Breaking Sticks?

[Arnieinthesky]

Yeah breaking sticks is normal (you're beating them on metal), but there's ways of prolonging the lifespan of your equiment. Don't lean into your playing. You can hit hard, just come off the instrument quick, (cymbal, head, rim.)

Also, someone mentioned something about a dude whos MO is to hit as hard as he can. You can actually distort the cymbal this way. The cymbal itself is trying to create more overtones than it's capable of. All musical instruments have some sort of natural compression when it's being pushed or saturated and sometimes it's at it's most musical form when it's working hardest.

jl

[Whoopysnorp]

In my experience, most cymbals sound pretty much the same when you hit them with all your might. It becomes harder to tell the difference between nice expensive cymbals and cheap bronze cymbals under those conditions. That's kind of nice in a way, since if you're going to be playing like that you can just buy the ZBTs or whatever instead of springing for K Customs.

[Nubus]

I recently started playing drums in a band, practicing twice a week. I just noticed that I don't break sticks anymore. I don't know what I did, other than maybe a bit more control than in the past.

I'm thinking of starting a thread on breaking cymbals now due to the above comments.

[smopo24]

Originally Posted by Whoopysnorp

In my experience, most cymbals sound pretty much the same when you hit them with all your might. It becomes harder to tell the difference between nice expensive cymbals and cheap bronze cymbals under those conditions. That's kind of nice in a way, since if you're going to be playing like that you can just buy the ZBTs or whatever instead of springing for K Customs.

yea, you can definately hear more detail in the decay than in the initial impact; some cymballs make me wince because they sound so cheap.....or it may just be in my head.

[Jared Kubokawa]

ps. those aluminum sticks suck. Yeah, they don't break, but they also don't sound like sticks.

[GearJunkie]

Originally Posted by Jared Kubokawa

ps. those aluminum sticks suck. Yeah, they don't break, but they also don't sound like sticks.

and then they get bent and don't work as sticks. oh lars ulrich! when have you steered us wrong in the past?!

[cthetranspire]

Those Eastons have plastic shafts, the theory being that if you break the shafts, you replace them by unscrewing the beads. The sticks feel ABSOLUTELY terrible and they also feel like you're the drummer for Metallica. BOO. You'll notice Easton didn't really look into drumsticks until Lars came around.

Sticks break, it's the nature of the beast for sure. However, striking cymbals so hard that they "overspeak" is exactly like blowing into a trumpet as hard as you can and expecting the trumpet to work as intended. If your playing is any sort of consistent, then your sticks will break at an expected rate. Even if they don't visibly crack, the inside will fracture. The tone of the stick changes at this point and it becomes fairly obvious.

Rocking the shoulder of you stick at a 45 against your plates not only cause a premature death in your cymbal, it will also have the same effect on the stick.

[SorenP]

Yeah some of my worst blisters ever came from those metallica sticks. You're basically just grinding your fingers against textured metal for hours at a time. Real nasty.

Some drummers just hit harder, it depends on the style of music and the kind of stick too. I think consistency is a good point. I used to break sticks (and heads for that matter) a lot, but it was a pretty regular thing. Some baseball players break bats more than others, it doesn't mean they're worse players.