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High-tension marching snares have an inner hoop where the batter head is placed to prevent its shells from collapsing—due to the high tension from Kevlar heads being tuned to higher pitches.

If this is the case, then why don't most marching snares have an inner hoop (or any form of reinforcement) on the snare side? Especially given that marching snare-side heads are also made of Kevlar.

I mentioned "most" since Dynasty DFX marching snares do have a reinforcement on the snare side—probably since it's not free-floating.

Elements in Space
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izayoi9300
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    Why _would_ they have an inner hoop? Is collapsing from the snare side a commonly encountered problem? I doubt it. Anyway, a drum head with balanced tuning shouldn't squish the drum in any direction, regardless of whether it's kevlar and high tension. On the batter side, hard strokes may cause imbalance strong enough to trigger collapse, but this shouldn't be much of a concern on the snare side. – leftaroundabout Nov 08 '22 at 23:56

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Most marching snares don't have a reinforcement ring simply because it isn't necessary. The drum can support the snare-side head just fine.

Remember that snare side heads are very thin. Even the aramid fiber heads. At the same pitch, the snare side head is at much less tension than a batter head would be.

Also, the snare-side head might not be quite as cranked as you're imagining. Check out this video of Mike McIntosh tuning a marching snare with an aramid snare-side head. The head pitch seems to be about 369Hz. I've seen people tune the snare-side head on their drumsets higher.

That said, aramid snare-side heads are strong enough that you can cave the bearing edge in with too much tension. My old high school used Evans MX5 (5 mil aramid) heads on the snare side, and the bearing edges had corners. They blamed the previous owners of the drums. I wish I had pictures to share. But with proper tuning, this should never happen.

Edward
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