Pad Interestingness: a roundup of recent activity

In the last week or so, I’ve been devoting time to all sorts of pad research, DIT an improvements and a couple of acquisitions. Here's a roundup.

1. Vintage practice pads made using solid wood can be far more resonant — and louder! — than later pads using plywood. I like to make mutes for these older pads I’m scrap foam. This is my latest, using leftover scraps of ensolite camping pad material that I stacked, glued and shaped to fit. Works beautifully.

2. In high school, my section leader acquired a brand new pad that had just come out, called the Trankle Pocket Pad. He had money and his parents got him whatever drum gear he needed or wanted. The pad wasn’t cheap — over $20 in 1979! — but after trying it we all wanted one. I finally got one in college, and took it everywhere with me. But by the mid 1980s the company had folded and suddenly you couldn’t find the pads anymore. I sold that original pad to a classmate and always regretted it.

Last week, I bought another from a guy who’d had it since college. When it arrived, I could see and feel that the gum rubber was in bad shape, so I decided to replace it. It’s not pretty but it does work, and I’m happy with the results.

3. Six months ago, this little pad appeared in an online ad. The seller had offered it with sticks and an old woodblock, all from his uncle’s estate. He wanted $60 cash, in-person for the lot. I asked about buying just the pad but at the time he didn’t want to ship. So I thanked him, and waited. Occasionally, I’d check to see if the listing was still active. Two weeks ago, the pad appeared in a new listing by itself, now for far less money. I reached out to the seller and asked if he’d consider shipping it to me. He agreed. I mailed him a money order, he mailed me the pad and now it’s here. It’s the only pad from Pep Products (a small drum parts manufacturer based in Kankakee, Illinois during the mid-twentieth century) that I’ve seen that wasn’t made of a solid block of rubber.

It’s a calfskin head stretched over some kind of frame — plastic? Wood? I’m not sure — and mounted on a small wood platform with a tilt built in. It’s a small, delicate thing, likely from the late 1940s or early 50s, and I wouldn’t chop seriously on it at this point. But I’m thrilled to have this here for examination and research. If anyone can share more info about the Pep Products company, I’d be grateful.

4. Coming soon: a Beetle singlesided Last Pad that I’ve rescued from its abusive previous owner, who was likely a high schooler wanting a pad he could hit like a hammer. He hadn’t read the fine print about the differences between the doublesided (high-tension) and singlesided (lower tension) Last Pad models, and ordered the latter to save a few bucks. Then he destroyed it. He tossed it up on eBay for an exorbitant sum (basically what he’d paid for it), and once again I watched and waited. Two months later, he realized that he was going to have to take a big hit, so when he dropped the price to under a hundred bucks, I jumped.

Here are photos from his listing showing the damage he’d done to the pad’s base by choosing a Kevlar head and cranking the tension.

Almost as shocking and s the number of people who were watching the listing at the time.

The pad is due to arrive this week. When it does, I’ll disassemble it and attempt to repair the base by gluing and clamping it. Stay tuned.

And just for fun, it was nice to be able to chop over the weekend, before the temperatures got too hot.

Happy drumming!