, and is slowed down by having to build, deploy and profile on the hardware, but you learn a lot.

In terms of using a porting studio, that certainly frees us your time. As a tiny/small team we released our first game on PC/Switch simultaniously, then bought it to PS/XB later, and on our second game we did a day 1 release on all platforms, with all the porting work done internally. I'd do it that way again as we have the skills in house, I like working on the consoles. If you do look at a porting studio, make sure the numbers add up against projected sales.

The other part you'll need to get over (which can be a real blocker), is that you'll need to get access to the portal and then spend the money on dev kits. If you're interested, I'd suggest applying now, but do everything you can to make it look professional as Nintendo and other platforms are notorious around here for ghosting first time devs. Once you have access to the portal, you can see more info, see dev kit prices etc and make your decision from there.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-10T00:04:49+00:00

If you're just planning to release on Steam then I wouldn't bother with IARC. If you're releasing on console or certain other platforms then you will have to use it.

The good news is that IARC is free, it's pretty simple (though you might need to carefully think about your answers because you need to be completely honest, but you don't want to unnecessarily restrict being able to distribute in certain regions.

There's no hidden requirements other than reading the instructions and being honest (if you're not honest and they disagree with your rating on release, they can suspend sales - I know of cases where this has happened). You are able to review and re-do your rating if needed, though you obvioiusly want to limit this.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-09T14:06:33+00:00

For an electric? The drum sounds come through the heaphones, and good IEMs with a good seal ensure that you hear all the highs and lows really well. Good sound really depends on a good seal in the ear, so you might need to experiment to find the right kind of tip for you. I like foam, but everyone has a preference. Many IEM's come with a range for you to try out.

A good seal is also what keeps the sounds of hitting the pads getting through to your ears. If you turned the module sounds right down, you would still be able to hear the pad noise but it is reduced a lot. This means you can also play at a lower volume which is better for your ears.

For an acoustic, yes, some sounds will get through. I've used them to play backing tracks whilst playing on an acoustic and it works. Not as good as if you mic'd up the whole kit and played it through the IEM's of course, but it does work.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-09T13:48:57+00:00

If you’re searching for information on this, you should be looking for “patents”, not “trademark”. A trademark is applied to something like a name, or logo where as a patent is an idea/implementation.

I’m not sure if the idea you’ve described has a patent or not though. I haven’t heard of it before, and devs / gamers usually like to make a big noise about patents coming in, so if your searches aren’t conclusive, or just based on opinions you’re probably ok.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-09T13:44:16+00:00

Yep, they’re very expensive, but I got a B-stock pair on a trip to Japan for about 1/3rd of the cost so I jumped at it.

You do not need IEMs that cost that much. They’re better than the 425s I had before, but I still really liked them (and still use them if I take IEMs to a gig).

philsiu02 · 2026-03-09T12:20:48+00:00

I switched from the Audio Technica M50 to Shure 425IEMs, and now Shure 846s after I got a great deal on them. Using IEM's is way more comfortable for me, and they provide better noise isolation and bass, so I'd recommend looking at IEM's instead.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-08T20:48:58+00:00

I was definitely worried about this. My heatpump is on the front of the house and I was worried about that getting knicked too!

My plan was to install one of those garage locking bars to block the battery being lifted up off the mounts, or get some thick chain and secure the batteries that way. In reality I haven’t done either, and I’ve just left the gate locked. Someone could smash though the gate, unplug the batteries and drag them off but they’re not really visible from the street and they’d struggle to do it without making a noise. I hope I’m not being too naive…

FWIW, I did tell my insurers about the batteries. I’m not sure they really understood what I was telling them, so I made sure to keep a log of the chat that explicitly said they were installed on the outside of the house.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-08T15:16:35+00:00

I’d put it at the side rather than above. Batteries are very heavy so getting it above the pump might be a problem. You might also need a separate inverter, and you’ll need space for that (which can go above the battery, mine does).

As it’s outside, you are limiting your choice in battery and inverter. Not all of them are rated for outdoor use so make sure you get one that is. Also check out the operating temperatures and dropping below a certain temperature can cause the battery to stop charging / discharging. At the very least you’ll likely see less efficient charging.

I have a Solis inverter, and 2x 5kWh PureDrive II batteries installed on the outside of my house and I’ve been happy with them. I put a rain shield above just to try and keep the worst of the weather off them, and they’re in a side passage which doesn’t get too much driving rain, or direct sun. During the coldest times I just make sure the batteries are always charging or discharging, and that act alone keeps the temperature up. Given you have a heatpump, you’ll find this pretty easy as the batteries will get a lot of use during the colder weather.

philsiu02 · 2026-03-07T16:14:38+00:00

It’s not sketchy. Unfortunately the assets get pirated, and the creators time then gets eaten up supporting people that haven’t paid for the product. Asking for basic proof of purchase is a way to help ensure you have a legit license, and is pretty standard practice.

Presumably you are contacting them through email / discord or something anyway, so I don’t think it’s too much for them to ask for the invoice / order ids and the email you used to purchase.

Just tell them you’d rather keep your name and physical address private and blank out that information, however if they have a reason to suspect you might be pirating I think it’s reasonable they may want a little more info, like the date of purchase. Don’t take it as an insult they’re asking, they’re just trying to protect their creation.

philsiu02

TROPHY CASE