I have fallen in love with this drum. All my other snare drums have been wooden (nothing wrong with that) but I wanted to try something with some metallic "ping" to the sound. Agonized about it, read all the reviews, looked at every video I could find, sweated the high price tag — but in the end, I'm thrilled and feel I have spent my money very wisely.
This drum has so much versatility! Play it without dampers and that "ping" I was after sounds spectacular, yet never too harsh as you can notice with some metal drums. There's a huge dynamic range available, from pppp to ffff and it all sounds great. The drum seems to offer a more diverse color pallet of tonal variations around the head. And a new world of variable rimshots has opened up. Then you can fiddle with the two dampers to modulate the tone as needed for particular rooms or recording situations. Even the snare strainer is remarkably sensitive to fine tuning adjustments as well. The possibilities are just endless. I'm a jazz guy most of the time, but I know this snare will cut it no matter what style of music you play. It is simply a beautiful instrument in every way.