When is a piece of vinyl not a piece of vinyl?

Awhile back, I offered a post about specialty brush pads. My discussion was limited, partly because I didn’t own many myself and partly because there was a lot of redundancy of design and construction among the pads available.

After I shared a link to the post on the socials, Anthony Stanislavski reached out to let me know about his brush pad, being made by Prologix. It was essentially a piece of thick vinyl with a coating and graphics showing the path each hand should take while playing brush beats, with a thin nonskid surface affixed to the bottom. At the time, it sold for over $50, which I thought was a little ridiculous at the time. I carried on and forgot about it.

Now, Stanislavski has gone independent of Prologix and is selling the same design at his own web site. It’s the very same item sans the Prologix branding, and it sells for $70.

I can’t know what prompts artists to step out from behind their endorsing brand and go it alone — or elsewhere — though this isn’t the first time someone has done so. It won’t be the last, either. Retail is a fickle mistress and market forces currently require companies to scale up in order to remain profitable. If the item doesn’t keep up with the scale, it gets dropped. If a company can’t scale up, it folds (as was the case with One Beat Better, which made one of the smartest brush pad designs ever and sadly couldn’t compete with the mega-companies) or is bought out by a larger company (as Prologix did with the original makers of the Chopping Block practice pad — they leveraged their size and scale to merge with the smaller business and then came up with a redesigned version that frankly isn’t as nice).

Here’s the original “Choppin’ Block” pad.

If you click on the link it will still take you to Synced Up’s web page, but you’ll find that the original design is gone, replaced with the new version being sold in “partnership” with Prologix, which is making the pad.

In fact, within weeks of the change, nearly all references to the original pad were gone from the Internet, no doubt erased by Prologix’s request in order to concentrate attention and clicks on the new version.

The speed of the change resonated with me in a negative way, though I can’t exactly articulate why.

But I digress.

The challenge with this vinyl sheet brush pad is the retail price. It could easily be replicated at home by anyone with access to an old industrial binder cover (made of flexible vinyl and large enough to cut a 13” circle out of), some neoprene and some superglue. Add your own graphics with a ruler and permanent paint pen, clearcoat as needed, let dry and voila! You’ve got the same thing for less than ten bucks.

However, the other reality is that there are fewer and fewer Americans who know how to work with their hands in even the most elemental ways. 

Before computers became ubiquitous, generations of ordinary people knew how to do simple repairs around the house, like taping and repainting a room, hanging Sheetrock, repairing a broken table leg with glue and a wooden dowel, and even making their own practice pads. I have a number of user-made pads in my collection, some dating from as late is the 1960s and the oldest dating from the 1930s. The earliest known commercially sold pad dates from the early 1910s and can be found in the 1912 Ludwig & Ludwig catalog. It consists of a circle of solid maple covered with a calfskin head and stuffed with wool until firm. It’s meant to provide the same feel as a drum (which in those days also used calf heads and lower tension than we know today) with far less volume.

 

 

 

 

 

It could easily be made at home today. And if I can get my hands on a broken calf head I might give it a try. But almost no one else these days is interested in making their own stuff -- either because they can't imagine how, or because they don't want to get their hands dirty.

And that’s why there will be ready buyers for these new brush pads, just as there are ready buyers for any of the cheap, mass-produced practice pads on the market. The combination of consumer trends, educational and workplace demands and the entire generational shift of the last thirty years has resulted in a landscape where people are willing to pay far too much money for mass-produced stuff that involves little or no real craft.

 There are, of course, practice pads on the market that are made one at a time by people who understand the value of craft and how that translates to quality and durability. I've mentioned many of those makers elsewhere in my blog so I don't need to re-list them here.
But if you want those craft makers to continue doing what they do, support them by buying their products and encouraging your friends and students to do the same.  That's the only way those craftspeople can stay in business and not be entirely subsumed by mega-corporations that put quantity and profit above quality.

And if you want to make your own brush pad, there are numerous materials out there that are free for the taking which you can experiment with. Those gigantic industrial binders can be found at many businesses that are going fully electronic, and they'll happily give you one or two before tossing the rest. Neoprene wetsuits make great nonskid material and can be found cheap whenever someone needs to replace theirs due to sizing or age. Yoga ats are also a fine nonskid material and can sometimes be found for free at the curb. Hardware stores sell industrial-strength scissors that will allow you to cut through these materials -- buy two or three sets and keep them handy for all your craft projects. (And remember to work outside when using super-glue or any other industrial adhesive so the off-gases have time to dissipate into the atmosphere!)

The mega-companies will keep making their cheap stuff and using every tool they have to steer drummers -- especially kids -- towards their products. The best thing any of us can do is to show up at the park or band practice with something more sustainably made and chop on it.

Happy drumming!

The Emperor Has No Clothes: Botello pad, v. 2

Last fall, Carlos Botello discontinued his partnership with Beetle Percussion and asked them to stop making his signature pad.

Just a month before the PASIC convention, Botello jumped ship to Salyers Percussion. The whole business was covered by me in a previous blog post and all over the Internet by tons of other drummers.

I hadn’t named the artist before, but by now it seems pointless not to.

Botello posts numerous videos of his demonstrations of various drum licks and exercises from his Left Hand Path drum books on YouTube and Facebook. Many of those older videos are still up, which get reposted regularly to steer people to his instruction books, and feature the old version of his signature pad.

New videos are featuring the Salyers version of his signature pad, which is mass-produced in China, and at first they seemed ordinary, though the sound of the new pad was noticeably different from that of the older Beetle version. The new pad sounded harsh and tight, without the depth of tone from the previous Beetle edition. Botello insisted this new version was a “truth” pad, one where you couldn’t hide from your mistakes. It was a rather sad attempt to sell a lesser product. He gamely carried on with it. Meanwhile the price of a Beetle version of the pad, no longer in production, jumped as scarcity grew. Beetle Botello pads now fetch as much as $150 in the used market, and mint versions can go as high as $200.

Lately, however, some new videos have popped up, and they show an interesting development.

The rubber “rim” that encircles half of the Salyers pad has had issues from the beginning. It didn’t stay put in the channel carved into the pad’s base, it disintegrated with heavy rimshots, and buyers complained loudly. After much cry and hue, Salyers and Botello announced that a new, improved version of this signature pad was “in development.” That was months ago, and nothing has appeared so far.

Botello’s newest videos show the Salyers version of the pad being played with the rubber “rim” facing away from the drummer, and the pad is now covered completely with an add-on laminate.

From a marketing standpoint, this is not a good look. It betrays the original premise of the design, and betrays consumers by admitting that the new design is a failure, not living up to what was promised.

Predictably, there has been deafening silence from Salyers (who, as I’ve said before, do not manufacture any of their own products), and no comment from Botello, who keeps posting videos with his new and unimproved signature pad and pushing his instruction books.

I own a Beetle version of the Botello signature pad. While laminates aren’t generally my thing — I’m an old fart who marched with Mylar — I like it as a reminder that laminates don’t have to suck. It’s an innovative pad with a nice feel and depth of tone, and I enjoy chopping on it periodically.

Beetle has largely recovered from this sudden and unfortunate episode, and continues to innovate new pad designs, craft-made in the US with sustainably sourced materials.

It’s not clear how Carlos Botello has rebounded, or if he will survive this chapter in his professional journey. I wish him luck, and hope he lands on his feet. I just don’t think he’ll do it with a company that cranks out cheap Chinese pads, sticks and mallets by the hundreds of thousands and is slow to respond to issues when they arise.

Chop on.

When an expensive new pad is just… expensive

There’s a new pad on the market, by a company that just filed an LLC last month.

Live Edge Drum Company is marketing a practice pad made of a slice of tree and which uses a playing surface made of some kind of rubbery epoxy. 

Feel free to check out the company’s web site:

https://www.liveedgedrumco.com/

You won’t find much info there, or even any contact information.

You can watch this shiny new demo video, offered by a talented snare drummer who marched Bluecoats this summer. 

Be advised, though, that said drummer is sponsored by the company, which just means that he got his pad for free. How nice.

If you want one, it will set you back a cool $140 PLUS shipping.

Before you jump at the chance to own one yourself, be advised that the pad is being pre-sold in small batches, and you have to get on the list before you can see a meaningfully detailed photo of the pad.

Also note that we don’t know the manufacturing process at all, only that it’s “made in America.” We don’t know by whom, or where.

In the absence of any more info at the web site, I looked up their business info, and found a listing for Live Edge Drum Company’s incorporation in Florida dated October 11 of this year. That means the company became an LLC just seven weeks ago. It’s possible the pads are being made in Florida, but we have no way to confirm that.

We also don’t know what kind of wood is being used or what the playing surface is made of, because that’s not mentioned either. The grainy-resolution photo at the web site doesn’t help matters.

A clue comes in the video when the drummer tells us that the pad is very lightweight. So we know it’s probably not a dense hardwood because those are mostly fairly heavy. A softer wood could be coated with an epoxy and still weigh less than a fine-grained hardwood. And whatever the playing surface is, it can’t be terribly heavy, either. It may be a very thin layer of clear silicone, which wouldn’t add a lot of weight but still provide some bounce.

So in the end, I reached out to a friend with decades of professional woodworking experience, and I asked him what his impressions were.

He was underwhelmed: “I’m sure it’s a cheap trivet from somewhere we can all access. It’s really covered in plastic or epoxy or something when I zoom in. Bark should not stay on wood naturally like that. Reminds me of the stuff at like Michael’s or other craft stores. If it’s light it’s fast growth birch or balsa.”

I trust this guy and his response makes a lot of sense to me.

UPDATE: just got these, which explains things even better.

As with all things, Your Mileage May Vary.

But I’m not going to get excited about a cheaply-made pad that sells for $140.

Caveat emptor, kiddos.