Product review: Percoustique practice pad

Percoustique was a company that, according to the little research I was able to do online, made drums and drum-adjacent equipment that was largely for the OEM or stencil market, and mostly supplied instrument rental facilities rather than being steered to direct sales.

I just acquired what appears to be a Percoustique practice pad, designed along the lines of the Quiet Tone pad, from an eBay auction where I was the only bidder. The pad arrived this morning and I quickly set about seeing what I’d gotten.

The pad is similar to a Quiet Tone in that it’s a 14” drum head with a real rim and tuning bolts — eight instead of the six on a Quiet Tone — and it sits on a molded plastic base with a very slight degree of built-in tilt.

Playing this pad and comparing it to the Quiet Tone shows that the Percoustique is, well, hollow.

Taking apart the pad revealed that the molded plastic base is hollow and contains a cotton fiber insert. The depth of the insert is shallower than the depth of the space in the molded plastic base, lending to the hollow sound. I don’t know if the fiber insert was originally thicker and became compressed, or if there was additional material inside the base with this fiber insert.

I’d used up the yoga mat material I’d had in previous projects, so I turned to what I had on hand. In this case, two layers of large bubble wrap, cut to size and laid one on another with the fiber layer on top. 

Reassembling and tensioning the pad removed the hollow sound. The large bubble wrap meant the tone would be lower than desired, and the response softer. At some future point I’ll look for a different material to use as an insert and see what happens.

There is another Percoustique pad available right now on Reverb, though at a price I think is rather high. You could watch it and wait for the price to come down. Or just save up and buy a Quiet Tone, which is clearly a better pad.