I had heard about SnareSkirt and had been following them for a little while before meeting Allen and Gina at the Music City Drum Show in 2022. I was curious. They handed me one to try and I was blown away by how it works. SnareSkirt does an incredible job of taming the loudness of a snare drum in a smaller room so that it doesn't interfere with the house mix. To me, it even makes the snare a little more focused in my in-ear mix as well. This product is really great and I use it a lot.
Brian Beihl
Musician, Drums & Percussion Big Daddy Weave, Owner, Producer & Engineer at Studio 1312
“It keeps the harsh snare wires out of any close vocal mics on stage and makes my FOH engineer happy!”
Elton Charles
Drummer for Jo Dee Messina
I witnessed the magic of SnareSkirt on a gig I was on a couple of days ago. I was wearing in-ears and I asked the sound engineer to take the snare out of my ear mix. She informed me that there was no snare in my ear mix. She went back to the sound board and grabbed a SnareSkirt. After she put it on, I thought the sound engineer had taken the snare out of my ears when in fact it was the SnareSkirt! It made a big difference. I am a firm believer!
Marie McGlone
Fiddle Player @Fiddlemarie
"I have used the SnareSkirt extensively both in the studio and live. I absolutely love this thing! What an excellent idea! It is perfect for keeping the snare from bleeding into other microphones (especially vocal mics). In the studio, I have witnessed first hand at how effective the SnareSkirt is at reducing snare volume bleed. I analyzed the overall volume, measured in LUFS, both with and without the SnareSkirt, and I was blown away with the efficacy of this product! You don't need fancy measurement tools to hear this product work, but the measurements did bolster a quantifiable reduction that I was already hearing with my own ears. I am a big fan of the SnareSkirt and I will be happily using it for many years to come! SnareSkirt for Life!!!!!"
Jake Burton
Drummer/Producer/Mixer
"Got a rave review on your SnareSkirt from the A/V tech from Ole Red Gatlinburg last night. I asked her if she liked it and she said "I immediately noticed a difference and love it. The band before you, I couldn't put the drummer's snare in the house but I could with yours and had control of it from FOH!"
Stefan Chippeaux
Drummer
A shout-out to SnareSkirt for helping take control of that tone! I always keep a couple of these on hand. As a sound guy in the Baltimore area, I never know when I'll need to slap one of these bad boys on. If you have a hard rocking' drummer (or you are one), do your audience a favour and pick one up!
Wes Tillack
WesSide Sound
To me it seems like SnareSkirt helps minimize some of the early reflections of the snare on surfaces around it (floor, any nearby walls), therefore reducing the phasing that occurs when two sounds arrive in our ears just slightly out of time. In plain english, it seems to ‘clean up’ the snare in the room and deliver a punchy, focused and controlled sound that is more pleasant to listen to!
Henrique Vargas
Sound Technician
I used the Snare Skirt dozens of times downtown in clubs. But most importantly I used it at the Schermerhorn Symphony Hall for The Musicians Hall of Fame induction ceremony. It did a fantastic job containing snare volume in an extremely “live” room. Highly recommended.
Mark Beckett
Staff Drummer at Grand Ole Opry
SnareSkirt is a must have if you want to reduce loud snare or loud snare pop, without compromising it's snare drum sound quality or pop! As a Bass player playing with a drummer that uses a SnareSkirt, I am never offended by the value of the drum no matter how hard they hit it!
Gary Nance
Bass Player
My friends, Allen and Gina Blaxton of Nashville have come up with a device that could solve a common problem for a lot of performing drummers. It’s called the SnareSkirt, a heavy cloth baffle with plastic hooks to attach to your snare drum. The purpose? To reduce the amount of snare drum volume going into the other mics in front of the drums by blocking the sound from the front of the snare drum. I did something similar to this with towels, packing blankets, and duct tape DYI in the past and I already knew this SnareSkirt would work just by looking at it online. Allen sent me one and I tried it. It Works! It works well. The volume reduction in front of the skirt is significant. It attaches to the bottom tension rods of the snare drum with simple hooks and hangs on the side that faces the audience. It literally blocks some of the sound waves that emanate from there. How much blockage? It is somewhat dependent on the environment of the performance; sound absorption or hard reflections of the surfaces behind and around the drum set, etc. In my funky garage/drum laboratory which has a pretty lively sound, it blocked a good bit of the offensive volume - enough to keep one in my trap case just in case I may need it on a gig.
I know Allen has done some A/B sound level comparison tests in a studio and I’ll update this review with those numbers . There is an AB frequency test screen below that pretty much says it all. Allen is a pro drummer in Nashville and a lot of drummers in “Music City” are using the skirt. They say it works!
George Lawrence
Not So Modern Drummer
If you are a regular gigging drummer, the SnareSkirt is a tool that is instantly useful. The frequency from the bottom of the snare drum is usually acoustically high pitched and harsh from the vibration of the snare wires, which can be an abrasive sound in a club, especially if the stage is elevated and the bottom of the snare is closer to ear level. Pretty common knowledge for us drummers, right? The SnareSkirt effectively kills those frequencies. This is also immensely helpful if the drums have mics, so the bottom snare head can be mic’d and blended in the front of house mix without clashing with the acoustic frequencies. Sound engineers will thank you! A few years ago I was playing percussion regularly in an 8-piece band, so I had a pretty big setup, and the club we always played at had a high elevated stage. I had a custom SnareSkirt made for my timbales and the difference was amazing. I believe that the SnareSkirt is something that belongs in every drummer’s gig bag...I bring my Skirt to all my gigs!
Roy Gabelein
Drummer
Sometimes, it's the small, simple things that make the biggest difference. For drummers, an incalculable number of elements contribute to the sound, the playing, and the performance. Still, as we all know, it’s the little things that can be the difference between landing a gig, and landing on the sidelines.
I have to admit, I didn’t expect much when trying the snare skirt out. I thought it was a novelty. My mind began to change when other drummers and audience members began complimenting my snare’s tone, unsolicited. More importantly, once some of the piercing high end of the snare was subtracted, sound engineers were just as complimentary. The Snare Skirt made my snare tone warmer, fatter, and easier to mix. Anything that helps you sound better, and make you easier to work with, is a needed and valuable resource. So do yourself a favor. Try it out. Something simple might just make a big difference.
Adam Puff
Drummer
When I first heard of SnareSkirt, I was instantly intrigued. So I went ahead and ordered a custom one for myself. I have been using it on every gig since. I find that it really helps me play the way I want to without being too much for anyone in the room. I like to hit my snare hard, so it's useful in cutting down on the attack the audience might hear normally. I play many clubs and different environments, and it's great for all of them! I've had multiple sound engineers compliment it's ability to make their job easier mixing Front of House. It definitely is a great conversation starter for the local crew and I while on the road. They share the same intrigue I once had! The SnareSkirt has become a welcome addition to my kit, and I won't head to the gig without it!
Derek Smith
Drummer
I've been a Front of House engineer for a very long time (since the mid 1980's). In the early days, we constantly struggled with stage volume and the ability to create a FOH mix that was something better than a "mercy mix" (that's where your mix is at the mercy of the stage volume). Back in those days, we had two major offenders when it came to being "a little too loud" ... Marshall stacks, and the Snare Drum!
Skip ahead to the mid 2000's and I was working on a theater tour that was VERY high fidelity. Once again, my biggest concern on a daily basis was the primary snare. Not because of the player, but the nature of the show was very low volume and very HiFi. I struggled with it for a while, and one day I decided to try something out of the ordinary. I went to the production office and I grabbed a black stage towel and tried to figure out a way to hang it off the front bottom side of the drum (the side closest to the audience). I had seen other things used in this form or fashion before, but never something made of cloth. I struggled with how to attach it and make it stay in place for the whole show, and I never really got it right ... but it definitely made a huge difference!
Skip ahead another 10 years and I was visiting my dear friend Cyndi Sands in Nashville. She's a real pro and we have had many talks about audio (and life in general). She is someone I respect enormously and she expressed having a similar problem with one of her current gigs. I told her the story about the stage towel and how I used it, and she (of course) decided to take the idea and make it WAY better.
Well ... she did, and now we (the world) have the SnareSkirt®.
I have two of them with us on the Lee Brice tour ... although we may not necessarily use them everyday, anytime the stage is shallow or we are in a tight space, we use them!
Skip ahead to the mid 2000's and I was working on a theater tour that was VERY high fidelity. Once again, my biggest concern on a daily basis was the primary snare. Not because of the player, but the nature of the show was very low volume and very HiFi. I struggled with it for a while, and one day I decided to try something out of the ordinary. I went to the production office and I grabbed a black stage towel and tried to figure out a way to hang it off the front bottom side of the drum (the side closest to the audience). I had seen other things used in this form or fashion before, but never something made of cloth. I struggled with how to attach it and make it stay in place for the whole show, and I never really got it right ... but it definitely made a huge difference!
Skip ahead another 10 years and I was visiting my dear friend Cyndi Sands in Nashville. She's a real pro and we have had many talks about audio (and life in general). She is someone I respect enormously and she expressed having a similar problem with one of her current gigs. I told her the story about the stage towel and how I used it, and she (of course) decided to take the idea and make it WAY better.
Well ... she did, and now we (the world) have the SnareSkirt®.
I have two of them with us on the Lee Brice tour ... although we may not necessarily use them everyday, anytime the stage is shallow or we are in a tight space, we use them!
Wayne Pauley
PM/FOH - Lee Brice