I have a Yamaha SFZ marching snare. I bought it brand new in the summer of 2005. I'm ok at tuning but I have a few issues with my drum. I have a Remo Whitemax on the top and a standard, thin, clear side-head on the bottom. When I play hard for about an hour or so, one or two of the bottom tension rods will come loose and even fall out and I have to keep screwing them back in. Is there a simple reason for this? How can I fix it?

Also: No matter what I do, the gut snares won't get flush with the bottom head. What should I do?

Would it help if I took a picture? Or added a video on Youtube?

We have the same problem with our 13" SFZ's... All you can do is adjust the white plastic lock nuts on the tension rods after you're done tuning so they don't allow the tension rod to work it's way out of the lug.

If your snare doesn't have those I would take a tension rod to the local hardware store and try to find some that fit, they'll cost $0.01-$0.03 each.

For the strainer, you'll need to adjust on the vertical axis AND adjust the individual snares w/ a screwdriver to get the optimum "fit." Don't be afraid to take the strainer assembly apart and tweak it to you're liking, just take your time...

Hope that helps!

eP

You can get some of the breakable "blue" locktite thread locker and put a little bit on each rod. DO NOT USE RED. The blue will keep the rods in place and not loosen. Most newer Yamaha's came with little plastic nuts called "gravity guards" to cure this common problem however it won't keep the tension rods tight.

I've never had tension rods fall out that quickly, although it is pretty common for them to detune and eventually fall out on Yamaha drums. Loc-Tite should work as Greg mentioned, but simply making sure the head is balanced and kept up to tension should help keep your rods from falling out. If the head isn't tuned evenly, the rods with less tension will vibrate loose. If the head doesn't have enough tension, all the rods will detune and loosen pretty fast.

On a related note: You'll probably find that the rods holding your Yamaha's "feet" will loosen a whole lot faster than the other ones. When I work with a Yamaha line, I usually remove the feet for this reason.

As for getting the snares to sit properly on the bottom head... I've noticed when installing Remo Marching Ambassadors on 13" Yamahas that the snare strands often can't make contact with the edges of the head because the rim gets in the way. With these collar-less heads, sometimes it takes a few days to stretch the head enough for the rim to clear the bearing edge. Get the head up to a medium-high tension, leave it for a day, tension it a bit more, leave it for another day, etc. If you go too fast, you could blow the bottom head. (In my case, they tend to blow right at the corner of the snare bed. That itty bitty little corner likes to cut right through the head, especially if the bearing edge isn't waxed.)