How to Eliminate Drum Set Rattle

One of the most common complaints I hear from beginner drummers is that parts of their drum set are rattling everywhere. This truly is an incredibly annoying noise, and can really ruin the mood of a good practice session. There's a few things you can do here, and we'll take a look at all of them.

1) First, one solution that beginner drummers seem to shirk away from is just getting a new set of snares. The process of replacing the snares isn't that complicated, and the snares themselves are a very big part of your snare drum's tone. It's important to note that many stock snare drums are equipped with mediocre snares, so if you can: replace them as soon as possible. It may be what's causing the rattle you hear. Puresound snares are the most universally recognized and used, I recommend them heavily.

2) The other most common cause of rattling is incorrect tuning. The drum skin seating is extremely important here, if you haven't correctly seated the skins on your snare drum it will most assuredly cause them to rattle. Seating them is an art, albiet a commonly ignored one. Be sure that your skin fits perfect and is totally even and comfortable before you start to tighten the lugs. When you do start to tune, make sure the lugs are tightened equally on all sides. If your bottom skin is too lose, it will shake the snares causing a rattle. This moves us to...

3) Tighten the snares. It sounds too simple, but just try it. Tighten them until the rattle goes away and see if the sound is satisfcatory. If it isn't, then try the other solutions on this page. Many times people are afraid to overcrank the snares. Don't be, give it a shot. The worst that happens is you'll have to replace a skin and snares. Trust me, you have to really tighten the snares a ton before that happens.

4) See what frequencies are causing the vibrations. Sound is vibration, and certain frequences can cause things to vibrate in unnatural and unpleasant ways. You'll need a guitar tuner to try this. Simply play a drum on your kit and try tuning it up or down a whole step. See if the rattle goes away or improves. Go all around the drum kit. Usually you'll be shocked to find that tuning a single drum differently is the key to eliminating rattle. In my experience, rattling is usually caused by the toms assuming you tuned everything else correctly. Another common culprit is the actual hardware of the drums not being tightened enough but usually this is very obvious.

5) Many people don't like this solution as it does kill your snare drum's tone a bit. If you put a piece of duct tape over the snares, it will significantly or completely reduce the rattle. This also stops your bottom snare skin from vibrating though, so you do lose tone. This should really be used as a last resort, but it's a solution worth noting.

That concludes our guide to eliminating drum set rattle. Good luck!