If you’re a regular reader here, you know that I’ve never been a huge fan of laminates on practice pads.
Growing up on Mylar, I just never felt the need for adding something that resembled Formica to what was already a perfectly decent pad.
So over the years, I’ve tried lots of laminated practice pads, and I have found most of them ranging anywhere from pointless to horrible.
I originally tried this pad three years ago, and because at the time I was doing a lot of drumming on older vintage drums with Mylar heads and standard tuning, I didn’t really appreciate the pad at the time.
More recently, I had an opportunity to buy this pad used and decided the price was worth the risk. Maybe my hands and head were in a different place now.
The Carlos Botello signature pad from Beetle Percussion is designed in partnership with percussion instructor, arranger and performer Carlos Botello, who teaches drumlines across the country including the Crossmen Drum & Bugle Corps. He’s also the creator of the multi-volume instructional series of books, The Left Hand Path (which are available online).
Carlos Botello and Bradley Lomax designed a really nice practice pad. You can click on the link that will take you to the Beetle page for this pad and read about the details that go into making it.
Disclaimer: I bought this pad used in a private party sale. The construction is identical between my used pad and the pad currently sold at Beetle’s web site. My pad is an early iteration of this model and lacks the graphics on the top laminate, but otherwise it’s the same pad.
My pad has been through the wars a bit — dropped, scuffed, played a fair amount (though happily, my laminate has no dents in it) — but works as advertised.
The top of the pad has a 1/4” thick recycled rubber surface, covered by a Mylar laminate. One might think that this is just another hard, unforgiving Formica-like playing surface, but they’d be wrong.
This side plays like buttah.
It’s soft enough that the laminate offers useful articulation instead of undue resistance. The Valchromat base is more durable than MDF and if you drop it, there’s no surface paint to scrape off because the fibers of the Valchromat are impregnated with the plant-based color all the way through.
The rubber rim is soft, but embedded deeply into the base so it will stay put, and gives just enough presence for you to know if your rim shots are accurate or not.
The bottom surface includes Carlos’ signature and a 1/2” thick layer of dense, soft foam. This side is meant to give you a place to build your wrists and get a good workout. There is almost no rebound at all, which makes it similar in intent to the pillows we used to practice on while on drum corps tour, and when you play on normally-tensioned Mylar heads, such workouts make sense.
If I were still possessed of younger, stronger hands and not bothered by advancing osteoarthritis, I might find this surface useful in my practice. But working on such a surface now would actually be quite painful and potentially harmful for my hands and wrists, so I will likely just avoid this side completely.
(NOTE: I’ve reached out to Beetle Percussion and asked about the possibility of swapping in a non-laminated recycled rubber surface to replace the foam. If they can cut a
Floppy Disc to match the shape on the underside of the Botello pad, swapping the two shouldn’t pose a problem, and I can do the swap myself.)
I think the combination of the recycled tire rubber and a real Mylar laminate (similar to what’s used to make a drum head, though perhaps a little thicker) makes for an ideal practice surface, especially for Rudimental and marching applications. It’s articulate without being harsh in feel or sound, and the surface will indicate your accuracy immediately without hesitation.
Having tried other Beetle pads with a rubber rim, I can say that the rim is a little soft for my liking, and I wonder how long it will remain durable enough to help me gauge my rimshots. Because this pad is so used, I may stiffen the rim a little by adhering a very long zip tie to the outside wall of the rim. I’m waiting to hear back from Bradley at Beetle for his thoughts first.
The pads are currently available at the Beetle web site, but be warned: high-craft pads like this are made one at a time and you could be waiting a month or more for yours to arrive. Also, pad models are made on a rotating cycle (because the cutting machinery must be reset for each pad’s thickness and diameter.
Various models of Beetle pads go in and out of stock depending on the model schedule, so if a model is out of stock, contact Beetle and ask when it might be available again.
Beetle is my absolute favorite American practice pad maker today, because they pay attention to their impact on the environment and do all they can to reduce negative effects by incorporating as many sustainable manufacturing practices as possible. This does make their craft-made pads more expensive than mass-produced rubber-on-wood pads, but in my humble opinion it’s worth the extra cost.
This Carlos Botello model could became my new favorite rubber drum pad for awhile.
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