DIY percussion: My own private Bus Pad

When I went looking for gum rubber for my Moeller homage pad, the smallest size I could find was 12” square, for around twenty bucks. Since I knew I’d find other uses for the rubber, I bought the square.

After using what I needed for the Moeller homage pad, I had quite a lot of rubber left over. I really liked the feel of the 3/8” thick rubber, and chose to make myself my own private “Bus” pad.

I returned to the same construction site where I’d sourced the wood for the Moeller homage pad. By now, most of the structural work had been completed and they’d moved on to siding, floors and interiors. There wasn’t as much scrap wood to pick through, but I managed to find a nice piece of solid wood that had been finished with a vague tan primer, and had a lot number stamped on one end. It just barely fit in my bicycle saddlebag, and I took it home.

I cleaned it up, cut off a couple inches on one end to fit the piece of rubber properly, sanded it lightly and painted it with glossy clear coat. Then, I roughed up the top and the underside of the gum rubber, glued them together and let sit under weight overnight.

The next day, I did the same thing with the underside of the wood base and a piece of stackmat material, which I glued with the fabric side against the wood and the rubber side out for a nonskid surface.

Finally, I used up the last of the scrap leather and copper finishing nails, and made a little nameplate.

I’m very pleased with how this turned out. It’s a portable size that fits in my backpack, but slightly wider than commercially made lap pads currently on the market.

This is in danger of becoming my favorite portable pad.

A short demo video can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/100003556179660/videos/pcb.9283558178439296/936505621744947

The pad works well with both heavier concert sticks and with marching sticks. It’s extra thickness means that I have to pull the rolls out a bit, which is great for warming up and also makes it a quieter pad.

DIY Project: homemade Moeller pad

Readers here will remember my first attempt at making a tilted wood practice pad, during the pandemic. It was a rough job, and the tilt was insane, but I learned a lot from the process. A friend named it the Hero Tilt pad.

Not long after finishing that project, I came across this photo of a pad made and used by Sanford “Gus” Moeller.

It was one of the most beautiful pads I’d ever seen, and I wanted to own it.

I also knew that wasn’t likely to happen. This one was either in the hands of Moeller’s descendants, or a collector, or maybe even a museum.

So if I wanted one, I’d have to make my own. The trouble was that I’m not an experienced woodworker. I own no power tools and I wasn’t prepared to lay out a ton of money on the project. So I made a deal with myself and decided that I’d take my time, do my best, and be willing to live with the results.

Part One: I got the wood slabs from a scrap pile at a construction site near my home. 

The cylindrical pieces came from chair crossbeams dumped by a restaurant when they replaced their broken chairs. Unable to get accurate measurements from a photo, I went “by the eye,” as they say. I drew lines for simple cuts with a hand saw, and after the pieces were cut I sanded them all by hand. I mostly wanted to sand down the sharp edges so they wouldn't snag on anything. Since I was working with scrap wood, hand tools and arthritic hands, I was prepared for my pad to be a bit more rough and ready than Moeller’s. 

Part Two: I roughed up the facing edges and used wood glue to attach the three main pieces together. I used a wood stool and bicycle toe straps as clamps to set everything overnight. When the glue dried, I went back and added a couple of wood screws for stability. Then, I added the small side struts with wood glue and let everything dry overnight.

I had thought of staining my pad like Moeller had, but my very rough scraps and glue spots would only be accentuated by stain or vernish. In the end I decided to just paint the wood. I opted for some Gloss Forest Green left over from when we painted our house three years ago. A couple of coats and it didn’t look half bad.

I wanted a name plate, but there wasn’t enough room to apply one where Moeller had placed his, so I mounted it on the side of the base. I made mine from scrap leather and used an art pen. I preserved it with a coat of clear nail polish and mounted it with tiny copper finishing nails.

Part Three: I applied a nonskid bottom using thin mousepad material. I’ve used this on other practice pads and it works well.

Part Four: Finally, I was ready to add the rubber playing surface on top. I marked off the size I wanted, dipped a sharp carpet knife in oil, and cut to desired size. After wiping the oil off, I scored the top of the wood and the bottom of the rubber, applied super glue gel, bound it up with bike toe straps and let dry outside.

Here’s the finished pad, and the original Moeller pad for comparison. It’s not perfect, but it’s solid and feels great to chop on. Considering my lack of woodworking tools and knowledge, I’m still pleased with how it turned out.

Restoration, reconstruction: vintage Ludwig practice pad, 1960s

I picked up this vintage Ludwig pad in a bundle that also included some cool, old Rudimental instruction sheets. It’s one of the older pads with a plywood baseplate. It uses an insert inside, a smaller plywood disc cut to the size of the head and rim (8”). On top of the smaller disc is a layer of dense rubber foam that allows for a nice rebound when the head is tightened over the top of it.

The wooden disc does not attach to the baseplate. It simply rests on top of it, with the pressure of head, rim and tuning rods holding the pad together.

Older models of this pad used a thicker insert of foam rubber, set inside a circular metal band that was sized to serve as a bearing edge for the head to lay on, under the outer rim. This pad lacks the circular band and uses a plywood disc instead. I don't know which came first, but I suspect this version may be either a newer version without the metal band, or possibly someone's homemade revision because the metal band was broken or lost. I don't know.

I took the pad apart so I could clean the components and figure out how improve assembly.

The challenge with this make and model of pad is that Ludwig stopped making it over forty years ago, and stopped making replacement parts at least twenty years ago. So any fixes I chose to make to this pad today would have to be with an eye towards semi-permanence.

I took the pad apart, cleaned the head as best I could with warm soapy water and set it aside to dry.

Then I looked at the baseplate. The threaded posts were easily removable by gentle tapping out with a small hammer. The center threaded post hole, allowing the pad to be mounted onto a stand, took some more forceful tapping with a small punch. The plywood is soft and easy to damage, so I took my time. The three small “feet” also came off pretty easily with gentle prying of a tiny flat blade screwdriver.

Then, I flipped the baseplate over. The side hidden by the disc and rim was black and clean. I decided that reversing the baseplate might help mitigate some of the warping brought about by sixty years of one-way tension.

(My camera went on the fritz while I was doing all this disassembly and reassembly. Once I got it to work again, I didn’t really feel like doing the whole process over again. If you want to see one of these pads unpacked, check out Rick Dior’s awesome YouTube videos, and get thoroughly schooled on how and why these old Ludwig pads are so cool.)

After I cleaned as much gunk off the head as I could, I put it back on. Replacement heads are very hard to come by for these old pads, and since this head had no holes and only a few small dents, I felt it still had some life left. But to make sure I could get more mileage, After I tuned it up, I applied a black dot from Cardinal Percussion. It basically turns the head into an affordable mock-up of Remo’s CS Black Dot head, and offers some additional protection and durability for the center of the head.

I also added a second set of washers to take up some of the stack height on the threaded posts. Simple 5mm washers, available at any bike shop or hardware store, do the trick here.

I decided against reinstalling the original feet. They’re tiny and warn down, and offer almost no traction on a tabletop. I spot-glued four squares of thick mousepad material and will eventually replace those with the big white rubber feet I’ve used on other similar pads.

Once this is all done, it will make a nice portable pad I can use and enjoy anywhere.

You can find the 8” size now and then on Reverb, eBay and elsewhere. The 10” size is much harder to find, and when you do you’ll have to pay a lot for it.

Video, after I took everything apart, reversed the baseplate and reinstalled the metal parts on the new bottom.



A couple days later, I obtained the rubber feet I needed to finish restoring this Ludwig pad.

They're 7/8", come with screws and can be found at most hardware stores.

Hint: Even in softer wood like what this pad is made with, it's a good idea to gently tap some thin nails into the wood first, then pull them out and use the holes as guides for the screws. They'll do less damage to the wood this way, and are less likely to go crooked while you screw them in.

Another hint: Like many of these old Ludwig pads, the wood baseplate was slightly warped, even after inverting it and reinstalling all the hardware. Selecting which "corners" to install the rubber feet in may help reduce some of the wobble from the baseplate not being level.
If that doesn't work entirely, you can help things along by placing very thin metal washers under the two opposing feet where the wobble is most pronounced.

Some folks prefer to have three feet on bottom, and in many cases that's more stable than using four. But on a pad this size I think four works fine.

 

After I got that issue solved, I had another go at the black ink on the head. This time, I gently buffed it with a fine emory board, one of the cheap freebies you get at nail salons. Then, I soaked a cotton ball in nail polish remover (acetone) and very carefully rubbed off what was left of the paint and the other stains on the head. When I finished, I wiped the head down with a damp rag to remove the excess acetone.

The results were excellent.

This should do it for this pad. I have another Ludwig DB-750 pad in the same size, with a nearly pristine Ludwig Ensemble head on it. That pad is really clean and has a higher tension than this one, and I think I'll just let it be. This pad, though, isn't so pristine that I have to baby it, and it's now part of my regular rotation of usable practice pads. I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Vintage Corner? Xymox convertible pad, early to mid-2000s

Yeah, okay, "vintage" is pushing it a little. But this was a cool find that I decided to spring for.

In the mid-2000s, Xymox Percussion began producing pads with a snare sound, created by cutting out a recess in the bottom of the baseplate and installing snare beads. For a time, The snare beads were encased in a removable metal box that could cling magnetically to a metal plate on the underside.

Later versions, simple placed the metal beads into the recess, which was embedded with screws, and enclosed them with a metal plate and nuts that attached to the screws. Those later versions were made in such a way that the nuts went on permanently, and removing them could damage the whole pad. This version of the snare sound assembly is found on Xymox's own pads, and has been licensed to other companies including Vic Firth and Ahead.

In the mid-2000s, HQ offered a gray, 8" RealFeel pad with the same removable box, on license from Xymox. It wasn't on the market for very long (possibly because that was when the HQ business was being sold to D'Addario/Evans, but I'm not sure of the exact dates). That 8" HQ pad is extremely hard to find today.

This 10" pad dates probably from just before the HQ version. Underneath the laminate is an actual gum rubber layer. This was subsequently replaced with neoprene in later versions, which doesn’t give as satisfying and response or sound.
The snare box is made of cast aluminum, with steel plates that cling to the magnetic panel inside the recess in the underside.

Note that this early version allows you to open everything up to adjust the number of beads you want inside, for a customized sound.

Sadly, this early version doesn't offer as obvious a snare sound, even when you remove a few beads to give the remaining beads more room to rattle. But when you remove the snare box, there is a noticable difference in sound without the snare beads.

It's a really interesting moment in practice pad history, and fun to play.

Vintage Corner: Billy Hyde Natural Rebound Pad

Billy Hyde was a noted drummer who was featured on Australian television in the 1960s and 70s.

He developed a practice pad design that proved so popular it became standard equipment for drummers throughout the British commonwealth. A number of British drummers still use this pad in their studio and on the road. Eventually, Hyde founded a music company that made and sold the pads, and which later expanded into a full retail music business.

The business went into receivership in the 2010’s and was later picked up by a relative who restarted the business. It continues to in Australia, though it was licensed the design and manufacture of the pad to other companies. Today, most of the Billy Hyde pads are made under the auspices of Stagg in the UK.

The original Hyde pad came in an 8” size. Today, they are available in 8”, 10” and 12” sizes.

The Billy Hyde Natural Rebound Pad was constructed of rubber fitted around a wooden baseplate, with a threaded hole on the bottom so it could be used on a cymbal stand. 

Here’s an original Billy Hyde pad that dates from the 1970s, and a copy made for Promark in the 1980s or 90s.

The Hyde pad has a softer, more supple feel, while the Promark copy is denser and harder.

The pads aren’t bad. While the difference in feel and tone is noticeable, both offer a decent rebound that’s good for concert and drumkit players. The 8” size is nice for travel. While all sizes include a threaded hole underneath, I would probably use the largest size in a snare basket for stability.

The originals can be found on eBay, but expect to pay higher prices for shipping and VAT if you’re ordering from the US.

Update: Ludwig aluminum practice pads

I currently have four Ludwig aluminum practice pads in my collection, ranging from the 1950s through the early 1980s. One of the pads came without the rubber suction cup feet on bottom.
Without the rubber feet, I could only use this pad on a stand. I wanted to replace the feet.

After contacting Ludwig and learning that replacement feet for this pad had been discontinued long ago, I went looking for another solution.

After looking at length, I finally found a solution online.

These are sold by multiple outlets (including the evil Amazon, which I will never use). I found mine on eBay and the price was right.

Update: they arrived, and I installed them. See below.

The feet fit the threaded holes fine. However, they run a bit long. Two solutions are to either cut the posts shorter (though this could be difficult without bolt cutters, and then you'd have to clean up the top of the threads to screw them into the pad base); or to use washers to take up the stack height. I chose the latter solution and it seems fine.

Two pads, one company: Ludwig aluminum practice pad

 #practicepadhistory

L to R: two pads, one company.

On the left, a WFL practice pad from the early 1950s.

On the right, a Ludwig practice pad from the mid to late 1950s, after William F. Ludwig Sr. was able to buy back his original company and name from Conn in 1955. 

Both made of die cast aluminum alloy, with gum rubber. The rubber feet on the bottom of the WFL pad don’t have suction cups. The feet on the Ludwig pad do. 

Both are designed to be used on a tabletop or on a stand (as noted by the receiving port and thumb screw). Some earlier WFL models did not include the port for a stand. 

There is a later version of this design with black rubber and a more modern Ludwig logo, made through the mid 1980s. The black rubber does not have the same response or feel as the tan gum rubber, but it’s not horrible.

The black rubber feet are notorious for falling off or cracking off with age. 

If you’re persistent, you may be able to find replacements through vintage drum dealers. 

The later versions of this pad (black rubber surface, modern Ludwig logo on a black decal) can be found online at various auction/sale sites, ranging for anywhere from $20 to $50 depending on condition.

(Stock photo)