The Timpette: an odd little practice pad kit

This is my most recent find. It's a little practice pad kit from the late 1940s called a Timpette.

It's not designed to be anything except a practice aid.

The manufacturer and sole distributor was a small company Called General Music Company in Los Angeles, owned by Lee Lockhart and created to market his pad design.

Mine came in virtually mint condition in its original box, complete with drum sticks and a little instruction book.

















Below: the label inside the box, showing a class of students all learning together on their Timpettes, and a folio-sized instruction booklet.

 

 The glass bowl gives a tremendous amount of resonance for the size, which is part of the pad's uniqueness. I imagine breaking it would be a disaster; there's no indication that replacement glass bowls were made available, and the bowl in mine looks like it could've served as a candy dish first.

 

The other interesting feature is a small hole drilled near the edge of the underside, which then accepts a small wooden dowel (provided) to til the pad for practicing as if it were a tiny snare drum either resting on your leg or situated behind a drum kit.

 

It works pretty well and provides enough stability for the pad to be played at soft to medium volume, which is all it's meant for anyway. And if you lost the wooden dowel, another could easily be made in your garage. This was back in a time when most Americans still knew how to do their own small odd jobs around the house. Even whittling a twig into the desired size and length could be done easily with a pocket knife.

The pad was meant as strictly an instructional tool, not a replacement for an actual instrument; and the maker recommends buying multiples for use in a class setting for beginning drummers.

Here's a little video of the pad, with the original sticks that came in the kit.

It was patented by Lee Lockhart in 1943. I was unable to find any sale history on this item abut I'm still researching that. The initial patent expired in the 1960s and according records an extension was not applied for. I would guess that this was owing in part to the fact that by the mid-60's, Remo Belli had all but sewn up the practice pad market with his tuneable, Mylar-headed drum pad, and there was no point in extending the patent on something that was by then obsolete (and nowhere near as durable).

I would also venture a guess that making the Timpette was not inexpensive. If the glass bowl was actually manufactured to spec, that had to be a costly component; and heaven help the student who dropped a Timpette and broke the glass bowl. This does not look like it would have been a promising desgin in the long term.

The description in the patent records suggests that a strap could be inserted through the wooden frame to allow the student to tie the pad to his/her leg, but no strap was ever commercially patented or released by Lockhart or his music company.

All in all, this was a really cool find of a practice pad that probably didn't go very far in terms of marketing or manufacture. The fact that I have yet to find it distributed outside of the Los Angeles area suggests it was a short-lived enterprise.

Still, I'm very happy to have added this to my collection, especially n near-mint condition with all the original pieces.
It's an odd, quirky little thing that's like nothing else I've ever seen.