Pad Rescue: Vic Firth basic pad, much improved

Early last month, I scored a bundle of old practice pads and mutes. Among them was the baseplate of a Vic Firth student pad. This pad is still being sold by Vic Firth and it basically sucks. The grey side is softer rubber with a muddy rebound that is unsatisfying. The black side is much harder and equally disappointing to play on. The baseplate is MDF with a heavy coat of black textured paint. The rubber pieces are applied with thick double-sided tape. It’s a perfectly horrid practice pad, and most of them wind up for sale on eBay or elsewhere after they’ve been used and abandoned.

What came to me was the baseplate with the black rubber still attached. It was pointless and sad, so I pulled it off.

Then I removed as much of the two-sided tape as I could. The shiny stuff under the black rubber was easier to remove; the tape on the other side had been exposed for so,e time and was gross and sticky, but I got an awful lot of it off.

Then I looked around for something to glue on in its place. What surfaced was a 1/4” thick round of hard rubber with a surprisingly pleasant, sharp rebound. Certainly an improvement over what had been there before. I took it out to the shed, propped open the door, donned gloves and safety glasses, and opened a new bottle of superglue. 

I roughed up the opposing sides, carefully applied the glue, laid on the rubber round and held it in place long enough to stick. Then I took a drumstick and used at as a rolling pin to roll out any gaps or air bubbles. After I wiped away the excess, I weighted it down and let it dry overnight.

The next day, I tried it out. It was hard, but with a nice rebound. Still, it felt like something was missing.

So I looked around my stash and found an old drum head with a slice near the edge. I traced a circle around the undamaged portion, cut it out and took it out to the shed, where I glued it on,top of the rubber round. After rolling a drum stick over it and wiping away the excess, I weighted it down and left it overnight. It wasn’t my most careful work and there were a few little splotches of glue left.

But when I took it out to chop on it, I was happy with w the result.

Adding a laminate added a snap to the feel and tone that, in spite of my general bias against laminates, was actually nice to chop on.

I glued a round of yoga mat material and glued it on the bottom as a nonskid surface. Perfect.

As MDF baseplates go, this one isn’t bad. The heavy coat of textured paint helps solidify it.

I’m happy with how this turned out. It has applications for modern marching drummers, and possibly for pipe band drummers too. And honestly, from what I’ve seen in the last few years, Vic Firth couldn’t bring out anything even this nice.