Haha, it's okay dude. I had rings on my set for a long time when I started playing. It wasn't necessary, but it made my set sound awesome and playing on a nicer sounding set is more fun.
Before you explore the various muffling techniques you should make sure your drums are tuned properly. Unless you have a good ability to get even lug tension all the way around a drumhead, I'd invest in a drumdial tuner.
After good tuning if you still need something I personally don't see a huge problem with using rings, moongel, mufflers or anything you want. It's your drumset, and if you like the way it sounds with a certain setting or add-on, then you should go for it. Don't worry about what others say. To each his own.
Now back on topic, I've used rings and more recently, started using moongel. I had ring rattle sometimes, during band practices the mix was loud enough to where you wouldn't hear the ring. When I was practicing alone though, I'd sometimes hear it. I fixed it with a little scotch tape on two or three small places around the drumhead. Be careful though because I'm not sure how they'll react if you put them on coated heads. They were fine on my G1 Clears.
Another option is to get some Moongel. Pretty much a rubbery, blue square that sticks to your drum head. They come in a little case with 4 "squares" in it. Each square is about an inch wide by an inch and a half long.
I use rings or moongel or nothing at all, depending on the circumstance. As far as I can tell, both rings and moongels do a good job of killing the weird overtones. The main problem many people have, is that sometimes it kills some good overtones as well.
The Moongel definitely is better for toms compared to the rings as far as tone goes. Sometimes the rings just choke the drum, especially if you're recording, you don't get that "singing" that the toms are supposed to do. Sometimes with rings it's just a thump. A piece of moongel doesn't have such a hard effect.
Moongel is about $6 to $7 for a four pack and you can get it at any music store that sells drums, drum shops, online drum shops and even Ebay., and some guys here even cut each piece so you could potentially get more out if a whole piece is too much of a resonance kill. Also they make ugly sounding ride cymbals better because they kill alot of those weird overtones.
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