Drummers will spend hours prattling on with each other about different drums - vintage ones, modern ones, different woods, plies, edges, hoops, snare beds, etc etc etc.
they talk about it as if they are guitars or violins. I'd like to weigh in on all of this. What follows is my OPINION. You drum guys may think I'm deaf, or crazy; if so I say bring your special drums over to my studio so we can do a truly scientific blind listening test and see if you can hear the difference between different shells and/or drums....
To a certain extent, a drum shell is a drum shell is a drum shell. If it's:
A. within the common thickness parameters of most drum shells, 3 ply, 6 ply, 8 ply, 9 ply, solid, reinforcement hoops, whatever.
B. actually round (not oval)
C. wood
D. has a good bearing edge
The difference in sound between drums has mostly to do with the following:
A. The hoops - die-cast or stamped? Gretsch style or some other die-cast hoop?
B. The bearing edge - old Gretsch drums had a backwards bearing edge right? it curved in from the oustide, rather than the reverse. Then there's the question of the angle of the bevel on the edge, which makes a smaller difference than the inside-curve/outside curve question, but does make a difference.
So why did old Gretsch drums sound so unique? 95% BECAUSE OF THE FUNNY BEARING EDGE AND THE DIE-CAST HOOP. NOT BECAUSE OF THE SHELL CONSTRUCTION (AMOUNT OF PLIES, THICKNESS, ETC ETC).
while we're on the subject of old drums, there is one other thing that seriously affects the sound in certain cases:
drums before a certain year were made initially for calf heads. some of those drums have a thick wrap over the shell, which were made exactly to the stated sizes (12x8, 13x9, 14x5, etc etc). When you put a mylar head on one of those drums, the flesh hoop is tight over the drum - you have to squeeze it on. When you tune that drum up, all kinds of binding at the edge occurs. That makes it difficult to get the head to settle in. Add to that the inherent difficulties of getting a drum with a heavy die-cast hoop in tune (because the hoop is so rigid that it moves as one thing when you turn one lug screw), and you end up with a drum that is probably not gonna sound good for WEEKS after you change the head or adjust the tuning more than just a small tweak.
This is why I'm always mystified when I'm asked to bring my old Gretsch drums to sessions - they're tuned up like jazz drums, which is probably not gonna be appropriate for most records. To tune them way down and have them sound decent will require weeks of advanced planning.
Here is a little doc that I send to folks when we're having this conversation:
the famous gretsch sound is mostly due to the diecast hoops, which are dense, clunky, short of ring, and NEVER tension the drum evenly. don't get me wrong - I love my gretschs and they sound super cool, but I want to have other drums there in case we say, "hmmm, can we get that same tone but tune the toms down for this tune?...."
so what's so desirable about old gretsch drums for modern recording?
In my experience, here's why. 1. most of those "magical" gretsch recording kits, if they had the funny backwards bearing edge to start with, have been redone in a modern way, many of them have stamped or other die-cast hoops instead of the original gretsch, and most of them are bare or finished wood, not wrapped; so the magic of those drums is ONLY the resonance of the thin shells, nothing else that's specific to gretsch drums.
and as I've already said, that magic shell resonance is MAYBE 5% of the sound.
The other thing that affects the sound is how much crap is on the shell, and whether there is a resonance iso mount on the drum. some fixed-shell mounting systems change the sound of the drum radically, others less-so.
drums with full length lugs from top to bottom are obviously going to resonate differently than drums with small-footprint lugs, and not always in predictable ways. I've never heard a completely floating-lug drum that I liked - the vast majority of the floating lug snare drums that I've encoutered seem appropriate for classical snare drumming, but pathetic for drumset playing.
And with snare drums, the snare bed has a big effect. I'm convinced that's why many modern snare drums don't sound good - they don't have a good snare bed. I had a yamaha metal snare drum years ago that had NO snare bed - perfectly flat bottom edge!
the point is, VERY LITTLE OF THIS HAS TO DO WITH THE SHELL MATERIAL, THE AGE OF THE DRUM, THE PLIES, ETC ETC ETC.
this is why GMS makes the best sounding drums in the world with Keller shells, which are available and used by lots of companies. What makes their drums sound better? the hardware, the placement of it on the shell, the edges, the mounting system - everything BUT the shell.
In closing, my contention is that if you take any drums which are in good repair - round, good edges, good hoops, quality construction and not too much crap or gimicky junk on the shell; put fresh, well-chosen heads on them and tune them up properly, they'll all sound equally great and very similar - whatever the shell and/or age of drum.
LEARN TO TUNE YOUR DRUMS. IT'S NOT PARTICLE PHYSICS. I'm amazed at how many drummers don't know how to tune. Often times they'll know how to do some kind of cockamamie gimick tuning, like tuning one lug down to get a fat sound, but they don't know how to get the drum in tune with itself - top head, bottom head, each lug. THAT'S where you start. THEN you use whatever other technique you want to affect a certain character. I recently made a drum tuning video for puremix.net Stay tuned for it's release....