Yesterday, Craig and I got together and played most of the day. I had stripped down my cajon kit to the 13″ New Beat hi-hats, a 15″ Sabian HHX Studio Crash that I used as a ride cymbal (it also has a nice bell), and a 12″ splash cymbal that served as a mini-crash. And of course the 10″ Gretsch Blackhawk snare.

I put new Aquarian heads on the snare:

Gretsch Blackhawk snare with Aquarian Texture Coat head

These heads are popular among drummers on DFO, the drum forum I sometimes frequent. The stock head had almost no texture, so brushes wouldn’t really work. They probably figured that nobody would do brushwork on a 10″ snare, but I wanted to. I think that the new heads gave it more definition too, more pop, less splat. I like them.

Here is one track from the session:

Craig is playing a black Ovation acoustic-electric through a Fishman amp. We were using two mics at this point I think, one for vocals and one for the room, with the guitar going direct from the amp. I put a little compression on this mix, and I attenuated the frequencies above around 5,500 hz to tame the hi-hats a bit. They were really bright. I might use the 14″ Armands next time.