Vintage Corner: The original Quiet Tone mute, by Henry Adler

I had the amazing opportunity to purchase two of the first-generation, original Quiet Tone pads, designed and distributed by Henry Adler. They arrived today, and I am fascinated.

I purchased both from the same fellow, a 14-inch Snare Mute and a 13-inch Tom-Tom Mute. The pads were originally designed not as practice pads, but as drum mutes designed to be placed atop drums for quieter practice. These mutes came with coil springs with hooks on each end, that allowed you to attach a mute to the top of a drum and keep it in place during indoor practice. 

The fiber base is the same as that found on the next generation of Quiet Tone pads that came with tension rods and replaceable heads. However, this original version bears a label that says “Pat. pending,” placing these in the late 1960s.

Also, the legs on this earliest model are screwed into a sliding nut on the underside of the two vertical rods. Sliding the nut allows you to place the legs where you want, and tightening the threaded leg into the nut (finger tight) keeps it where you set it.

Sticks are shown in one of the photos with the 13-inch mute to show scale. I’ve places small pieces of folded paper between the horizontal rod and the two vertical rods, to reduce the rattle of metal-on-metal. 

This first generation came pre-tensioned, and could not be adjusted. The pitch is lower than that found on later versions of the pad, and has a lower tension that more closely resembles jazz drums of the 1960s. 

These are photos of the 13-inch Tom-Tom mute. 

As you can see in the video, the head sits lower from the top of the rim than on later versions of the Quiet Tone. This earliest version was probably not designed to be taken apart by the player; the rods connect to the rim with rivets. Subsequent revisions would allow for tuning adjustment and head replacement, a thicker fiber base and eventually the addition of a foam rubber layer to strengthen the construction and allow it to be used as a real practice pad.

These earliest examples of the Quiet Tone have their limits and would probably not withstand the demands of the modern drummer, but they are a significant piece of practice pad history and are extremely rare in complete condition. I am very glad to have them, and honored to be their next caretaker.

Vintage Corner: More Remo pad love

Remo’s first practice pads, circa 1960-62, were not tunable, and consisted of a round piece of Mylar set into a frame made of thin plywood. Foam underneath allowed for a quieter sound, though on every one of these I’ve found the foam has literally disintegrated with time. The result was not stellar by modern standards, but it was real departure from the rubber-on-wood pads common at the time. These earliest versions were built atop a thin, hollow frame that gave it some tilt and a resenting chamber.

What I’d never seen before was a 10-inch size that came without a resonating platform. I didn’t know these existed. But I just found one to add to my historic collection, and I’m thrilled to share it with you.

Product review: Percoustique practice pad

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.

Cooperman Sticks: Gone for good?

Cooperman Drum Company has been out of sticks for months, with no expected resupply date.

So today, I was surprised to learn that Nick Petrella, whose concert models have been made by Cooperman for years, is now having his sticks produced by Rohema of Germany. 

Cooperman previously offered Petrella's signature sticks, models 5 and 10, in persimmon and hickory, and very occasionally in rosewood. They were popular with concert percussionists. (The Cooperman #10 has long been one of my favorite concert sticks; I currently own three sets in hickory.)
Rosewood production ended with CITES restrictions on harvesting and importing rosewood.
Persimmon sticks ceased being available when cured persimmon stocks became scarce; Cooperman and Reamer both switched to offering their models in hickory only over a year ago. Now, Cooperman doesn't appear able to keep making even hickory sticks because of issues in sourcing quality hickory stocks, an issue that may grow with the acceleration of climate change.

Enter Rohema, a German company that has been making drum sticks for a long time. Their sticks were mostly available in Europe, with limited importing to the US. Steve Weiss announced this week that they now stock the new Nick Petrella signature models from Rohema, modified versions of his old Cooperman models # 5 and 10, in "laminated wood". Rohema hasn't revealed what wood is being laminated to produce its sticks. Birch has long been a choice for lamination, but produced much heavier sticks. 

Comparing the Coopermans with the new Rohemas, there are some interesting modifications. Read the dimensions offered for each maker and each model, and you'll see that the new Model NP5 is actually offered in a slightly larger diameter than the Cooperman version, while the new Model NP10 comes with a longer taper, a narrower neck and a slightly larger tip than found on the Cooperman version.

Cooperman Nick Petrella #5

 

 

 

 

 

Rohema Nick Petrella NP5

 

 

 

 

 

Cooperman Nick Petrella Model 10

Rohema Nick Petrella NP10

First-quality Cooperman sticks last sold for $39/pair. The new Rohema versions are selling at Steve Weiss for $28-29/pair. I was flush from some recent pad sales and so intrigued by this development that I took a chance and ordered one pair each of the new sticks. They should be here next week.

Vintage Corner: Quiet Tone practice pads, from the early days

According to verbal history, Henry Adler designed the Quiet Tone practice in the 1960s as a way to practice drumming quietly.
It could rest on a tabletop or on top of a drum, and worked as advertised. 
The earliest version featured a plain Mylar plastic head and rim laid over a muting base (made of some kind of fiberboard that, contrary to rumor did not contain any asbestos). The earliest version of the QT pad had very primitive tension that was difficult to work with and did not offer much of a tuning range. 

The patent for the design was actually awarded to Merton Glick and Joseph Mancari in 1969. I am still researching the Henry Adler connection to see if he was involved in any way, but so far I can find nothing.

Below: drawings from the patent application:

The earliest versions of the QT pad, before the patent was awarded, are extremely scarce and very hard to find today. So imagine my surprise when I found listings for two of them, at a surprisingly low price for each. Of course, I snapped them both up.

14" pad, meant to fit on top of a snare drum:

 

And the 13" size, meant to fit on top of a tom or a piccolo snare drum:

As you can see from the blow-ups below, the tensioning mechanism was far more primitive on this earliest version, which used a simple nut and bolt design. This would be replaced later by a drum tension rod, which provided more adjustability.

While this earliest tuning mechanism was too primitive for real world applications, having examples in my collection makes it easier for me to see and show the full development of an important piece of drum pad history, and I'm glad to have them.

Happy drumming.

There were homemade practice pads before any other. There still are.

The first US patent for a drum practice pad was granted in 1920 to Henry Bower, a drummer and teacher who created a “drum practice device” so that drummers could practice anywhere without having to lug a drum along. There was no claim made about the practice device being quieter than an actual drum, only more portable; Bower’s design utilized a wood base, with a wool batting as a middle layer and topped by a piece of hard fiberboard, the same as was used for drum cases (and which was still used for drum cases, up through the late 1980s, when hard plastics improved enough to supplant fiberboard). The result was a practice pad with a very hard, articulate response and tone which was barely muted at all by the wool batting. Bower then licensed his design to a drum shop in Los Angeles, which then produced the pads in quantity and had distribution rights.

But drummers had made their own pads for private use before Bower got his patent. These homemade pads were essentially one-offs, made by the drummer for his personal use. 

A number of working drummers continued to make and use their own practice pads after mass-produced pads became widely available. Why? There’s no single definite reason. The pads in the first photo below represent different decades in modern drum history, from the 1950s into the early 1980s, when mass-produced practice pads were plentiful and relatively inexpensive. However, most of the mass-produced pads during this time were made with a built-in tilt, rather than flat. (Remo’s tunable pads even came with a slight tilt built into the design, which didn’t really go away until the 1990s. They also cost more than the simple rubber-on-wood pads did.)

Most drummers were still being taught traditional grip up through the late 1970s, and drums were still carried on the march at a tilt (using a webbed shoulder sling and a leg rest) until the early 1980s, when the modern drum corps movement took off. West Coast drum corps such as the Santa Clara Vanguard taught their snare drummers to use matched grip and carried their snare drums as parallel to the ground as possible. These corps inspired and spearheaded development of sturdier drum carriers with adjustable tilt so that players using matched grip didn’t have to wear a shoulder sling. By the late 1980s, more commercially-made pads were being made flat to accommodate matched grip players. 

(Incidentally, when I began learning snare drum in 1973 I was taught traditional grip. I didn’t learn matched grip until I began high school and the section leader insisted on everyone using matched grip for the sake of uniformity. I learned to use both, but whenever I sat behind a drum kit I tilted my snare drum and used traditional grip. I still play that way today, and my practice pad station at home utilizes a tilted platform so I can use flat pads on it with traditional grip. I’m just stubborn, I guess.)

Photo, L to R:

Homemade pads made and used by Jim Dinella, Don Wunn and Norman Grossman. 

The Don Wunn pad (center) is probably a 1950s Leedy pad that was refurbished with a replacement base of plywood and the rubber top reattached. Don Wunn ran a drum shop in Portland, Oregon in the 1950s, and sold the business in the early 1960s.

Jim Dinella was a music educator and professional drummer who wrote articles for a modern Drummer magazine and was a historian for the Percussive Arts Society. His pad was probably made in the 1970s and was obtained from his estate.

Normal Grossman ran a drum shop in New York City and authored several drum methods, while also maintaining a full private studio and performing at clubs around New York. As of 2024 he was reported as living quietly in New York City. I obtained this pad from Jon Singer, who was charged with disbursing his drum equipment and instruments.

Below: a practice pad made and used by Solomon Feldman, a drummer/percussionist based in New York. Made from a plywood base (which looks like it may have once been part of a utility cable spool) with a panel of leather affixed to one side. While leather is not widely used on mass-produced practice pads today, tanned leather has continued to be a responsive playing surface for drummers.**

I continue to look for homemade pads from drummers of an earlier age. I think they’re a great example of “beausage” — something made beautiful through usage, acquiring a patina that could only come from being well-worn. And in this era of mass-produced deck being made unsustainably and shipped from overseas, these old pads carry a poignancy that I really cherish.

(** Tackle Instrument Supply offers a fancy leather pad affixed to a hardwood base. At only 6” diameter and with a retail price of $75, I t’s meant as a coffee table collectible more than a serious practice implement.)

Note: depending on the age and condition of an old homemade pad, and whether or not you intend to play on it, you *may* choose to stabilize older wood by applying a thin coat of wood hardener. Wood hardener does exactly what it says it does — it hardens the wood by filling in the wood fibers. (On furniture projects, it’s often followed up with light sanding and staining or paint.) 

Working in a well-ventilated area, tape off any areas you don’t want to touch with the liquid hardener, apply a thin coat with a small sponge brush and let dry overnight. Choosing to alter and/or play on an old wood is a personal choice that can be influenced by many factors, including the age of the pad, the fame of the drummer who made it, the scarcity of that drummer’s personal equipment and the condition of the pad before altering.

I would never alter my Bower pad! It’s over a hundred years old and extremely rare, and even in better condition I wouldn’t really want to play on it. Conversely, I did make some attempts to stabilize the Jim Dinella pad because it was newer and in relatively good condition. I added a little foam on the bottom to keep it from skidding, and I stabilized a couple of joined corners with a small amount of clear glue. Again, consider all the factors and use prudent judgment.

Happy drumming.

Dolly was one of us, too.

Dolly Parton, 1946 - 2026

Snare drummer, Sevier County HS, 1963

Godspeed, Dolly. Thank you for the music and everything else.