It is not unusual for drummers to use a snare drum with a shell made of a different material than the other drums in his set. We all realize that
snare drum sizes and shell materials can greatly impact the sounds the snare drum can produce. But it seems that same obvious concept has not been applied.....at least not to any great extent....to the other drums in our kit.
Most drummers I have been around have bass drum(s) and toms made out of the same material…..most often a specific type of wood (i.e. maple, birch, oak, etc.) I believe the Pearl Reference Series was the first departure from this scenario. Each size drum in that series has a
different type of wood formulated to producing a certain "voice" relative to the other sizes. However, it seems still to be most typical to hear "my kit has
maple shells". Or "my drums have birch shells". And so forth......one type of wood for everything except....possibly....the snare drum..
Steve Gadd has used a slightly different approach for several years. He currently prefers the tone qualities of
maple for his bass drum but the tone qualities of
birch for his toms.
There was a time in his early years in New York when he used a maple bass drum (Gretsch) and fiberglass toms (Pearl) with a Ludwig Supraphonic snare drum. However, that may have been as much based on his equipment budget as it was the partuclair sound of those drums back then. I really don't know?

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I do know that today, he can have whatever drums he wants. Perhaps he learned something from his "mix and match days" that we should further analyze. After all, the bass drum tone and tom tom tones ....do have distinctive voices within the drum kit. We often seek a different decay rate and attack from these different drums.
So is using different woods a really overlooked way of obtaining the special sound charactertics you want?
Well back to the question for this thread, I am wondering if there are DSA readers out who are purposely using bass drum(s) and toms is drums made of different woods. If so, why did you choose what you did?