Q:  What is your opinion on “glue rings” or “reinforcement hoops”? I hear some good and some bad.  What do you think

Ok, the big sticky question. There are multiple answers to this question.

I catch a lot of flak for my stance on this issue but I am firm in my belief. 

1) Almost the entire drum making industry tells the market that "the new technologies in glues" or the "advanced way shells are pressed now-a-days" makes re-rings unnecessary. It's true that today the glue used for ply shells is highly advanced. I will not try and say that the glues used on drums now aren't better than the ones they used years ago. I simply do not have the data to say how much more advanced they really are. 

2) The issue isn’t about better glues or manufacturing technology. In my humble opinion, it’s mainly industry hype designed to get the market to accept a product that is cheaper to make. Simple as that!  It’s all about dollars and sense, nothing more.  It's difficult and time consuming to install re-rings. Companies are steadily trying to streamline and cut costs. If quality goes bye-bye so be it. They call it “progress”.

3) So, what do re-rings do if they are so good?  Well, it’s true that we've all seen old vintage drums that were out of round.  The question is are they out of round because they are made of old materials the old way or are they out of round simply because they are just pain old? In 20 or 30 years will the modern shells of today go out of round?  We just don’t know yet do we?  

My guess is that they will stay round longer than the shells of old.  So, that would seem to support the “no rings” method.  But here is where my thinking differs from most others.  I don’t believe this is a roundness question at all. It’s undeniable that re-ring make the shells stronger thus increase its roundness integrity but I feel that that is merely an added bonus and simply a positive byproduct, not the most critical benefit of re-rings.

I look at drums in the same way I look at stringed instruments. There is an active resistor and a passive resistor in both stringed instruments and drums alike. You always hear people talking about how "those shells resonate" etc. but the shells, much like the body of a guitar, are not actively resonating. It is the heads of drums and the strings of guitars that are in fact, the components that are actively resonating.  

Let’s compare pianos.  The thin sounding ones always have small sounding boards.  The 9 or 12 foot grand pianos have humongous sounding boards, that’s the main reason why they sound so much better. What does this have to do with drums?  Even though I’m not a physicist, the physics are similar.  Whether it’s a guitar string, piano string or drum head, if the point where the resonating entity contacts the body is stiff and solid, the end result will be longer sustain and more sound. 

Think about the bridge and nut on a guitar.  That’s the two points where the strings make contact with the neck and body.  High end guitar makers make guitar nuts out of very high tech materials that increase resonance, respectively the bridges are firmly fastened to the body in such a way that they allow the strings to vibrate as long as possible.  My philosophy with drum making is similar; you need something solid to attach the ends of the active resistor to in order to make it resonate longer, louder and fuller.  Enter, the re-enforcement ring!  

My personal sound preferences for drums are 6 ply shells with 6 ply re-rings. 5 ply shells are cool too but in my opinion they are just a tiny bit to flimsy and they don’t really sound much different than 6 ply shells.  So basically, the benefit of a re-ring is the added strength not so much to the shell but to the bearing edge which transfers to the sound of the instrument.  A solid bearing edge offers better tuning and more sound and in my experience, longer sustain and volume.

4) “Re-rings raise the pitch” like that’s necessarily a bad thing. While theoretically true, I feel this is just more industry hype. The industry will tell you all sorts of things in an effort to persuade you into actually ‘wanting” to go with the products they offer.

Do re-rings raise the pitch? If you want to split hairs, yes in theory, they do. In drum physics, the common consensus is that more mass equals higher pitch but more volume. Less mass equals lower pitch but less volume.

Can you ear pick while blind-folded the difference in pitch between 2, 8x12 toms one with and one without re-rings?  

Well, first they would have to have the same heads and the same hoops, in fact all the hardware and every component such as the shells and bearing edges would have to be identical. Then comes the tricky part.  They would have to be tuned exactly the same way not by hear but with a micro torque wrench then by ear, and you can’t use the cheap wrenches they sell at some drums shops.

I tell you all of this because I have conducted just this experiment using identical components and a $150 machine shop grade micro torque wrench, then adjusting by ear the exact tuning.  The only difference whatsoever was that one drum had re-rings. This is the only way to conduct an accurate comparison.

The difference in pitch was all but non-existent.  It did seem to be minutely higher but it did not detract from the overall sound quality. However, the re-ringed drum had a noticeably longer sustain and a richer, fuller note not to mention it was easier to tune. The non-reinforced drum died quicker and had a less tone quality. This is not to say that either sounder better or worse. It’s all about what the drummer wants out of the drums.

There is my thinking about re-rings and the results of my studies that lead me to these conclusions. I hope they are helpful.