Using transient designer plugins to get tight and punchy drum tracks

I get asked often to record dead and punchy drum sounds. It's a popular sound and it's objectively awesome (in my opinion!). Link to a recent Youtube video where I go over my tuning and muffling

Something that happens a lot is that I get a nice tight sound, then i'll start mixing with eq, and compression, tape plugins etc. and inevitably the drums start to sound roomier and longer than I would like.

So recently, I had this issue with a snare drum and figured I would try using Smack Attack by Waves. There are many transient designer plugins but I often reach for a waves plugin, they're cheap and pretty reliable.

They are simple plugins, usually an attack and sustain knob are the meat of it. So I cranked the sustain a bit and backed off the release and voila, it preserved the vibe I captured with my processing and shortened the decay bringing back that punchy sound I wanted. See the image below for exactly how I had it set on my snare bus.