I saw Jack DeJohnnette once and noticed that his hats were tilted away from him. I tried that, having the tilter screw on my side of the hat tilted slightly up and have never had that problem since.

After having learned to play with a more relaxed "grip" I am sometimes able to go as far as eight 2 to 4 hour gigs on a pair before they begin to do the old "hickory shred". In the last two years I have taken to rotating several pairs throughout the gig instead of wareing out one pair at a time. As one of a pair shreds I'll discard it and mate the other with another that has lost its partner.