I’ll come clean straight away; I’m a fan of the UV1 line. I have been since I tried them.
When I tried the UV1 heads back in mid 2018 – http://mikedolbear.com/reviews/uv1-drum-heads/ – I pretty much instantly liked them and I’ve been buying them ever since to put on my toms and snares. The funny thing is, I’m not normally one-ply head on toms person. Ok, I might possibly go one-ply on an 8 and 10” tom sometimes, but I also don’t use those sizes very often.
That said, what I found with the UV1s was that I was still happy with the sound and feel I got from the full kit (8, 10, 12, 14 floor) whereas most other times with a single ply head I normally wouldn’t have done.
So, when I recently heard the UV2 line had been released, I was very interested.
As you may have guessed by now, UV1 equals one-ply, UV2 equals two-ply. Easy.
The review kit consisted of a 14×5” snare, 12 and 16” toms and a 22” kick, which had a UV EMAD on it.
The UV2 line is made using two reinforced plies of 7mil film. In terms of putting the heads on the kit, they went on just fine. Very easy to seat and tune.
To start off, I put the heads on the toms tight – more to just stretch them out a bit overnight really – and while it wasn’t my sound or feel, I could still hear depth and body from the toms. I cleverly forgot to press record for this, so you’ll just have to trust me on that.
Anyway, these heads are apparently designed with rock and metal players in mind, and so taking that into account you’ll hear in the video a fairly medium tensioning and a lower one too. The lower tensioning was not much above finger tight.
The medium range was pretty much where I might have this type of head. I liked that range on the toms, it providing body and depth without the need to go too deep. The snare was snappy but full.
I’m generally not a low and fairly flappy tension person. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever tuned like that on my own drums. I normally like to have some level of bounce and resonance in there for me to feel comfortable.
However, and it may be because I’ve never really delved into the realm of just above finger tight, but I was surprised at how much I really liked the sound of the drums this low. I would describe the sound as thick and creamy on the toms and wet on the snare (which admittedly in the real world of recording would have needed a little bit of muffling just to lose some of the overtones; live it would have been fine).
I didn’t get a chance to play the heads for a prolonged period, but I didn’t see any obvious signs of damage/pitting or loss of coating during the time I used them.
All in all, I think Evans has done a great job in building on the UV technology and these new heads sounded and felt good to me. They’re available in sizes 8 to 18” and in performance packs of 10/12/14, 10/12/16 and 12/13/16.
More at – https://www.daddario.com/products/percussion/evans-drumheads/drum-set/snare-batter/uv2-coated-snare-batter/
David Bateman
November 2019
