Full review: Rudimental Drummers Chop Pad

I took delivery on Rudimental Drummers Chop pad almost a month ago, and so far it has exceeded my wildest dreams. So I thought it was time to get a more detailed review up on the blog.
I ordered the Chop pad because it would give me the feel of a Mylar head marching drum, but with a slightly quieter tone than the Marching pad, something my partner really appreciates.

I've been playing this pad pretty much every day since I got it, switching off far less frequently to my rubber pads.

The thing about playing on a pad with a real drum head is that every single note is clearly heard and felt, which means that you can't hide your mistakes behind a fake snare sound or a laminate glued to a mushy rubber surface. Every note is clearly heard. If your playing is sloppy, this pad will force you to make it cleaner. (In my case, that has meant slowing down some beloved favorites and reworking them in order to get them cleaner -- a painstaking process that used to be unsatisfying because the playing surface of my old pads wasn't giving me all the information I needed -- or wanted.

I was immature and impatient as a younger drummer. And it showed when I tried to play technically demanding things.

Since returning to daily drumming a few years ago, I've been trying to improve, even if that means changing some things about my technique.

I don't have the budget for a private teacher these days -- I'm a starving musician myself! -- but between YouTube videos and the folks in the Marching Percussion 101 group on Facebook, I'm already seeing some improvement and I'm hopeful that with careful practice I might see more.

So, while I still enjoy chopping out mindlessly from time to time, I also enjoy serious practicing more than I used to, and I have to say that playing on a sturdy, heavy-duty pad that responds like a drum has made a difference.

A few details:

1. RD offers a rubber drum mute the same size as the head of your pad. If you think you'd benefit from placing an actual drum mute on top, you can order it with your pad. The additional cost isn't so much. (I made a much thinner mute for my pad, from an old gaming mat; because the Chop pad is already designed to be a little quieter anyway).

2. RD pads are tensioned with actual drum tension rods, and are tuned with an ordinary drum key which comes with the pad. (Since this is a pad and not a drum, there is no reason to use a high-tension torque wrench on an RD pad. Just use a regular drum key, okay?) Your pad will come with the correct number of tension rods and the appropriate batter head for the type of pad you want.

Your pad will come tensioned, but not over-tensioned. I'd suggest you play it for awhile without changing the tension first, and see how it feels. If after a week or two of daily playing you find you need to tighten it up, do so a quarter-turn of the drum key at a time. You and the pad may need a little time to acclimate to each other.

3. Although RD pads are made in The Netherlands, the owners are great about responding to questions, usually within 24 hours or less, wherever you are.  So DO email them with questions before you order. They're drummers themselves and they know what they're doing. Plus, they're helpful and super-friendly.

3b. Their delivery time is actually reasonable for where they're coming from and for the fact that each pad is made one at a time. At the time I ordered my pad, the USPS was under attack by the administration, causing slower mail delivery; and we were in the middle of a global pandemic which brought multiple sectors of the economy to a crawl.
Still, I got my pad in a little over five weeks' time.
And since I've slowly been divesting my collection of most of my pads from That Other Custom Pad Maker, I can go ahead and say that if a custom pad maker on the other side of the world can get a high-quality drum pad to me in less than two months, while That Other Custom Pad Maker can't seem to ship a pad within their own country in a year's time, well...

..::ducks to avoid flying debris::..

(Stay tuned. I finally got the Xymox Hybrid Snare that I'd ordered last fall around the same time that I got the RD pad. The Xymox is still in the box and I've been hesitant to pull it out because I think I'll be disappointed. There's more to that story and I'll tell it later.)

So overall I am really quite happy with my Chop pad. It points out my weaknesses right away, AND it's just so satisfying and delicious to play. The perfect feel for someone devoted to playing on Mylar.

If you play high-tension, modern marching drums with Kevlar heads, RD's got something for you, too. Go to their web site and check it out. In fact, this is the first company that has figured out how to make the right pads for rope drums, Mylar-headed old-school marching drums, concert snare drums AND modern Kevlar-headed marching drums. I know of no other comp[any that has figured that out.

(Bonus: At their web site, there are instruction sheets for how to care for each of their pad models. If you get a pad, simply download the instruction sheet for your pad and you'll be able to care for and enjoy it for a long time.)

Best of all, this could very well be my forever pad, because it takes an ordinary drum head that I can easily replace as needed. Count me One Drummer Chopping, and happily so.
Below: An example of how this pad tells me exactly what I need to work on. I'm a grownup. I can handle it. Even when reading a chart I haven't played in over forty years.
("L'esprit De Corps II" by John Noonan, from the green NARD solo book. Old-school and fun to work out of.)