Wood type, for those who care?

For the drums or the chair?

Same...
I could literally talk about acoustic guitar woods for hours. I actually had a conversation with the guy who harvested the old-growth Adirondack spruce log that my Collings was built with. 

I just picked up a beech kit that I'm digging.

Anything but plastic and stainless steel. I can't stand Vistalites or metal drums in the studio. (To be fair, I have no experience with other metal drums than Ludwigs. A&F's metal kits supposedly sound insane)

Inside finish, bearing edges and head type makes a bigger difference than wood species, to my ears.

Having grown up in the hometown of those god awful Impact I dustries fiberglass / plastic shells, ANYTHING BOT PLASTIC FIBERGLASS! I used to joke that these things were what made WI AE’s great at drum sound because we all had t deal with those Imapct kits.

It’s a small world aside; the impact factory was right next store to future Full Compass president Susan Lipp’s first husbands company Marathon Rubber who owned a warehouse my father rented.

Players,heads choice and tuning will have a far more important result
that wood choice on a kits. !!!!

Generally yes.

I did use the same heads on a Yamaha recording custom kit made from 100% birch, and a Tama Starclassic bubinga and the tone was remarkably different in the room.  It was a lot less different through the mics, but still noticeable enough to probably pick one or the other out from listening alone.  It wasn't so much the timbre, but the decay seemed very different. 


Otherwise I think the bearing edge and head affect the attack and overtones more, while the wood and mounting systems affect the decay and tonality.  

The best results I’ve gotten with 8” and 10” toms is to ask the drummer not to use them haha.

But seriously I’ve only really used them much in hard rock or metal applications where the genre tends to lean towards heavy use of samples anyway so I do the best I can and leave it at that.

Best results usually come from tuning the tension on the top head rather loose for stick feel and tone, and using the bottom head to get the pitch right. Most guys that come in with small toms have the top heads cranked and that never seems to work. Clear ambassadors works the best for me on those drums.

LOL.

Most drummers prefer larger drums in the studio anyway, so most of the time I don't even set up the small ones.  I do find that stuff like the G2 evans work well on small toms if you tune them right.  Tuning is always key, but seems even more crucial for smaller toms to maximize projection of the meat of the tone, or else you just get the high pitched "plink" sound instead of a full hit.

I also found that once a drummer has cranked the head to marching snare tension, it's almost never going to sound good again, and new heads are warranted.  I usually keep stacks of mildly used heads to trade out on kits that drummers insist on using.  

But usually I leave my kit set up in the studio and have the drummer give it a try first.  9/10 of the time they choose to use my kit anyway because they don't want to lug their stuff in, and I've spent so much time maintaining it and getting the head choice and tuning correct and their kits are usually rattling from 40 different places and covered in tape/tissue with divots in the head that are deep enough to be mistaken for meteor craters..

Was just asking about wood type, and nothing else.

I ordered burger, fries and a coke. I got lasagna. Should I have ordered fries, coke and a burger? 😜