Vintage Corner: Quiet Tone practice pads, from the early days

According to verbal history, Henry Adler designed the Quiet Tone practice in the 1960s as a way to practice drumming quietly.
It could rest on a tabletop or on top of a drum, and worked as advertised. 
The earliest version featured a plain Mylar plastic head and rim laid over a muting base (made of some kind of fiberboard that, contrary to rumor did not contain any asbestos). The earliest version of the QT pad had very primitive tension that was difficult to work with and did not offer much of a tuning range. 

The patent for the design was actually awarded to Merton Glick and Joseph Mancari in 1969. I am still researching the Henry Adler connection to see if he was involved in any way, but so far I can find nothing.

Below: drawings from the patent application:

The earliest versions of the QT pad, before the patent was awarded, are extremely scarce and very hard to find today. So imagine my surprise when I found listings for two of them, at a surprisingly low price for each. Of course, I snapped them both up.

14" pad, meant to fit on top of a snare drum:

 

And the 13" size, meant to fit on top of a tom or a piccolo snare drum:

As you can see from the blow-ups below, the tensioning mechanism was far more primitive on this earliest version, which used a simple nut and bolt design. This would be replaced later by a drum tension rod, which provided more adjustability.

While this earliest tuning mechanism was too primitive for real world applications, having examples in my collection makes it easier for me to see and show the full development of an important piece of drum pad history, and I'm glad to have them.

Happy drumming.