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.