(Because I play exclusively on Mylar heads, I didn't feel a need to purchase the separate laminate; if you play a lot on Kevlar and Kevlar-Hybrid heads you may find the laminate useful, as it will provide crisper articulation that simulates a modern, high-tension marching snare.)
It came in a plain box with a styrofoam insert to stabilize it.
Right out of the box, I noticed:
-- some noticeable scuffing on the metal side panel, nothing fatal but still a little surprising for a brand-new item.
-- there are no instructions with the pad. For someone who's seen the videos this may or may not matter; but for someone receiving the pad as a gift or who doesn't know the company's products, a sheet detailing care of the pad and its mechanism might have been a good idea.
(To be fair, Xymox pads don't come with instructions, either. I'm waiting on a Hybrid Snare Pad and we'll see what includes.)
-- the rubber on the bottom is thick enough to raise the pad above a tabletop so you have a small resonance pocket of air between the tabletop and the pad itself.
-- the "snare" sound is achieved by the use of metal ball bearings placed inside a sunken space in the underside. This concept was originally patented by Xymox years ago and by itself, is nothing new.
-- What IS new is that the "snare sound includes a mechanism controlled by a side knob, which controls how freely the bearings vibrate and move around, which in turn controls how much of the "snare" sound you hear while playing.
My partner asked me to take the pad outside because the off-gases smelled funny.
So I took outside and placed it in a stand, and began to play.
Right away I liked the response and rebound of the rubber pad. Without a laminate to tighten things up it feels about right for practice, and responds well enough that I would enjoy a simpler, non-snare version of this pad if offered, with only the rubber and the hard plastic polymer rim.
Then it was time to play with the knob and see what would happen.
Turned all the way counter-clockwise, the snare sound becomes muffled, but never goes away entirely. Perhaps more experimentation and use will lossen things up so I can turn the knob a little further and completely disable the snare sound, but I didn't get there with this first trial.
Turning the knob all the way clockwise as far as it will go releases whatever is impeding the movement of the metal balls, to achieve the "snare" sound.
In my initial work with the adjustment knob, I found that, turned to either extreme it would sometimes get stuck, and require greater hand strength to turn the knob the other way again. I don't know if this is because I turned it too far, or because the mechanism needs "breaking in," either of which could have been explained by the inclusion of an instruction sheet. Because I understood that the "snare" sound depends on how freely the metal balls could move, I sometimes jiggled the pad in the stand to see if it changed how the balls had settled against whatever the dampening device was.
In earlier pad designs with a simulated "snare" sound, there has been no dampening involved, so the metal balls could wiggle about in the recessed area. (Xymox pads now come with a rubber sleeve you can install to dampen the metal balls completely. It's not adjustable and takes a couple minutes to switch it in or out; but the dampening effect seems more completely than on the RCP pad here.)
I think it will take spending more time with this pad to see if I can get perceptible gradations of sound somewhere in the middle, which would go a long way in making the pad truly versatile.
If there are no real gradations, and all the pad comes with are two distinct "snares on" and "snares off" settings, then the "snare feature is little more than a gimmick that is already available on other pads. I'm going to put this pad through some paces over the next several days and file an update next week.
But in the meantime, here's a video of my very first explorations with the pad.
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