So, my high school instructor is a snare guy, so those of us on the quadline have never really been taught any sort of specific tenor technique or grip. The upper-battery mainly uses the same technique, approaching the drum with a standard American grip, the quads maybe slightly adjusting our technique for our instrument. Don't get me wrong; We have good technique, it's just we don't have that sort of exposure one would get from a quad-oriented instructor. I have seen many different kinds of techniques and approaches to playing quads, and I've tried to mimic them and establish how it is achieved and how it varies from a snare approach, but I've never been able to exactly get that right "look."

Basically, what I'm asking is, can anybody go into depth about achieving that technique/grip for quads that seems so distinct from the normal snare technique?

The sort of technique I'm referencing is something along the lines of Nick Arce's in this solo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zn5kSLXRhM

Ask Nick Werth he is on this site and also has his own web site you may get the answer very quickly from a simple email inquiry.

Nick posts here as iQuad and just left a link to his site on the Snare Line topics.

look up Bill Bauchman for technique

Traditional left hands aside, the grip and stroke for snare drummers and tenor players are essentially the same. Any differences are generally concessions made to facilitate movement around the drums.

The Bill Bachman suggestion above is a good one. The book Quad Logic and the DVD Reefed Beats both do a good job of teaching grip and stroke mechanics, as well as getting around the drums. These instructional materials are great investments for any tenor player.

In my opinion, one of the most important lessons from Bill's stuff is to mentally separate the X axis and Y axis -- the horizontal movement around the drums versus the vertical motion of sticks against drum. If you isolate those two things, it's easy to visualize the technique parallels between snare and tenors. Snare and tenor players should have the same basic Y axis approach. If you play a tenor part on one drum, the stroke and heights should be similar in approach to a snare drummer's. Then ADD the the X axis motion horizontally to get from drum to drum while maintaining solid Y axis technique. Bill briefly demonstrates the concept on this Vic Firth web page.

Of course, there are things that are going to affect a tenor player's Y axis a bit, like the need to elevate a hand when playing crossovers. But there are techniques that can be used to keep the Y axis approach as consistent as possible despite the change in hand position. When crossing over on adjacent drums, the fulcrum of the top hand should be directly over the fulcrum of the bottom hand. This allows the top hand to be positioned as low as possible while keeping it out of the way of your bottom hand's upstroke. When crossing over on non-adjacent drums, your wrists should be over one another. Again, this allows the top hand to be as low as possible, close to its natural position, without impeding the bottom hand's upstroke.