Vintage Corner: Remo's precursor to the tuneable pad (Part III, sort of)

Here's the followup to my previous posts about the Remo tuneable practice pad.

First, Remo has a really cool little timeline at their web site that allows you to see major developments from the company's beginnings up till around 2007 (the timeline could use an update). From there, I was able to learn a few things that helped me to place the Remo pads in my collection on the historic timelime.

My plastic pad dates from the 1970s.
My two metal-rimmed tuneable pads date from the early to mid 1960s -- basically, until Remo began making tuneable pads with hard plastic rims.
But I have two pads that pre-date these pads, and I always wondered exactly where they came from.

These pads are not tuneable. They are constructed entirely of wood and use very early versions of Remo's synthetic drumhead material, for which patent paperwork was first filed in 1957 (the patent was granted in 1962; prior to this, most drummers had to live with calfskin heads and the vagaries of temperature and humidity that affected them. The synthetic drum head was a revelation as well as a revolution).
Beneath the head there appears to be what's left of some kind of foam (padding? muffling?); it has disintegrated over the decades, leaving a pad with an unsatisfying, hard "thud" sound.

Construction: each pad is made of wood, a built-in tilt and a sound chamber made of a thin piece of wood that looks like it was heated and bent into a curve. The framework holding the head is mounted on top of the curve, making for a resonant pad.

One of the things that can stymie research is a lack of serial numbers or other markers. These can be found on drums, but generally never appear on practice pads.

However, Remo's timeline gives us some help in determining exactly how old these pads are.

Remo's timeline goes as far as charting the course of its "Crown" logo design over the years, which in this case helped me more closely date these pads, the first produced under the Remo brand.

The larger pad's logo is worn, but still visible enough to determine a manufacture date.

Based on Remo's timeline info, that would date this pad to right around 1958-60, making it the first generation of practice pad offered by Remo.
Below, the logo from the smaller pad.

This means that the smaller pad is almost surely from 1961, since the new plastic-rimmed pad was rolled out in early 1962.
Not all companies provide such useful historic information to collectors, but Remo's timeline is especially helpful here. If you look closely at some points along the timeline, you can even click on links to patent information.

Like I said, playing these pads is NOT an exciting experience. The feel and sound are klunky.
It would be great to find a pad in as-new condition, with the foam in original shape, so I could get a better sense of how it sounded in the late 50s.

I hope you've found this exploration as interesting as I have. Happy drumming!

Research project: "Deco" pad, 1940s

I will be taking delivery on a very distinct vintage pad sometime next week.

In advance of receiving it, I decided to begin researching its history.
I ended up going down a cool little rabbit hole, and thought I'd share.

Here's the pad.

The pad, which doesn't seem to have a brand or model name that I can find, was designed and made by Robert I. Woods in the 1940s, and sold through his local music dealer in Liverpool, NY.

What's interesting about this pad, besides its distinctive design and looks, is that it can be adjusted to change the pitch using the bolt that runs through the middle -- tightening it will give you a slightly higher pitch; loosening will lower the pitch. According to the seller, later models in the 1950s included another adjustment that allowed one to open or close side panels for a change in tone. This is an earlier model from the 1940s, before that feature was added.

Some of the pad's historic info was provided by the seller; the rest I had to go looking for.
What I found included stories about the music shop's origins and the sale of the building for conversion into condos (sigh); some hunting to determine which Robert Woods actually invented this pad (Robert I. had a son named Robert F, who was not a musician); and the history of the business where Robert I. did his inventing.

Most of this info was found by scouring the web for obituaries. You can find out quite a bit from reading someone's obituary about how they lived and what they did with their time on earth. And you don't need to pay for an Ancestry subscription, either. Many newspapers keep records of obits going back into the late 19th century. You just have to be willing to do more digging on your own, which for my money beats paying Ancestry to do it. It's more fun to do it myself, anyway.

Here's what I found about the music dealer that sold Woods' pads:

From Syracuse historical site:
ONONDAGA MUSIC CO.

Business started in 1935.
Owners Dave Gersony,  Howard Gersony
Location- 119 So. Jefferson, later moved to So. Clinton Street.
Lines- Gretsch, Martin, Fender, Haystrom, Yamaha, Ampeg,
Marshall Amps, Peavey, Polytone, Korg, Crown, JBL,
Malatchi, various sax, trombone lines, Vinyl Records (45's, Lp, 78, EP's)
Recording tape & accessories, Vinyl Records (45's. Lp, EP, 78 RPM)
Musical Instrument sales & lessons, a full serve music store.
Huge selection of Jazz Recordings
Sadly our good friend Dave Gersony passed away Aug 31, 1997

And here is what I found out about Robert I. Woods, who was an inventor, the local school band director and a lifelong musician (obituary from 1984):

Finally, digging a little further I was able to learn about Woods' employer, the Lipe Machine Shop:

(from Wikipedia)

The building became an industrial incubator after Charles E. Lipe, 29, a young Cornell University engineering graduate of the Sibley College of Mechanics in 1873 and son of a German-born farmer from Fort Plain, Montgomery County, New York, moved into the building in 1880 and set up the C. E. Lipe Machine Shop. The building was commonly known as the Lipe Shop.
The Lipe Shop was a "haven for inventors and an incubator of industries" and Lipe himself was a prolific inventor. He had invented a cigar-rolling machine, a broom making machine, motion picture equipment, automatic looms and time recorders.

***

 Now, I didn't absolutely have to go digging this far back to get the basic facts. It would have been enough to know who invented and sold this pad. But going back further gave me a richer picture of the environment in which Woods was encouraged to innovate and invent things that would make something better out in the world. As a high school music teacher, he certainly would have seen his share of cheap practice pads that offered nothing other than a flat surface to practice on. His design added in some adjustability, and some nice design elements as well.

What's interesting (to me, at least) is that Woods doesn't appear to have registered a patent for his invention. This could be for several reasons:

-- he may have attempted to file a patent claim that was rejected because his design either copied too many aspects of someone else's or because not enough of Woods' design was considered "new" and/or "original" to be granted a separate patent;

-- he may not have had the means to file -- it costs more than applying for, say a simple copyright for a song -- but that's not likely considering his lines of work;

-- he was making them on his own time and selling them through his local music shop, which means this product was never produced on a large enough scale to go forward to patent registration and marketing beyond the Syracuse area. If that's the case, it also suggests that relatively few were made, and therefore even fewer exist today.

My money is on the last possibility.

I am hoping to find out more about this pad, but like all my vintage pads, information can be difficult to come by because practice pad innovation wasn't as big a deal as new drum designs (Remo Belli's tunable practice pad excepted).

But if any of my readers have ever seen another one of these, I would love to know about it.

I'll share more pictures and, if the pad is safely playable, a short video after it arrives.