Pad rant umpteen: growth gets growthier, junk gets junkier, and we all lose

Remember this post? 

Well, it has hit the fan.

First, RCP, makers of the Active Snare Pad, have gone full-bore Chinese mass production and simultaneously churned up a new perversion of the idea of Manifest Destiny. They’re now offering pads with Christian messaging, which are being made by people working for pennies in awful conditions in China, to be sold mostly in the US. 

In and of itself, I have no real quarrel with Christian messaging. It’s part of the oxygen in this country and I can do nothing about that, so it’s a hill I choose not to die on. But having these pads made overseas by people with no other options to eke out a living is, to my thinks, basically awful.

Then, Carlos Botello jumped ship from Beetle Percussion earlier this fall to become an artist endorser at Salyers Percussion, a company that doesn’t make any of their own products but has become a juggernaut in the hyped-out marching world. He told Beetle to stop making his signature pad, and signed an agreement to have his pad produced and sold by Salyers. 

The difference in the pads is obvious, and astounding. 

The Beetle version, made in the USA, featured a laminated rubber surface and recycled rubber rim mounted on a Valchromat base, with a foam layer on bottom for working out fingers and wrists. The Salyers version, made in a Chinese factory, offers a laminated silicon playing surface with a soft rubber rim that circles half the playing surface, mounted on an MDF base. The pads sound and feel different and the evidence is found in multiple videos. The price difference between the two pads is about thirty dollars, which tells you that (a) Beetle was slightly underpricing their pads in order to compete in the marketplace, and (b) Salyers knew that it had to offer their version at a lower price, but still has to squeeze all the profit it could out of what is an inferior, mass-produced pad.

(Below, L-R: Beetle Botello pad, Salyers Botello pad.)

It’s sad and a little ugly all around. And it’s a battle that craft makers won’t win as long as we conduct business in a grow-or-die economic landscape where marketing supersedes quality — and quality control.

Which is why I’m going out of my way to make my own pads, refurbish old pads, and support businesses like Pad Parts that want to encourage drummers to build their own practice pads.

There are too many pad makers, too many pad models and too much redundancy for the pad market to be sustainable in the long term. And I’m pivoting so I can do the research to back up my concerns about the waste and borderline fraud inherent in the marching-focused pad scene. We’ve reached a point where the waste has to stop.