Well I think part of Gadd's sound is his technique. He is a heavy hitter and he buries the beater in the bass a lot. My 18 has an arrow strip of felt toward the top edge only. If I bury the beater I get that this; however I can bounce the beater and get some ring out of it. Really versatile that way.

My 22 had a pin stripe Batter and eq3 resonant. I had half a dead ringer on the pin stripe. I could get a similar effect but it was more damped overall.

A coated emperor with or without a felt strip may get you able to get the Gadd Thur while still leaving other sounds available to you if you play very lightly and/or bounce the beater.

What is on the bass now? And if the resonant head has a hole in it, get another! No more than 4" and close to the edge. Even a small hole dead center kills the drum. I had no choice with my D20 kit. The original reso head was used as a batter and had some damage. There is an 8" hole in that head. It still sounds ok but does not project other than out the hole and the shell has no life. I like to really hear the whole drum sing (within reason!).

Recently I have been playing mostly a Roland electronic set. It is the first time I ever bounced the bass drum pedal, since prior to that I thought everyone buried it after watching Bob Seeger, Queen, etc in concert. What I played previously was original 1966 Ludwig bass drum heads (and set) with about a 16" hole out of the reso head. Many bands in the 60's and 70's had no bass reso head. That was the trademark sound at the time.

Yeah I cut my Powersonic front head to bits. Only the top bit with the logo remained.

But I also had some concert tons with that kit, so everything balanced out and sounded equally terrible.

So that "hitting a couch cushion" bass drum sound endured into the 80's im afraid...

Anyway, I eventually learned the bass can be tonal rather than pure percussive.

If you like the flexibility of being able to get that great nurture beater sound as well as tonality, I suggest the powerstroke 3 Batter. I'm using the eq3 out front and get that blend of sound quality. I do have a small piece of acoustic egg crate foam in the bottom of the kick too. Frankly I don't think it does much to the sound on my 22x14 RC kick.

Then of course you can tension the heads and dial it in. I run both heads just above wrinkly to have the lowest possible fundamental. You may want a bit more tension to get more percussive with the buried beater.

Yes- both bass drum heads tuned to just above wrinkly is always how I played. I was never formally taught how to tune a drum set. Instead I got things to where I thought the sound should be with the 5" Ludwig Supersensative snare slightly tight, and with all the black dot tom heads ever so slightly loose. This sound was great when doing any Jeff Beck or Hendrix material, and also was the tone that Chicago had for so many years.

Then when I went to 4 mic's on the drums I would have our bass player play the set and stand at the back of the auditorium to sound check the tuning and sound mix. I was actually impressed that with just tuning by ear, and with no formal tutoring, that it all sounded just right to me. And also sounded great on recordings.

On songs by Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin, Boston, etc the drum tone was not totally authentic, but for our original songs and the rest it came out just right.

Formal drum tuning? Where does one acquire this? Maybe if I actually went to Berklee I would have learned this skill. I think we all sort of figured it out "the hard way" going by what we saw and heard.

The first time I heard the Yes 90125 album I though that snare sound was IT! I even had a woven Kevlar head for a while, and broke some lugs screwing around. I also learned (through empirical testing) that filling a snare drum with water does not sound good! In fact, it doesn't sound at all!

I suggest a bit more tension on the bass heads (whatever you settle on) and see if you like that. You can always bring them back down if you want.

There are instructional drum tuning videos now on youtube with lengthly details for things such as using 2 snare drums, toms tuned reverse of what I use (theirs: top head loose, bottom tight). I thought I had it right, and probably will not even experiment considering that I am still locked into that vintage sound of the old drum sizes with larger toms, and with mufflers.

I walked through Berklee in Boston every day on the way to and from the subway to go to work. It was 1978. It was a block long building and would get me in out of the snow or rain. Would listen to the rehearsal rooms and quite frankly was not really into all the jazz fusion being done there at the time (even at the apex of the disco craze).