Vintage Corner: Leedy practice pad, 1930s-40s

I have a fondness for the older, larger tilt pads that were popular between 1930 and 1970.

I’m especially excited about pads dating from the first half of this age spread. They tend to have a slightly steeper tilt angle and a larger rubber playing surface. The reddish rubber surface tends to keep its rebound for a reasonably long time if it’s stored indoors and taken care of. If it’s left outside, the rubber degrades quickly, becoming unplayable.

Dating some of these pads can be challenging due to any or all of the following reasons:

— Pad designs from this era tended to be similar across multiple companies, and were not changed often;

— Available materials were similar, due to availability of both materials and types of rubber processing;

— Major drum companies changed hands multiple times between the mid 1930s and the mid 1950s, meaning that branding had to change along with ownership. Good examples of this include Ludwig, Leedy, WFL, George Way and Camco. There are others.

Thanks to the efforts of the fellow who created and maintains the DrumArchive web library, hundreds of pdfs of historic drum catalogs and fliers can be examined and the pictorial evidence found can help confirm what started as a hunch as to the year a pad was made and sold. A recent deep dive into the archive helped me determine the maker and age range of this pad, which now makes it one of my oldest vintage pads.

I obtained this pad last spring, and couldn't figure out who had made it or when.

The reddish rubber on top is likely original, though that's impossible to prove. Also, there's no decal on the wood anywhere. So all I have to go on is the design, including the size and shape of the wood panels and any distinguishing features.

The bottom panel has a circular cutout that appears to serve as a sound enhancer.

The rear-facing support panel has carved-out sides that add some flair to the pad's appearance. 

If you turn the pad over, the bottom is made of a very thin fiberboard, which covers the sound hole. Presumably, this fiber bottom has no function.

Or does it?

Going into the Drum Archive, I looked through multiple listing of Ludwig catalogs, and found nothing resembling that shape or style.

But when I turned to catalogs from Leedy Drums, I discovered that they had made this very pad, including the shape of the support panel, the sound hole and the fiber bottom -- which was actually designed to be a second practice surface. Leedy sold this model as their "Two-Way" Practice Pad.

Drum Archive has Leedy catalogs starting in 1933, and my pad appears in every Leedy catalog from 1933 through 1949. The next catalog on file dates from 1953, by which time the company was called Leedy & Ludwig. Conn owned both companies and merged them by 1950. (In 1955, Leedy was sold to Slingerland Drums, and Bill Ludwig, Sr. bought back the Ludwig Drum Company and merged it with what was left of his own WFL Drum Company. By 1965, Leedy was on the wane, and was completely subsumed into Slingerland the following year.)

Earlier versions of the Two-Way pad appear to have been made with a lighter color of rubber, but since everything was printed in black and white there's no way to confirm what color the rubber was unless I find a much earlier version of the pad. I'd guess that either the white rubber was replaced, or more likely the reddish rubber came into use during World War II because high grades of rubber were being rationed.

This pad still sounds and feels good, though the rebound of the rubber is slightly lessened with age. The fiber bottom is intact and I have tried playing lightly on it with skinny sticks, but I won't make a habit of this. It's similar to the fiber that was also being used for drum cases for decades, though perhaps a little bit thinner and now a bit warped in the center. I'm glad it's still there. Now that I've been able to date this I can determine that it's among the oldest pads in my collection. I can't really estimate its age much beyond a range from between 1933 and roughly 1949, but that still makes this pad between 76 and 92 years old. That it's still in quite playable condition is remarkable, since practice pads of this era were generally among the cheapest items in a catalog and among the most abused by school drummers. When one survives in such good shape, that makes it a real find.

Pad Parts is LIVE!

Want to make your own practice pad? 
Want to choose from a variety of different surfaces, textures and thicknesses, and a variety of base plate materials?
Now you can.
PadParts is LIVE and taking orders.

I've ordered materials for an 11" pad with 10" playing surface, big enough to really chop on and small enough to fit in my bag. Top will be gum rubber, bottom will be recycled rubber and the baseplate is a dark green ForesColor (a kind of Valchromat). 

(Disclaimer: PadParts is owned and operated by the folks at Beetle Percussion, makers of the most sustainable practice pads on the market.)

All bases and surfaces are precision-cut. Bases come with a chamfered edge for a neat finished look and reduced snags. Pad Parts also sells a couple different kinds of industrial glue -- use sparingly and in a well-ventilated area -- so you can make you own sturdy practice pad at home.

Check it out and place your order soon!

Test driving the Ludwig drum

Sweetie is out for awhile, which gives me time and space to chop on the new drum. First exercise is a warmup I wrote. Second is something I found online, don’t know who wrote it but it’s fun (and challenging to time the Fivelets right!).

I tried this with a few different pairs of sticks, and found that I like the Ludwig 3S sticks best. 

Big, fat drum. Big, fat sound. Big, fat happiness.

#ludwigdrums

#ludwigsticks

#rudimentaldrumming

#TeamMylar

Dreams DO come true: vintage Ludwig drum conversion

I’ve wanted a 15 x 12” marching snare like the one I marched with in high school. I had one several years ago, but it was never the one I wanted. I sold it and waited to find something closer to my dreams.

This fall, I found it. Or rather, I helped make it happen.

I scored an old single tenor drum from the same vintage as my high school days, for an amazing price. Then I set out to convert it into a marching snare drum. I got new rims and some lovely NOS heads. I found an old throwoff and butt plate in my parts box. I found a vintage set of 15” snares at a local shop, and cleaned up the lugs and tuning rods. Finally, after getting quotes from local shops for the cost of carving and sanding snare beds ($35/hr with a two-hour minimum!), I decided to do it myself with a large pocket knife and sandpaper, working with a light touch and keep the beds shallow.

It came together beautifully and I took it out to test it, arthritic hands and all. I couldn’t play ad infinitum because of the neighbors, but I played enough to know that my next stop will be a park on the next sunny day. Color me happy.

I took it out this morning right after I finished setting it up. It was after 10am, but my next door neighbors have a baby and I didn’t want to make loud noises for too long. Plus, my hands were sore this morning and I couldn’t find a groove very quickly. So I diddled around and promised I’d take it out again on the next sunny day, to a park where I’d be less likely to bother the neighbors. 

But just listen to the sound! Deep, crisp, rich. Today’s Kevlar Kids wouldn’t know what to do with it, and that’s okay. I’m thrilled to have this and will enjoy it mightily.

Made in China. But at what cost to US makers?

The annual convention of the Percussive Arts Society is happening this weekend in Indianapolis.

PASIC features lots of workshops, performances and a gigantic marketplace where drum companies display their latest releases of new product.

I've never been and likely won't ever make it to a PAS Convention. But I'm confident in saying that at least half of what's new on the market this fall will have been manufactured in China.

(You can read my previous posts here about which companies are making their own products in-house, and which are having them made and branded by juggernaut factories in China. The last time I went into specifics, guys from the two biggest US drum companies went all pitbull on me in the socials and it wore me out.)

That drum companies feel compelled to mass-produce cheap pads overseas, mark up the retail by several hundred percentage points and then massage the socials to hype their pads so that kids will want to buy them, is just a sad reality of today's practice pad market. It has been a sad reality of retail for a long time, and there is little you or I can do about it except to point out when things go sideways.

Case in point:

A well-known marching drum instructor and clinician had a signature pad that was produced for several years by a US company. That company made the pads in small quantities in-house in the US and they were immensely popular among marching drummers. The pad was very well made and retailed for a little over $100, a price deemed a little high by the dictates of the modern practice pad market, but understandable because the pad was made in small batches by the guy who was selling it and there wouldn't be a ton of profit in that. (Apparently, you're not supposed to turn a huge profit if you make what you sell. Who knew?)
It became one of the most popular pads in that maker's catalog.

This fall, that instructor told his small US maker to drop his signature pad. He was signing on with a larger company as one of their official artists, and the new company would be offering his pad going forward. 

The catch? The company this instructor has jumped to doesn't actually make any of its own products. They are all made by other manufacturers and embossed with the company's name and logo. In the case of practice pads, the pads for the new company are all made by Hanflag in China. Hanflag makes pads and rebrands them for a bunch of American-based companies including RCP, Salyers and others. 

When you have one factory making products for three or five different companies, those companies have to come up with ways to differentiate from each other in order to sell more units. If they can't find a way to differentiate, then negotiations must be made for one company to drop a pad design and allow another company to market that design under their name. 

(This has just happened with Salyers and RCP, both of which produced an adjustable snare pad that was made by Hanflag -- which also sells the pad under the brand name HUN in Asian markets. Salyers realized that it could not differentiate enough from RCP, and since RCP brought out the pad in the US market first, they are keeping it in their lineup while Salyers has discontinued it. I wasn't a fly on the wall, but I have friends who work in the industry and they have confirmed that this is basically what happened. Good luck finding a Salyers "Stealth" pad now. They're gone. But you can get the exact same design from RCP, which sells it as their "Active Snare" pad.)

What's so maddening about this is that the production is not at all sustainable; the pads use materials that are redundant and harmful for the environment and the factory has to ship them halfway around the globe to get them into the hands of kids in the US market. None of this is good. What makes it worse is when a design is copied -- or altered just enough to avoid copyright infringement -- so that an artist can shift his allegiance from a small-batch craft maker to a larger mass-producer which doesn't even make their own product.

This conversation has already made its way to the socials, and the new design of the pad mentioned above has just been released at PASIC, so I'm not revealing anything new here.

Exhibit A: the original design, made in the US from sustainable, environmentally sensitive materials. The practice rim went all the way around and the top surface had a laminate laid over recycled rubber. A second surface affixed to the bottom provided a different feel and made the pad versatile.

Exhibit B: The new version of this design, altered enough to avoid legal concerns and mass-produced in China from materials that are very likely not as environmentally friendly. The practice rim goes only halfway around the surface, and there doesn't seem to be a laminate (though I won't be surprised if one is sold separately at a premium price).

This new version of the design retails for around $100. Consider how little it costs to make this mass-produced version and you realize that a great deal more of the money will be pure profit for someone who didn't make the pad. (By the rules of this game, the man who owns the company is the one who deserves all the profit he can get. Because he was smart enough to get someone else to make the product for him at pennies on the dollar.)

I'm sure the new version of this pad design is playable, and will sell well enough to justify the switch. The kids who participate in the modern marching arts are all familiar with this instructor and will certainly want to buy this new pad.

The instructor/clinician is a brilliant drummer, has chops for days and also publishes instruction books that are becoming very popular among marching drummers. (The new company will distribute his books, which is an added bonus for someone who had been self-distributing before.) I have no ill will for the drummer at all and wish him well.

What bothers me is that the marketplace as it is currently designed and managed forces people to make decisions based on economics first, and other considerations fall much farther down the ladder. This isn't one drummer's fault. It is the fault of a kind of capitalism that insists on endless growth for a company's survival.

The kids who will buy this pad won't care. They're kids who just want to chop on an awesome pad designed by an awesome drummer. Never mind how the pad came to be what it is today, or where and how it was made. If you try to educate the kids about this whole scene, they will resent you for harshing their vibe. That's just the way it is.

But the state of the drum marketplace today is just so predatory and wasteful, and that is why I've largely turned my attention to collecting and restoring vintage pads. Every old pad I bring back to life is a pad that won't go to the landfill, and instead can be handed to a young drummer to be enjoyed for many more years. I can live with that, and I can live with never stepping foot into another trade show exhibit hall for the rest of my life.

Chop on.

(NOTE: If you wanted the earlier version of this pad, don't worry! The original US maker of this pad has turned to making custom pads on demand, and if you can live without the signature you can probably get something very close to the original design of the pad above.)

Vintage Corner: Henry Adler adjustable practice pad, 1940s

I’ve been looking for one of these for a very long time. I had all but given up hope when suddenly this one appeared online for sale. I hesitated for a few days, then finally decided to go ahead and buy it.

It arrived in complete and functional condition.

As the photos make clear, the pad is in surprisingly good shape for being almost eighty years old.

However, the rubber was hardened and deeply cracked with age and exposure [to sunlight], and in its original condition wasn’t really playable.

After researching possible ways to renew the rubber, it became clear that the damage was too great, and I would either have to let it be or replace it.

I took a couple of days to consider my options.

Leaving the pad as is would mean that it would be relegated to a strictly historical artifact, a museum piece destined for a plexiglas glass display case and inertia.

Replacing the rubber surface would greatly reduce its historical value — and possibly its monetary value —  to collectors. But it would also make the pad playable again.

I had to be honest with myself and admit that I had always hoped to find one in playable condition. But before I took the leap, I sought opinions on fellow drum pad enthusiasts.

Most encouraged me to make the pad playable again, and after considering all the responses and my own feelings, that’s what I ended up doing.

Removing the original rubber was a slow, painstaking process. I took my time, not wanting to damage the wood underneath. I lightly sanded down the wood surface to remove the worst of the glue and allow the replacement rubber to lay flat.

Then, I selected a 1/8” thick piece of gum rubber and trimmed it to match the shape and size of the original, so that the overall aesthetic wouldn’t be too altered. I had considered using 1/4” thick rubber, but I decided on something that would give me greater articulation and also allow for a wider range of volumes without my having to hit the pad so hard. It IS almost eighty years old, after all.

I carefully glued and weighted down the rubber on the wood, let it dry and tested it. So far, so good.

Finally, because the wood was unfinished as far as I could tell, I decided to seal it with a clear coat of wood hardener, which would protect and strengthen the wood surface all around. It would also protect what remained of the decal, which shows Henry Adler’s name and the address of his New York shop and studio. (If you click on Henry’s name above, it will take you to an interview with him by Jim Dinella. I own pads from each of them now.)

(Later versions of this pad would carry a decal from George Way, who’d been licensed by Adler to produce and sell the pads. These later models also had a metal lever rather than a wooden knob, and were painted red or green like Way’s other pad offerings. When George Way was bought out by Camco, the Adler pad was no longer made. 

Here is a later version of the Adler design, sold by George Way in the 1950s. Note the sliding metal lever, and that the doors are hinged at the top rather than the bottom. (Photo still taken from Instagram video, courtesy of Michael Windish.)

Adler’s patent for this design was granted in 1950 and the pad was in production for less than ten years total. I believe mine is an early, pre-patent edition of this pad dating from the late 1940s.)

The original white “feet” were very small and one was missing. I removed them all and swapped in some  slightly larger white feet from a Ludwig pad. They tapped into the existing nail holes nicely.

The whole thing was allowed to dry outside under cover from the rain all day. When it stopped being smelly, I brought it indoors to become accustomed to the indoor temperature, and I was done.

I’m not sorry that I brought this pad back to life. I’m pleased with how it turned out and will enjoy it for a very long time.

Keep drumming. No matter what.

Since retiring, I've found that drumming every morning has proved not only therapeutic, but soul-restoring as well.

After breakfast, I retire to my studio and begin playing on a pad (usually one of my vintage Ludwig tunable pads, which have the most wonderful feel and response of anything I own. I start gently, playing single strokes. I may do a little work from the first page of Stick Control (the book drummers love to hate, and also love). At first, I'm just warming up my hands and wrists, so I keep it simple and gentle. 
Once I've done that for a good five to ten minutes, I'll add diddles or flams, keep an even, slower tempo and focusing on -- well, nothing at all. This is drumming for my mind, and keeping things calm and easy is key. I'm not necessarily thinking about music at this point, just movement.

By the time everything feels warmed up, I've graduated to a favorite page from the old NARD Book, and I reach for my metronome. Again, I choose a slower tempo and focus on calm and breathing, and I read through one of these short solos that have become old favorites for me. I started learning some of these in middle school and they feel like hot soup on a cold day, comforting in their structure and order, and in the way they make my hands move.

By now I'm about 20-25 minutes in, and I select a newer drum piece -- a rudimental solo or a corps-style exercise -- and focus on that for a good ten to fifteen minutes, starting slow and not forcing anything. I may gradually increase tempo, or I may stay where I am. It depends on my mood and the temperature in the studio.

Finaly I go back to my meditative warm-up and use it as a cool-down, bringing me back to a gentle present moment. By the time an hour has passed, I'm relaxed, refreshed and ready to get on with my day.

Now that I'm not performing and preparing for a performance, drumming for its own sake has become a simple joy, and a lovely way to start each day in mindful calm.

Happy drumming.

Inflation has led to deflation: Used practice pads

I've researched and collected historic drum practice pads for a long time.
When I began my deep dive, almost no one else I knew was focused on historic drum pads, so that made it easy for me to find old pads at bargain prices. 
But by 2018 or 2019, things had begun to change, as more drum enthusiasts found vintage drums increasingly unaffordable and/or unattainable. Many of them turned their attention to other drum-related collectibles, including practice pads.

Before the Covid pandemic closed down the world, a brisk trade in vintage practice pads was on the rise. Alongside that, some of the big drum manufacturers were investing heavily in marching- specific designs and throwing a lot of marketing at younger drummers who were just coming into their own in the marching arts. 

During the pandemic, the practice pad market grew exponentially, and quickly. Those with an eye towards profit were punching above their weight with new models of marching-focused pads almost every season, while older drummers who had marched in the 1990s were now selling off their own vintage pads to turn a quick buck. 

If you've followed this story, you know that tan RealFeel pads made before D'Addario acquired HQ began fetching prices in the triple digits, Xymox was running the table for a little while and half a dozen other companies were trying to catch up. It was exciting for maybe a decade at most, and then the wheels gradually began to fall off. Xymox had horrible supply issues and atrocious customer service; Drumslinger learned that a one-man shop could never keep up with the likes of Vic Firth and Evans; and Prologix basically sold its soul. Whenever I pointed out the excesses of the practice pad industry, I would get shouted down by guys who worked for those comp[anies or who had helped design some of their most-hyped models.  

The shop bosses don't like canaries in their coal mines. They serve a useful function for the minders, but they also eat away at profits by slowing down production.

Now, in late 2025, the bottom has begun to fall out of the used practice pad market as so many enthusiasts who bought up piles of cool pads woke up and realized that (a) they weren't marching anymore, (b) they had bills to pay and (c) the pads they'd paid an arm and a leg for were now worth less than a quarter of their original value. 

Suddenly, the market was glutted with more pads than drummers and prices fell like 1920s wheat prices. (Millennials, look it up.)

Today, you can find an old tan RealFeel pad for under $100 and sometimes for less than $50 on Facebook Marketplace. HUN's M-12 pad (which was rebranded for RCP as their Active Snare pad) is now selling used for less than $25 used. Evans gray pads, which were never my favorite but which are ubiquitous, are selling for as little as $5.

The only pads which seem to have retained some value are those whose supply was controlled their makers: Evans red Barney Beats pads still fetch a high price due to artificial scarcity caused by Evans decision to make it a limited run. Beetle pads are made in small batches, one at a time, using sustainable practices that would never work for a large-scale manufacturer and those pads still demand competitive prices even in used condition.

While the practice pad market was beginning to capsize, I had turned my attention to making my own pads from scrap and repurposed materials. I was also recovering from two years of Long Covid, and didn't have the money or the energy to keep collecting in the same manner as before. My priorities began to shift. I focused on a handful of older, vintage pads that continued to have lower demand among the younger pad crowd, and for which there was a lot of documentation I could research. But my pad acquisitions really began to fall in 2024.

More recently, I decided to downsize my holdings in general after being approved for Disability. Knowing that I would not get a great return on my investment, especially for the marching-focused pads I still owned, I began to sell these, mostly at a discount. (In some cases I donated them to students so the pads could still see use. I am very happy that somewhere, there are schoolkids practicing on one of my pads.)

My collection at its peak numbered close to 200 pads of all kinds. That was in early 2023. Since making the conscious choice to pare down, I'm now at around fifty pads. I have plans to sell a few more of these and get down to the pads I enjoy chopping on the most, plus a couple of really rare, old pads that I find beautiful and historically interesting.

I had a lot of fun researching and find historic pads. But as I've begun to come out of serious illness and am adjusting to life in retirement, my priorities have shifted. By making more space in my material life I'm being open to whatever comes next. 

So if you're looking for a good drum practice pad, this is a very good time to shop online and at yard sales. I'll post some of my pads soon at the Drum Pad History Group on Facebook, and donate whatever I can't sell to a school. 

I haven't give up on drumming! I still chop a little every day and get a great deal of pleasure from doing so. I'm just getting more focused about what I chop on and why.

Happy drumming.

(Photo: George Stone practice pad, 1920. Back when a practice pad was just a horizontal surface that kept the neighbors off your back, and nothing more.)

 

The beginning of the end of big-name practice pads? I’m sort of ready for that.

I am winding down my practice pad collection, probably for good.

I’ve been pondering this step for a long time. I’ve made a few halfhearted tries in the last few years. But something has changed, in me and in the world around me, and I find myself in a new place that I am finally beginning to recognize.

The fact is that I’m preparing to enter a new phase of my life, one which likely does not involve teaching or drumming professionally and one which may not even involve much drumming in public for the foreseeable future.

Since the pandemic and its related events turned my life upside-down, I’ve been floundering. Getting far enough past Long Covid simply to function like a person again took over two years, and residual issues have lingered long enough to force me into medical retirement.

I’ve struggled to find my bearings since I began to improve; not knowing where or how to be useful, not able to promise a regular schedule or a regular level of energy while I’ve dealt with various medical issues, and feeling really lost.

Last week, a local All-Age drum corps invited me to join them in the pit playing mallet percussion. Playing in a drum corps pit would require me to manage not just playing mallet instruments, but also moving them and loading them on and off trucks at performances. Add in the fact that the corps is based in Milwaukie, and I’m transit-dependent, and it would be an unworkable situation that I could not guarantee a meaningful commitment to. There was a time I might have leapt at the chance, but that time has passed. I thanked them for the invitation and politely declined.

While I am getting stronger and more functional, there are definitely limits to my functionality and my energy level that signal it’s time for me to consider other possibilities. I can still play rudimentally, but marching and performing are just not happening at this time. And without the incentive of rehearsing I admit my interest in drumming has flagged a little.

Which brings me to my other line of thinking, especially about practice pads and my interest in them.

I have a feeling that the practice pad tidal wave is beginning to fall. Too many similar designs of higher-end pads have flooded the market since the beginning of the pandemic, and not enough people or communities have rebounded financially since Covid began to recede. Add to that the struggle of so many school groups just to stay afloat, let alone field a marching band. Even if Drumpf and Co. DO get shown the door, there’s too much damage done to repair anything in a lot of what’s left in my lifetime. It’s sad. I try not to dwell on it too much.

So I am beginning to sell off as many of my pads as I can. I hope to reduce the number down to perhaps a dozen or so pads that I use and enjoy regularly. I’ll offer them at decent prices, and whatever I can’t sell I might donate to a youth group.

I’d hang onto them, but I’ve encountered a lot of apathy in my attempts to spark interest in Rudimental drumming locally. Portland just leans way too far to the hard left on so many issues, for there to be much purchase beyond well-funded suburban schools.

At the end of the day, it’s just a practice pad. And maybe someday it will be just that, and no more, again. More and more, I think that would probably be a good thing.

Pad Rescue: Vic Firth basic pad, much improved

Early last month, I scored a bundle of old practice pads and mutes. Among them was the baseplate of a Vic Firth student pad. This pad is still being sold by Vic Firth and it basically sucks. The grey side is softer rubber with a muddy rebound that is unsatisfying. The black side is much harder and equally disappointing to play on. The baseplate is MDF with a heavy coat of black textured paint. The rubber pieces are applied with thick double-sided tape. It’s a perfectly horrid practice pad, and most of them wind up for sale on eBay or elsewhere after they’ve been used and abandoned.

What came to me was the baseplate with the black rubber still attached. It was pointless and sad, so I pulled it off.

Then I removed as much of the two-sided tape as I could. The shiny stuff under the black rubber was easier to remove; the tape on the other side had been exposed for so,e time and was gross and sticky, but I got an awful lot of it off.

Then I looked around for something to glue on in its place. What surfaced was a 1/4” thick round of hard rubber with a surprisingly pleasant, sharp rebound. Certainly an improvement over what had been there before. I took it out to the shed, propped open the door, donned gloves and safety glasses, and opened a new bottle of superglue. 

I roughed up the opposing sides, carefully applied the glue, laid on the rubber round and held it in place long enough to stick. Then I took a drumstick and used at as a rolling pin to roll out any gaps or air bubbles. After I wiped away the excess, I weighted it down and let it dry overnight.

The next day, I tried it out. It was hard, but with a nice rebound. Still, it felt like something was missing.

So I looked around my stash and found an old drum head with a slice near the edge. I traced a circle around the undamaged portion, cut it out and took it out to the shed, where I glued it on,top of the rubber round. After rolling a drum stick over it and wiping away the excess, I weighted it down and left it overnight. It wasn’t my most careful work and there were a few little splotches of glue left.

But when I took it out to chop on it, I was happy with w the result.

Adding a laminate added a snap to the feel and tone that, in spite of my general bias against laminates, was actually nice to chop on.

I glued a round of yoga mat material and glued it on the bottom as a nonskid surface. Perfect.

As MDF baseplates go, this one isn’t bad. The heavy coat of textured paint helps solidify it.

I’m happy with how this turned out. It has applications for modern marching drummers, and possibly for pipe band drummers too. And honestly, from what I’ve seen in the last few years, Vic Firth couldn’t bring out anything even this nice.

Full Review: Loyal Drumsticks, M1 and Mason models

Loyal Drums, long known for fine rope drums hand crafted in the USA, has recently released two models of drumsticks in hickory. I took delivery on one pair of each model and hung out with them here at home.

The Brendan Mason signature model was designed in collaboration with Brendan Mason, a champion rudimental drummer, arranger and instructor in the ancient/rope style. It’s a big, bold stick that’s ideal for rope drumming. In fact, small hands may struggle to maintain proper control of these sticks. My hands, although larger for a woman, found it difficult to play with these for more than ten minutes after a good warmup.the tips are somewhat pedestaled, though not sharply, and I’d consider the taper to be moderate. They’re well balanced, and even at the relatively light weight of 84 grams they have an authoritative feel. Because of my arthritis and smaller hands, I may reserve these for “good” days as a slow warmup stick.

The M1 model has the same butt diameter and a moderate taper that narrows just a little more than the Mason model, with slightly larger tips. My pair weighed in at 82 grams and I found these easier and more comfortable to play for a longer period after warmup. They’re also well-balanced, and are recommended by Loyal as an ideal rudimental stick that’s especially good for those who use the Moeller technique of playing. With a proper warmup, I find these sticks comfortable for regular practice.

Both models are made from hickory. The finish is good, though not quite as fine as that found on, say, Cooperman hickory sticks. The grain is straight and the sticks are matched and packaged in pairs.

The sticks can be ordered in a range of gram weights from the high 70s/low 80s up into the upper 90s (per stick).

Photos and videos below.

Photos showing the grain, and a chunk of wood knocked out of the butt end of one of the sticks (perhaps during shipping?).

Here are a couple of videos demonstrating first the Brendan Mason, and then the M1 sticks.

Loyal hickory sticks retail for $38 a pair plus postage and can be ordered from the Loyal web site.

Spolier Alert? PadParts.com coming soon

Bradley Lomax, the brains and brawn behind Beetle Percussion, is launching a new enterprise called PadParts. After years of  talking with folks who make their own practice pads, or who would like to, Bradley is preparing to set up a supply house that will make various parts of a practice pad -- baseplates in solid wood and MDF, various playing surfaces from recycled tire and gum rubber, in different thicknesses and more -- available for purchase so anyone can make their own practice pads at home.

[Disclaimer: I'm one of the folks he's been having conversations with, because as regular readers here know I've made a ton of practice pads at home. I am not being paid to endorse the site or any of its products, but now that it's happening I can talk about it.]

The actual web site isn't live yet, but here are some sneak peeks from the Instagram page.

As you can see, multiple options will abound for anyone wanting to make their own practice pad. Included at the upcoming site will be suggestions for adapting these designs to include materials you may already have on hand.

Obviously, there is not a little controversy around this project, at least where mass producers of commercial practice pads are concerned. After all, why pay a hundred bucks for one of their pads when you can make something very similar in form and function yourself for a fraction of that?

Any large-scale commercial pad maker may cry foul if they feel like their designs are copied too closely; but in a time when the whole concept of design and intellectual property is being challenged legally and technologically every day, I think that ship has sailed.

Even as I type, someone on eBay is selling the top rubber part of an old Cappella practice pad with the wry tag, "IYKYK" in the listing title. I think they're asking too much money, but whatever.

And if you're feeling really inspired, there's also a listing for a homemade pad that is shaped exactly like the Capella, so if you really want to get wacky, you can buy both items and glue the Cappella rubber to the underside of the complete pad.

Make a statement. Go crazy.

An added benefit of making your own pads is that you can learn a lot more about what works and what doesn't, using your own experience to inform your choice of materials and construction; and I think you might be more likely to use a pad you've successfully made yourself.

Since Beetle Percussion began as a way to make drum practice products more sustainably, I feel this falls in line with their existing modus operandi.

Personally, I hope it's a successful venture. I think the whole world of mass-produced practice pads -- especially marching-specific pads -- has gotten overhyped, overpriced and way out of hand. In a time when climate change from increased industrial output has become, as the kids say, a thing and consumerism is out of control, I think a return to homemade pads is a good thing. I'm glad to see that I'm not alone in that opinion.

Happy chopping.

Drumming is good for you. Here’s proof.

During the Covid pandemic, I lived with roughly 3 years of forced inactivity, brought on mostly by the onset of Long Covid and the time I spent too weak to do anything after I developed it. That resulted in high blood pressure, increased depression and other issues. It took time to sort all the pieces, and longer still to figure out how to begin recovery, especially because trying to do too much too fast could be dangerous for my heart and lungs.

Now that I’m past the worst of it, I’ve begun moving again. Not a lot, and not all day every day, but enough that I’m beginning to see a difference in how I feel. I’m sleeping better most nights, and my blood pressure seems to be falling a bit. Arthritis is still an issue, and so is my gut; but I can walk mostly in a straight line now, and I have fewer moments of dizziness.

Today I went outside and played. Demonstration below, followed by a full circle round the block at something like 100-110 bpm. It felt okay.

The plate that holds the practice pad is made of metal, and it’s heavy. Still, even with a pad sitting on in it’s lighter than a drum, and my back is getting used to the weight. At some point, perhaps in a few weeks, I might try carrying a drum with a sling and leg rest and see how it feels. 

Of course, at some point it will get too cold and wet to do this outside every day, but that’s eight to twelve weeks off at least.

I’ll still want to fiddle with the carrier a bit, but it’s reasonably dialed in for my purposes for the time being.

Future Vintage? Hot Sticks “Bully” marching sticks, circa 1980-84

Once upon a time, there was a company called Hot Sticks. Founded in Mississippi in 1979, their painted drum sticks made a splash among younger drummers through the early 1990s. Then business fell off, and the company closed for awhile in 2018. They resurfaced in 2022, and now offer painted and imprinted drum sticks, pens and baseball bats.

I remember these showing up in my high school band room around my junior year. A couple of freshman drummers had bought them at our local music store. They were purple and red and they didn’t really impress me. By then, though, I’d been introduced to much better sticks and I guess that made me something of a drum snob. To be fair, no one in my college or professional ensembles used them, so I felt somewhat vindicated. 

I was never able to determine if the company ever made its own drum sticks. I suspect that they probably did not. It was too easy, even back then, to job out the drum sticks from another maker and paint and imprint them in-house.

For a few years Hot Sticks followed the new marching percussion craze and tried to make their entry into the market with the Bully sticks. They were painted white (to avoid having to tape them) and were meant to compete with Promark and other companies.

The sticks were not anything special, even for the time. CB700, Fibes and other companies also had their sticks made elsewhere and branded accordingly. But based on what I could research, the Billy sticks we only offered for a few years, and then quietly discontinued before 1990. Since most marching sticks were destroyed through use, surviving pairs are harder to find.

So I scored these on eBay. They’re in good shape, though they’re certainly not pitch-matched. (Almost no mass-produced sticks were back then.) They’re a great example of how a company used appearances to sell a sub-optimal product, and for that alone they make a nice addition to my collection of vintage marching sticks.

Vintage Corner: my oldest sticks

I’m more into pads than sticks, but I do have a number of really cool sets in my collection.

Here are the two oldest sets I own:

1. Ludwig & Ludwig 5S, early 1920s. These came in a large pile of various used sticks, and they weren’t even why I bought the lot, but they turned out to be the nicest find. The 5S size was made by Ludwig up through perhaps 1923 or 24. By 1927, the stick shape still appeared in the catalog but the number and other markings had been whited out in the illustration, which likely means the size had been discontinued by then. I found documentation in a 1922 catalog.

The stick shape is very stout until you get to the end of the taper, and then it narrows down considerably before ending in a sizable tip. The 5S size was likely a “junior” sized marching stick for smaller, younger hands.

The sticks are hickory and are not cracked (amazing for sticks this old), and they feel quite nice. I only use them very occasionally on my Ludwig tunable pad and nowhere else. 

2. George Stone ”Master” model #11 sticks, circa 1925. These were made by George Lawrence Stone’s workshop, and are even rarer than the Ludwig sticks. George Lawrence Stone (who wrote the seminal “Stick Control,” which is still in print today and still used by millions of drum students) inherited the workshop from his father, George B. Stone, and continued to make sticks and drums through the mid 1930s. By 1938, the workshop was closed down due to flagging sales, and to divert more resources to the drum school, which was quite successful at the time. Thanks to Ting at King Louie Music, I was able to confirm that these sticks appeared in Stone’s 1925 catalog. They’re unusual, very old and very rare. They’re also in good used condition for their age, with no cracks or gouges, and they’re also hickory. I’m told that the odd taper was not uncommon for sticks of this era. These were designed for concert band use.

Again, because these are so rare, they’ll mostly hang on my wall display rack and I will only bring them down on extremely rare occasions to tap on my old Ludwig pad.

As I said earlier, vintage pads have long been more my thing than sticks. Pads are still easier to find, even with the increased hype of the last few years, and they tend to last a lot longer than sticks, which were made to be used, broken and replaced often. Still, when the opportunity arises, I won’t turn down a pair of cool, old sticks.

Happy drumming.