Ludwig Drums Black Beauty Brass Supra Phonic 14 x 6.5 Snare

Brass shell. Black finish (obviously), Chrome hardware and lugs, supra-phonic technology whatever that is. I'm not a snare nerd. I'm a producer.

The studio I work in most of the time has about 5 or 6 snares to choose from. Our black beauty is the standard model, and we hardly ever have to tune ours. Some snares are very finicky about needing to be maintained a lot but this is not one of them. So that's good. We typically aren't fans of metal snares because they tend to sound "ringy" or "pangy". The black beauty is actually quite warm yet defined and sort of crisp sounding in a way.

There's a couple of things I've found about the black beauty during my years recording it. In the drum room it sounds out of place sometimes, and almost obnoxious in the mix. But for some reason when you record it, the thing blends perfectly. It has this very distinct tonality to it. Go listen to "assassin" by john mayer. That is a perfect example of the black beauty. It's a cutting yet warm snare that sticks out of the mix in all the right ways. Put some reverb on it and magic happens.

The weight on the black beauty is great too. People are usually surprised when they feel it for the first time as it looks like it would weigh a lot more. We have a couple other steel snares that weigh something like 50 lbs. The black beauty is half that. We probably use this on over a 3rd of the tracks we do. It might be the most popular snare in studio. Surprisingly the heavy metal guys seem to like it more than anyone. It's a great snare and one of my favorites.