Crap just keeps getting crappier: The arms race is over and I’m done.

The latest from Xymox, the Voldemort of drum practice pad makers, appeared in my feed today.

That’s right. Oblivious to the patent and trademark infringements going on here, Xymox has decided to screw everyone by selling a knockoff of the old tan RealFeel pads from the 1990s.

Same look, same shape, and a nice knockoff of the old HQ logo that reads “OG”.

They must know they’re in violation of something here.

And my guess is that they don’t care.

As soon as this showed up on the drum pad groups, people howled, either in derision (“I cannot believe that Xymox would stoop this low”) or in excitement (“I have to get one!”)

A guy who works at D’Addario, which owns Evans and all the designs and branding from HQ (which originated the design thirty years ago) is popping a vein. He promises that D’Addario will take legal action, if necessary, to stop this thing in its tracks.

I predict that they’ll be too late, and that almost no one in the general pad market today will actually care all that much. They’ll be too late because the pads are already in production and are being sold at the Xymox web site, and any legal action taken will not stop the pads already shipped out. (Nor will said legal action protect the exclusive on the octagonal shape, because you cannot really patent a geometric shape anymore.) 

And other than a few hundred people who got ripped off by Xymox, almost no one else will care, especially the Gen Z kids who  see this as their chance to get something close enough to the original tan RealFeel pad their dad practiced on thirty years ago.

It gets better. RCP just came out with this delightful little Chinese-made knockoff, which I believe is supposed to hearken back to Offworld’s Shuttle Pad. It’s another crass attempt to play on fake nostalgia, and it’s kind of depressing.

Crying foul now, when nearly every mass-produced pad on the market is made in part or in whole in China, is like bolting the barn door after the horse has fled.

And with that, I know that I have stayed involved for long enough.

There is less and less interest in vintage pads and their history now. The online drum chat groups are populated mostly by folks who are young enough to be my grandchildren, and they want whatever the top 12 DCI drum lines are using. Even if it’s poorly made, even if it’s unsustainable, even if it will wear out in a year or two. They do not care. Fine. Let the modern mass-producers of practice pads chase each other’s tails, and chase the dollars of every high school and college drummer out there. I’ll chop on what I have and be content.

I hope to be shed of all but about five pads by the end of the year. If I ever feel the need for another practice pad, I can always make one.

Happy drumming.

(Photo: yours truly, using a fire hydrant as a practice pad.)