Using your Head: The 3 Major Drumhead Manufacturers
The technology and science of drumhead manufacturing has developed immensely compared to the animal skins used on drums for thousands of years. Modern drumheads are made of plastic, metal, and resin using precision machinery to ensure consistency of sound and durability.
There are dozens of different models to choose from, each best suited to particular styles of music and playing. There are clear heads, coated heads, heads with multiple plies, heads with tiny air vents, heads with built-in muffling, and more. But what are the most widely used brands? What’s their origin? What differentiates them from one another?
From Flesh to Plastic
Throughout the majority of human history (dating back thousands of years), drumheads were crafted by stretching an animal’s skin (usually calfskin) tightly over a drum shell and tensioning it using rope. There weren’t companies that produced them. You simply had to learn to make your own or know somebody that could make them for you. Calfskin heads were very susceptible to changes in the environment (particularly heat and humidity), couldn’t accommodate much tension, and could tear if struck too hard.
Animal skin heads used on early drum sets were fastened to shells with a wooden hoop that pressed down on the outer rim of the drumhead, which was a skinnier hoop that the animal skin was tacked into. Early tomtoms, like the one pictured to the right, often had the heads tacked directly into the shell, meaning they weren’t tunable and were a massive hassle to swap if they broke. Despite the difficulties and inconveniences of animal skin heads and tacking them into place, better technology simply didn’t exist until the 1950s and the further development of plastic film.
In the below video, Carter McLean plays on a kit with all animal skin heads, albeit modern ones. The tones are very round, warm, and open, even at the relatively high tuning he’s using.
Originally invented in England in the 1940s by Imperial Chemical Industries, polyester film was primarily used as packaging material, insulation for electric motors, and for the manufacturing of recording tape. After World War II, DuPont chemical company acquired the patent rights to produce polyester film in the US, naming their product “Mylar.”
Ludwig drum set from the early 1940s. Note the tacked resonant heads on the toms!
In the early 1950s, a chemical engineer at 3M by the name of Jim Erwin was allegedly the first to build a mylar drumhead. Designed specifically for the drummer Sonny Greer (best known for playing with Duke Ellington), Erwin was able to fasten a sheet of mylar by bending it around the hoop of a calfskin head and tacking it to the hoop. The resulting head was much more uniform and durable.
In 1953, a touring drummer by the name of Remo Belli was in Chicago for a show. At the time, Gretsch, Slingerland, and Ludwig were all based in the city. Remo (does that name sound familiar?), who was also part owner of a respected drum shop in Hollywood known as Drum City, made it a point to visit each manufacturer during his time in Chicago. Slingerland pitched the idea of producing heads with mylar to Remo, but he wasn’t interested until he made his own crude version of a drumhead in 1956 by stapling a sheet of mylar to a wooden hoop (extremely similar to Erwin’s design from a few years earlier). While his crude prototype wasn’t immediately functional, his idea was experiment pushing him in the right direction.
Also in 1956, a drummer by the name of Marion “Chick” Evans, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, designed his own take on a mylar drum head by stretching a sheet of mylar around an outer hoop, which was then wrapped around and drilled into a smaller inner hoop. While these early mylar heads were highly susceptible to denting and unseating from the hoop, they were a necessary step toward the drumheads we use today. Remo Belli and Chick Evans were on the precipice of creating two of the biggest names in drumhead manufacturing.
Remo
In 1957, Remo Belli and chemist Sam Muchnick went on to start manufacturing drumheads. They did so under the name “Remo,” which is now one of the most well-known names in modern drumming. Muchnick developed a rigid aluminum hoop filled with resin that firmly locked the mylar sheet in place. This design allowed Remo’s drumheads to hold a much higher level of tension than any other drumhead at the time. Remo’s heads were known as the WeatherKing, due to their ability to endure changes in heat and humidity without compromising their durability. The first in the line of WeatherKing heads was the Diplomat model (pictured below), which is still produced today. It consists of a single 7.5 mil ply, resulting in a bright, open tone with a long sustain. (Note: the measurement “mil” refers to thousandths of an inch, not millimeters.)
An old Diplomat head with the original Remo logo
In 1958, Remo released the Ambassador model, which originally consisted of a 7.5 mil ply and a 3 mil ply squished together. About a year later, the Ambassador was updated to consist of a single 10 mil ply instead. The thicker ply resulted in a more focused sound and controlled sustain. Remo also released the Emperor model in 1959, consisting of two 7.5 mil plies. Two-ply heads allowed for much greater durability, a more defined attack, and even more focused sustain compared to single-ply heads. During The Beatles famous televised performance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964, Ringo’s drum kit featured Remo heads, launching the company’s name into the mainstream.
Fast forwarding to the next decade, Remo released their iconic Pinstripe heads in 1972. Consisting of two plies with a thin muffling ring sandwiched between them, their durability and tone has earned them the spot of being one of the most popular drumheads used today. Remo’s Controlled Sound heads also debuted in 1972, featuring an extra layer of mylar in the form of a big black dot at the center of the drum, which greatly increased durability along with a tighter sound.
In 1975, Remo introduced their Fiberskyn line of heads, which consists of a blend of fiberglass and polyester film. The result is a drumhead that looks, feels, and sounds much like calfskin heads. Originally thought to appeal to only a small market of drummers that wanted to retain a vintage sound, they ended up becoming quite popular. Many old school drummers that resisted plastic drumheads in favor of animal skin heads finally converted after trying out some Fiberskyns.
While most known for their production of drum set heads, Remo also manufactured drum sets for a time, created synthetic shells and drumheads for hand drums that mimic the properties of wood and other organic materials, and continues to contribute to global music access and education.
Have you ever heard of RotoToms? For those unaware, RotoToms are small drums that are tuned higher or lower by simply rotating the drum (clockwise for a higher pitch, counterclockwise for a lower pitch). Those were also designed by Remo and released in 1968. Suffice to say, Remo is responsible for many drumming innovations that are considered standard today!
Evans
The year after Remo drumheads hit the market, Chick Evans teamed up with Bob Beals, an established instrument repair shop owner, to formally begin Evans Drumheads. Originally based off of Evans’ 1956 design, which involved tacking the mylar to the hoop, their early drumheads couldn’t hold nearly as much tension as Remo’s design and were much more susceptible to denting from hard playing. It was inferior in almost every way, forcing Evans to also adopt the method of making hoops containing a resin. However, Evans’ hoops were very flexible compared to Remo’s, which negatively impacted durability and resulted in heads often not sitting properly on shells, giving drums a choked out sound. Despite their shortcomings, Evans marketed their drumheads as All Weather heads (not to be confused with Remo’s WeatherKings).
Funnily enough, Evans wanted to sell his drumheads at Drum City in Hollywood, the shop that Remo co-owned at the time. Remo initially showed a lot of interest in Evans original design and the two talked back and forth regularly, bouncing ideas off of one another. One such idea was to emulate the rough texture of calfskin heads to better accommodate playing with brushes. Clear heads lacked a rough surface for the brushes to grip since they were so smooth. Evans had the idea to spray heads with a lacquer, which led to the first coated drumheads. Early coated heads lost their roughness relatively quickly, sometimes requiring another layer of lacquer to restore them.
Clear G1 heads and an EMAD bass drum batter head
Evans All Weather drumheads were sold for a short time at Drum City. However, after seeing Evans’ manufacturing capability firsthand in 1957, Remo opted not to strike a more comprehensive distribution deal with Evans, citing his concern about Evans’ ability to scale up manufacturing and keep on top of the business side of things. Perhaps Remo didn’t want to support his direct competition too much...
Beyond that, the specific history of product development at Evans becomes murky. But Evans has made various contributions to the development of drumhead technology. In addition to having the initial idea to create coated heads, they’ve experimented extensively with an array of pre-muffled heads. Evans EC2 heads contain a built-in muffling ring under a 2-ply head, making for an easy-to-tune head with controlled sustain and overtones. Their line of EMAD (Externally Mounted Adjustable Damping) bass drum heads, which are some of the most popular on the market, contain a plastic ring that can hold different foam inserts that muffle the bass drum’s batter head to varying degrees. They come in single and 2-ply varieties, each containing multiple sizes of muffling rings.
Color varieties of Evans Hydraulic heads
Another popular line is Evans’ Hydraulic heads. Known for their extreme durability and “thuddy” sound, Hydraulic heads are built from two 7-mil plies with a very thin layer of oil between them. They take especially well to lower tunings and have a very short sustain, making them an ideal choice for rock and metal drumming. Paired with their Reso 7 resonant head, which is a single-ply coated 7 mil head, it’s possible to get an incredibly punchy sound and short sustain with very little effort put into tuning.
All of Evans drumheads today are manufactured with their Level 360 Technology. This design includes a steeper collar (where the edge of the head’s playable surface begins to bend down toward the rim), allowing for greater contact between the shell’s bearing edge and the head. When the head makes more uniform contact with the shell, it can vibrate more freely, resulting in a clearer tone that also maintains tuning better. After being acquired by D’Addario in 1995, Evans became a much bigger competitor in the industry.
Aquarian
A little later to the game, Aquarian was started in 1980 by Roy Burns and Ron Marquez. Ron started a powder coating company in 1974, where he added coated finishes to parts for other instruments (such as some hardware components on Rogers drums, pedals on Fender Rhodes keyboards, or the pick guard on Fender guitars), while Roy was a working jazz drummer. Between them, they had manufacturing knowledge through Ron and knew what drummers needed and expected from their gear because of Roy.
An array of Aquarian drumheads
Largely inspired by Roy’s frustrations with the incompetent management of Rogers drums (who he worked with at the time), they initially began in the business of manufacturing percussion accessories. Aquarian didn’t start consistently mass producing drumheads until 1987.
Ron was a perfectionist when it came to production, and Roy was a perfectionist when it came to sound. They never compromised either part. Although Ron found a way to more cheaply produce drumheads, they didn’t meet Roy’s artistic standards and likely wouldn’t compete well in the marketplace. Building off of innovations and production techniques pioneered by Remo and Evans, Aquarian was able to further perfect the design of drumheads.
Aquarian produces heads containing one, two, and even three plies to accommodate all playing styles and musical scenarios. Their multi-ply heads are manufactured using a specialized vacuum tuning process that eliminates any air pockets that could potentially get trapped between plies, which otherwise results in dead spots on a head. With no air between plies, they can vibrate more freely and generate a clearer tone.
All Aquarian heads are made with their Safe-T-Loc hoop system, which makes it virtually impossible for the heads to unseat from the hoop or wrinkle, no matter the tuning. The Safe-T-Loc design essentially further refines the designs Remo and Evans pioneered back in the 1950s by curling the mylar inside of the hoop and completely encasing it in epoxy resin. Protruding rails on the inside of the hoop prevent the resin from lifting apart from the rim regardless of how much tension is placed on the head.
Compared to One Another
Each brand’s manufacturing methods give their heads distinct properties. Generally speaking, many Remo heads are often associated with having a more open tone with a slightly rounder sound, whereas Aquarian heads are typically associated with a more pronounced attack and shorter sustain. Evans heads usually fall somewhere in the middle, with more of a balance between attack, tone, and sustain. The below video compares an Aquarian Response 2, an Evans G2, and a Remo Emperor, all of which are clear 2-ply heads. Functionally, they’re each manufacturer’s take on a standard clear 2-ply head. Can you hear any differences between them?
Of course, each brand offers dozens of different models geared toward achieving specific sounds so it really comes down to personal preference at the end of the day. As your skills develop and your ear becomes more refined, you’ll be able to better judge the best combination of heads to attain your desired sound and feel.