Interview with David Loendorf of Quiet Tone

David Loendorf grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey and began playing drums in the early 1960s, while still in grade school. He attended Rutgers University for a time and by the late 1970s he was taking formal lessons with Henry Adler in New York City.

Henry Adler had started developing what would become the Quiet Tone Mute in the late 1960s, but because of his work teaching students, running a drum shop and performing, production was sporadic and limited and “advertising” was strictly word-of-mouth.

David was part of the team (with Adler and Glen Sorge, another of Adler’s students) that turned Quiet Tone into a going concern beginning in 1987. After a short time, Sorge stepped away from the business, and eventually David took over the Quiet Tone operation himself. During this time, David was making the mutes in the basement of his New Jersey home, with some help from his wife. 

While building mutes and managing the Quiet Tone business, David worked as a teacher and percussionist, performing with multiple ensembles in the NYC/NJ area including the Monmouth Symphony.

In 2000, Quiet Tone was sold to the Sabian corporation and the operation moved to Canada, with David staying on to consult in production and to work on other projects for the company. He stepped away from Quiet Tone completely by 2004. Today, David is retired and living in Maine. 

While researching the history of Quiet Tone, I was given his name by Robert Boyd, who’d run into him at trade shows. Before I’d had a chance to look David up on the socials, his name popped up as a suggested Facebook friend. It was eery, but also helpful. I reached out to him asking if he was indeed the David Loendorf who’d been involved with Quiet Tone pads and if so would it be okay for me to talk with him? He responded in the affirmative on both counts a couple of days later, and we talked by telephone for a little over two hours. 

Here’s our chat, edited for clarity and brevity:

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BH: So you started drumming in school?

DL: Yes, in sixth grade, in 1963. My music teacher noticed that I could play a little and put me on drums. I played all through high school, learning as I went along by practicing and watching other drummers. 

BH: You grew up in Bayonne, so you must have known about the Bridgemen [drum and bugle corps]?

DL: Oh yeah. I played with them for around three months. Practice consisted of being lined up on either side of a long wood table and being given rhythms to tap out on it, over and over. Then, we got on a bus and headed to the New Jersey Armory, where we were taught to march. Dancing and playing at the same time? It was not for me. So I quit and went back to my high school band and was quite happy there. I played everything from snare drum, bass drum to cymbals and timpani and enjoyed it. 

BH: What other kinds of drumming did you do between public school and your studies with Henry Adler?

DL: Through the 1970s, until I got into the orchestra in 1981, I was playing lots of country, pop, and swing. We had some interesting times -- because we were working in Union City (NJ), Les Paul came and started watching us play. He really loved my guitar player, Paul Jones. We started hanging out at his house and his studio, which was filled with guitars — I had fiddled around with guitars before really getting into drums — and I saw some amazing, beautiful stuff. I saw some of his prototypes and got to try some of them. We also got to visit Media Sound in NYC, across from Carnegie Hall, where we worked with John Phillips and got to do some interesting things. I got married in 1979 and went into orchestral percussion not long after that. But that time was fun! We made $35 a night and spent $45 (laughs).  I also worked on the sales floor at Freehold Music before I started working with Henry Adler. 

I was capable but my hands were kind of weak in terms of technique. So after I dropped out of college (I studied English at Rutgers, with a professor who was from Oxford — I couldn’t do anything right by that guy!), I started taking lessons with Henry Adler.  I studied with Henry in Freehold while I was working on my house there. Eventually I went in for more regular, formal lessons with Henry at his New York studio, which was on 46th street across from Manny’s Music. I studied with him for around 6 years, formal lessons every couple of weeks. We’d go through the Buddy Rich book with traditional grip, then he’d have me start over using matched grip, and then he’d make me start again with varying degrees of bounces. Lots of repetition, over and over, so I could apply different kinds of technique and get better at each one. If I’d studied with him longer than I had, he probably would have made me go through that book nineteen different ways!

BH: How did you get involved with the Quiet Tone mutes?

DL: Henry [Adler] had started making Quiet Tone mutes in the late 1960s at his studio on 46th Street, and drummers he knew liked them so he’d make more by request. By the mid-1980s, when I started studying with Henry, I was helping Henry make them with another of his students, and we began making them in greater quantities. Drummers would hear about them, come in and try them. They sought out the mutes and we started selling a lot of them. Quiet Tone was formally incorporated in 1993, and we were making mutes in larger and larger batches. That included some contracts with the military. 

BH: I have here an early flier for QT that shows mutes for 14-inch snare, 13 and 14-inch toms and a bass drum mute. You also made larger mutes, for awhile, yes?

DL: Yes. We also made a 15-inch mute but we quickly discontinued it in favor of a 16-inch size. When tom sizes got bigger they got softer — the 16 tom was, well, a bit mushier, you know? So I thought, let’s put them out the way they feel and sound. So the 16-inch mute sounds and feels like a 16-inch tom. In early 1994 I patented a Quiet Tone bass drum mute. People were telling us we really had to have one, so I designed one and we brought it out, but it was something of a disaster. It just wasn’t that good, and we didn’t make them for very long.

Around that time, I took over the entire Quiet Tone operation from Henry Adler. I continued making the pads at home for awhile, while at the same time playing in ensembles in the area and teaching drum students. Drummers sought us out to talk about QT mutes and about drumming in general, and I traveled to trade shows and festivals to market the mutes for a number of years. I’m grateful to have befriended and hung out with some of the best drummers in the world because of my work with QT. I didn’t try to seek endorsers, it was mostly just drummers coming to me to ask about the mutes, then spreading it by word of mouth to other drummers.  David Weckl, Vinnie Colaiuta, lots of other drummers, they all tried the mutes and loved them. They did a lot of advertising for them just by raving about them.

(Below: original QT mute, from Editor's collection.)

An interesting story: One of the larger batch orders was for the US Army’s Old Guard [fife and drum corps]. My wife was helping make the mutes in our basement by then, she was a nurse and she’d come down to the basement after her shifts at the hospital and assemble mutes with me. Some of those early mutes wound up with the Old Guard. Just a few years ago, I saw a video for the Army that showed the Old Guard rehearsal barracks, and while the camera swept along the room, at the back were some of the earliest Quiet Tone mutes on drum stands — my wife had made some of those pads years before, and guys drumming now at the Tomb of the Unknowns were still practicing on them!

BH: When did Sabian get involved?

DL: In 2000 I retired from performing, and the mutes had grown more popular than in-house production could keep up with. Around that time I sold the Quiet Tone brand and design to Sabian. They moved everything to their facility in Canada, which allowed them to ramp up production considerably to keep up with demand. They used some parts sourced from our suppliers in New Jersey for a while. Eventually -- after I left Sabian -- they scaled up even more by transferring all of the Quiet Tone manufacturing to Taiwan. 

I worked with Sabian for three years as part of the management team for percussion and accessories. My wife and I sold our house in Freehold and bought a property in Maine, which put me closer to Sabian’s facility in New Brunswick. Sabian had a building in Houlton, Maine, a big empty building that we turned into a soundstage, and I spent a lot of time inventing there, but my actual office was up in New Brunswick.

I was able to continue playing here in Maine, and artists visiting the area would stop in to say hello and perform on the soundstage there. I continued to work with a small number of students here, including Dustin Fitzpatrick of Drum Science. He studied for four years with me, mostly on hand development. He got so good, over the top, that he scared me.

BH: Tell me about how the Quiet Tone was constructed. Where did you source parts?

DL: Well, before Sabian, the rims and hardware came from China, the heads came from Remo and the fiber board base — you know there’s no asbestos in it, right? — the very first base we used was basically acoustic sound tile material. Later, we switched to something called Homasote [a versatile, eco-friendly structural fiberboard made from 100% recycled paper and wood cellulose compressed under high heat and pressure without harmful formaldehyde adhesives - Wikipedia].  We used closed-cell Homasote, made in those days in Trenton, as the base. Then a layer of open-cell sponge [similar to what’s used in neoprene drum mutes now - BH], then a layer of flat Mylar and then the drumhead. It’s a good combination of components for a good feel and response.

BH: Were you still with Sabian when they brought out the mesh head version?

DL: No, that was after I left. I haven’t tried it. 

BH: Since you stepped away from Sabian, have you been drumming much?

DL:  Well, I recently bought myself a new drum kit and I’ve been spending a lot of time tuning it, outfitting it with extra things and just having fun with it. I find myself playing along with recordings of my favorite bands; right now it’s a lot of Yes, especially their "Live at the Apollo" recording from 2018, it's just really great stuff.

(Below: David Loendorf, 1967)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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After a delightful conversation, we agreed to swap email addresses and eventually photos of our favorite drums and pads. I’m truly grateful to David for his time and for sharing his story.

The end of an era: Cooperman will stop making drumsticks.

THIS JUST IN: Cooperman is officially closing down their drumstick production this fall, in favor of concentrating on other projects.

Here's my email exchange with Patsy Cooperman:

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From me to Cooperman:

Hello -- I know that you've been out of sticks for some time. I see that Steve Weiss no longer has anything from you in stock.

Does this mean that you are getting out of making drumsticks?

Thank you. --B

Cooperman’s response, 9-25-2026:

Hello -- Yes, we have recently decided to close our drumstick production as we concentrate on our other instrument production - you can see the statement on our webstore at www.coopermandrumshop.com. We will be adding “outlier” pairs (weight match but not as close in pitch match) to the store as we finish up the pairing process for all the models over the next few months, which may include some models we haven’t made in quite some time. Please let me know if you have questions, thank you -- Patsy

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This is sad, but not at all surprising. Cooperman have been focusing more and more on their beautiful hand drums for the last few years and I believe most of their rope drum production and tooling have been transferred to Loyal Drums.

Right now there are a few Outlier pairs of Nick Petrella #5 in hickory available at the web site. Patsy has said that other outlier models will slowly be added as they become available. Though I'm fairly happy with my few Cooperman holdings at this point, I did just buy a pair of Petrella #5's and I'll keep an eye out in case there's anything else that grabs my interest.

Except for Rohema taking over production of Nick Petrella's two stick models, there is no word of anyone else taking over production of Cooperman's other stick models. And the prospect of that seems highly doubtful anyway. 

A concerted effort to transfer Cooperman's stick production entire to another maker has not been reported or even hinted at.

Frankly, the cost in undertaking such a large transfer of materials, tooling and designs and the copyright issues involved in all that is probably beyond any one company these days. 
So if you have Cooperman sticks you like, hang onto them because very few more will be made, and they'll be outlier quality instead of first-run.

This is definitely the end of an era. 
Considering how long Cooperman have been making drum sticks, it's been a heck of a good run.

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.

Have we finally reached Peak Pad? Maybe, at least for now.

I've been watching used pad prices rise and fall -- mostly rise -- on the internet for well over a decade now. While I don't claim sole credit for the meteoric rise of used pad prices since 2021, I do believe that the Drum History Podcast interview I gave in July of that year certainly helped to accelerate some interest, especially in vintage pads. Since then, prices for select used practice pads have shot through the roof, most notably the tan Real Feel practice pads of the late 1990s and the first-generation Xymox pads from their pre-laminate days.

While prices on the tan Real Feel pads remain high, especially for those in mint or near-mint condition, I've begun to see some prices for other pads fall.

A pre-laminate Xymox pad that sold two years ago for over $100 is now stalling out at asking prices of $60 to 80.

And with the availability of information on the Internet, general antique dealers have gotten in on the action. An unlabeled pad that's probably an old Slingerland model, which would have sold in 2023 for perhaps $40-50, is currently going for almost $200 on Etsy. The dealer didn't know what she had, and when I reached out to tell her what I thought, she raised her price and listed it elsewhere for even more. It's a nice old pad, but without a label its provenance is impossible to verify. 

Old vintage pads have little or no appeal to most drummers under thirty. They all want the cool marching-specific pads that came on the scene in the late 90s and 2000s. In addition, many newer makes and models of marching-forward pads have since come on the market -- and the market is positively glutted with those pads now, as older drummers graduate from school, age out of drum corps or otherwise leave the activity altogether. With school arts budgets being slashed, music programs being eliminated and the birthrate beginning to fall, fewer kids are getting into drumming today. 

The end result is that there are now more pads available than people who want or need them.

I've watched prices fall on these used makes and models over the last year and a half:

-- Real Feel gray pad, from $30 to $10;
-- Ram Pad, from $70 to less than $40;
-- Xymox laminated "reserve" pads, from $100 to as little as $25;
-- Offworld Invader pads, from $60 to as little as $20

And so it goes.

I've been slowly offloading a number of pads from my collection over the last year and a half, either by selling them, using them as trade-in on stuff I need at local drum shops, or giving them away to students. Technically, I'm sure I've lost a fair amount of money in the process, but as someone who used to own a retail business, I understand that a new thing loses half its value when it leaves the store and will almost never get it back. I've enjoyed the research and testing of these pads. But I'm retired and am approaching the time when I will really have to downsize. So off they go, in dribs and drabs.

As of this writing, some significant practice pad deals are to be found online, especially on eBay. If you've been putting off your search for a cool practice pad, this may be a good time to take a more serious look. (No guarantee how long these items will be available, of course; but they give a good example of the state of the used pad market right now.)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/158325682366 -- Offworld Shuttle pad

https://www.ebay.com/itm/237030291700 -- Pair of Remo pads

https://www.ebay.com/itm/820132643625 -- Vintage Ludwig 1960s aluminum pad

https://www.ebay.com/itm/178494949572 --  vintage WFL 1950s aluminum pad

Tan Real Feel pads are still being offered at over $200 in good condition, but I've sensed that the hype around those pads is lessening over time. So if you have your heart set on one of those, be patient. I think that Peak Pad will eventually come around to these models as well.

I'm not being all doom and gloom here. Drum equipment follows the same retail rise and fall patterns as almost everything else being bought and sold on the market. There may come a time when smarter heads will prevail, schools will once again devote more funding to arts education, and maybe the demand for music equipment will increase again. Meanwhile, more people are DIY-ing their own pads, drums and other gear to save money and/or to express their ingenuity and creativity. It's an interesting time. Pay attention, and as always, happy chopping.

 

Vintage Corner: Ludwig Pioneer snare drum, ca. 1960?

Earlier in the week, I saw this drum at a local music shop. I picked it up, grabbed a stick from the demo bucket and tapped the head, and fell in love. I returned the following day with an old guitar to trade in and negotiated the best trade I could get.

It's a Ludwig Pioneer snare drum, a student model from around 1960. There's no date stamp on the inside (as there often is with vintage Ludwig drums of this era). Late-model WFL snares sometimes came from the factory with new Ludwig badges on them, while the rest of the hardware was old WFL stuff they were trying to use up. These earlier Ludwig badges had no serial numbers, meaning the drums would date between the late 50s and into the early 1960s. By around 1960, the inside of the shell was painted white, a finish Ludwig called Reso-Coat. It did little or nothing to improve the sound of the drum, and Ludwig used it primarily to hide flaws in the wood. It was basically just oil-based white paint, nothing more. By the late 60s, Ludwig had begun using maple shells on their drums and stopped painting the insides white so that they could let people see the higher-quality maple they were using. During the Reso-Coat period, wood shells could have been made of a variety of different woods, veneers, or plywoods. While the trainsition from WFL to the bigger and better Ludwig Drum Company was happening -- a process that took several years -- drums and accessories were manufactured using a less-standardized set of component parts. By the mid to late 1960s, Ludwig badges began using serial numbers and a more standardized set of component parts. But the period between the end of WFL (1955) and the final merging of WFL with Ludwig took several years and was a little like the wild west while things got sorted out.

The drum after I got it home:

Left: The Ludwig badge without serial number. This and the white interior date the drum to somewhere between 1960 and around 1963 or 64.

Earlier versions might still use a WFL badge or a "transitional" badge with blue Ludwig logo printed on a brass plate.

Below: Part of the original "baseball bat" muffler. I'm looking for the felt-covered top to complete the mechanism.

 

 

Above and left: this drum had been owned by a school district, and the ID had been stamped directly into the shell of the drum on two sides. On the side nearest the butt plate, the stamp wasn't as deep, but the finish had been worn away. On the side nearest to the throw-off, someone had stamped the wood very hard and layers of plywood had fallen off, either at the time of being stamped or more likely over time with the use and abuse typically seen with school instruments. 

I took the drum most of the way apart. The inner bolts holding the lugs to the shell were very corroded, so I decided against trying to remove them; on a nearly 70-year-old drum there was the risk of stripping or breaking a bolt off inside a lug and not being able to salvage either. So I applied a drop of oil to each bolt, let it soak in, and then very carefully tried to snug it down. If it didn't move, I didn't force it. If it moved, I only nudged it a tiny bit. 

Since I couldn't remove the lugs, I decided the best way to shine them up a little was to use some Nevr-Dull wadding to gently polish them. I also used this on the throw-off and butt plate and the rims. Comparing my drum with photos of drums in better condition, I was able to determine that my hardware is all original. The rims and lugs are in pretty nice shape; the snare mechanism less so because of a little rust and wearing off of the nickel plating, but still perfectly functional.

Ludwig used date stamping on the inside of their wood shells from around 1960 until 1971, when they switched to glueing paper labels inside the shells. Between 1960 and 1963 they used red ink for the date stamp, ad after that switched to black or dark purple. Not every shell was stamped, though it seems most were. Sadly, I could not find a date stamp on the inside of my shell -- and I looked hard. My best guess is that my drum was made between 1960 and 1963. 

After asking other vintage drum enthusiasts for their thoughts and considering my options, my abilities and the purpose of this drum, I decided to go ahead and use some wood hardener to stabilize and fill in the worst of the gouges in the shell, mostly caused by the school district stamping and years of wear and tear. Predictably, my hands got a little shaky during the application and I ended up spreading it in places I didn't really need to, but since it's a clear liquid and this drum's too ugly to be anything but a player I decided not to fret about it. I set it to dry overnight in the shed.

I've found a new Remo coated Ambassador head in my stash, which will be ideal for my uses. the Ambassador snare-side head is used, still in decent shape.

The next day, after everything had dried and the smell faded, I brought the shell back into the house and reassembled the drum with a new batter head. I did not reinstall the incomplete muffler, but decided I’d see how it sounded without any muffling at all. Being mindful that with only six tuning nodes I couldn’t go crazy, I carefully reassembled everything and reinstalled the snares that had come with the drum. This is the first of what will likely be a few attempts at getting a decent sound out of the drum.

After my initial testing, it’s clear that:

A. The drum needs at least some muffling. I put a Snareweight leather muffler on the top, which soaked up some but not all of the excessive ring. 

B. I tightened the snares a few times, and decided that the drum needed better, newer snares. A newer throw-off would help too, but for now I really want to use the original and see if I can’t make it work more smoothly.

C. The original snare-side head will do. I applied some tape strips across the part of the outer edges where the snare wires cross to reduce over-ring. Aquarian offers a commercially-made version of this concept using adhesive woven material but Scotch tape works almost as well in a pinch.

D. I think that ultimately, I’m going to have to repair or replace the baseball bat muffler. I’m leaning towards the Canopus replica, which allows for four different ways to set the muffler and afford greater flexibility. But fifty bucks is more than I can really afford at this point. I’ll call Revival Drum Shop after Yom Kippur and see if they have enough parts for me to rebuild the original muffler.

It’s a great snare drum with a nice, warm sound. The finish is still gouged and scraped, but at least the wood hardener has stabilized the plywood visible in the gouges so I can really play the drum now. I look forward to bringing it to my next Klezmer jam in October.

Petrellas from Rohema: UPDATE

The Rohema Petrella sticks arrived.

After hanging out with both models for a little while, I can tell you they’re good.

I don’t know what wood they laminated, and the packaging doesn’t say. (Neither do the listings at Steve Weiss.)

The Petrella 10s, my favorite stick from Cooperman, have a slightly fatter taper than the Rohemas. The lamination adds a little weight to the sticks, so I assume that the narrower taper helped to keep the Rohema version within the same weight range. Both pairs shown here weigh 71g.

The only thing I noticed is that these laminated sticks have a tiny bit less shock absorption than solid hickory sticks do. It becomes apparent a minute into playing with them, but it’s a small thing and doesn’t prevent me from liking the way these play.

They’re awfully nice to play with. Well balanced, feel great in the hands, and they’re available now. Assuming that Cooperman won’t make the Petrella sticks anymore — and there’s no word from Cooperman about the future of their sticks in general — you can get these and not be disappointed at all.

Available at Steve Weiss, Percussion Source and other higher-end retailers. 

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.