Product review: Percoustique practice pad - UPDATE 9/24/26

Percoustique was a company that, according to the little research I was able to do online, made drums and drum-adjacent equipment that was largely for the OEM or stencil market, and mostly supplied instrument rental facilities rather than being steered to direct sales.

I just acquired what appears to be a Percoustique practice pad, designed along the lines of the Quiet Tone pad, from an eBay auction where I was the only bidder. The pad arrived this morning and I quickly set about seeing what I’d gotten.

The pad is similar to a Quiet Tone in that it’s a 14” drum head with a real rim and tuning bolts — eight instead of the six on a Quiet Tone — and it sits on a molded plastic base with a very slight degree of built-in tilt.

Playing this pad and comparing it to the Quiet Tone shows that the Percoustique is, well, hollow.

Taking apart the pad revealed that the molded plastic base is hollow and contains a cotton fiber insert. The depth of the insert is shallower than the depth of the space in the molded plastic base, lending to the hollow sound. I don’t know if the fiber insert was originally thicker and became compressed, or if there was additional material inside the base with this fiber insert.

I’d used up the yoga mat material I’d had in previous projects, so I turned to what I had on hand. In this case, two layers of large bubble wrap, cut to size and laid one on another with the fiber layer on top. 

Reassembling and tensioning the pad removed the hollow sound. The large bubble wrap meant the tone would be lower than desired, and the response softer. At some future point I’ll look for a different material to use as an insert and see what happens.

There is another Percoustique pad available right now on Reverb, though at a price I think is rather high. You could watch it and wait for the price to come down. Or just save up and buy a Quiet Tone, which is clearly a better pad.

UPDATE, 9/24/2026: After trying multiple combinations of internal padding and muffling materials, I finally hit upon a combination that I can live with:
-- leave two layers of small-bubble padding on bottom.
-- remove cloth muffler.
-- add multiple layers of corrugated cardboard. 
-- add foam drum mute material.
-- add two more layers of cardboard and top with a layer of tool drawer material (as used in the Rick Dior Quiet Tone videos). 

The end result is still a little lower in tone, but the stick response is much sharper and the rebound much quicker. Although the hard plastic base is fairly stout, I had to go slowly and carefully when re-tensioning the head. I suppose you could swap in a better Remo head, but I went ahead and kept the original Percoustique stock head and it works well enough.

This has inspired me to explore other "flat" pad options, including those by RamPad and other companies that use a plywood base and have similar construction to Quiet Tone, Percoustique and Pearl pads of this type. They're more expensive but I'm on the lookout for used models I can obtain for less. Stay tuned.

DIY time: flip-over drum mutes by Pearl, and by Yours Truly

Yeah, I know. 

Technically, this is some kind of copyright infringement.

But since I don’t plan to sell mine, I figure no harm, no foul.

Pearl’s design retails for $25.

 

My copy, which cost less than five bucks in materials.

The idea, I think, is to muffle the worst of the overtone ring, which my design does pretty well.

I suspect making it with suede would work better as the suede offers more flexibility, but I can just play with the leather to work it a bit and eventually achieve the same result.

I noticed that in the customer reviews, someone said Pearl’s design was faulty because you couldn’t keep it from popping off the tension bolt when playing a rim shot or loud accent. My thinking is that ther user might be faulty because if you’re muting the drum, why would you 0ay, you know, loud?

It’s a good design, and works nicely on my new-old drum.

Shuffling along with LIDO (vintage sticks)

 

A recent find, these Lido 2B drumsticks date from probably the early 1960s.
                                             
       

Lido was a brand used on drums and sticks made in Japan during the late 1950s/early 1960s. But the catch -- and what makes it harder to research -- is the fact that one Japanese plant manufactured sticks and drums for Lido and a host of other budget-level brands, simply stamping the product with whatever brand was ordered.

For a model 2B the sticks feel rather lightweight, but the grain still suggests some kind of hickory.
There's a lovely patina to them, and only a tiny bit of wood has been worn away from one of the tips. They're decently balanced as a pair, and they play nicely on my vintage Slingerland pad.
They feel more like a large-tipped orchestral stick than a concert band stick.
Eventually, Lido and a few other budget brands from this Japanese plant would be subsumed into the Pearl Drum Company.