Yes! My snare is finally up and running again – thanks to Olaf of Pustjens Percussion Products! It feels so great to play on my own instrument again.
I tried to tune it very carefully under the watchful wisdom eye of Marcel van Weerdenburg and we succeeded in achieving the sound I was looking for: a tuneful sound with a bit of snap and a nice body – like Sean Reinerts snare drum in Cynic's 'Sentiment'.
Tomorrow we'll hit the rehearsal room again with Anatomy of I and I'll put my bronze baby to the test. I can't wait to get behind my kit again! The two tunes we're going to work on feature a lot of blast beats so there will be chances enough to check my sound.
And technique, for that matter. I haven't been blast-beating a lot in the past time and now that I find myself filling Dirk's (drum) shoes it's more important then ever to relax into the brutal parts, contradictory as that might seem.
Funny side-note: just as I was figuring out what sort of tripletty-roll-blast Dirk manages to put up in his songs now and then, he publishes a post on his brand new blog that shows exactly how to do it. The universe (Dirk) provides! 
