The Emperor Has No Clothes: Botello pad, v. 2

Last fall, Carlos Botello discontinued his partnership with Beetle Percussion and asked them to stop making his signature pad.

Just a month before the PASIC convention, Botello jumped ship to Salyers Percussion. The whole business was covered by me in a previous blog post and all over the Internet by tons of other drummers.

I hadn’t named the artist before, but by now it seems pointless not to.

Botello posts numerous videos of his demonstrations of various drum licks and exercises from his Left Hand Path drum books on YouTube and Facebook. Many of those older videos are still up, which get reposted regularly to steer people to his instruction books, and feature the old version of his signature pad.

New videos are featuring the Salyers version of his signature pad, which is mass-produced in China, and at first they seemed ordinary, though the sound of the new pad was noticeably different from that of the older Beetle version. The new pad sounded harsh and tight, without the depth of tone from the previous Beetle edition. Botello insisted this new version was a “truth” pad, one where you couldn’t hide from your mistakes. It was a rather sad attempt to sell a lesser product. He gamely carried on with it. Meanwhile the price of a Beetle version of the pad, no longer in production, jumped as scarcity grew. Beetle Botello pads now fetch as much as $150 in the used market, and mint versions can go as high as $200.

Lately, however, some new videos have popped up, and they show an interesting development.

The rubber “rim” that encircles half of the Salyers pad has had issues from the beginning. It didn’t stay put in the channel carved into the pad’s base, it disintegrated with heavy rimshots, and buyers complained loudly. After much cry and hue, Salyers and Botello announced that a new, improved version of this signature pad was “in development.” That was months ago, and nothing has appeared so far.

Botello’s newest videos show the Salyers version of the pad being played with the rubber “rim” facing away from the drummer, and the pad is now covered completely with an add-on laminate.

From a marketing standpoint, this is not a good look. It betrays the original premise of the design, and betrays consumers by admitting that the new design is a failure, not living up to what was promised.

Predictably, there has been deafening silence from Salyers (who, as I’ve said before, do not manufacture any of their own products), and no comment from Botello, who keeps posting videos with his new and unimproved signature pad and pushing his instruction books.

I own a Beetle version of the Botello signature pad. While laminates aren’t generally my thing — I’m an old fart who marched with Mylar — I like it as a reminder that laminates don’t have to suck. It’s an innovative pad with a nice feel and depth of tone, and I enjoy chopping on it periodically.

Beetle has largely recovered from this sudden and unfortunate episode, and continues to innovate new pad designs, craft-made in the US with sustainably sourced materials.

It’s not clear how Carlos Botello has rebounded, or if he will survive this chapter in his professional journey. I wish him luck, and hope he lands on his feet. I just don’t think he’ll do it with a company that cranks out cheap Chinese pads, sticks and mallets by the hundreds of thousands and is slow to respond to issues when they arise.

Chop on.

I take back ALMOST everything I’ve felt or said about laminates: Beetle’s Botello signature Pad

If you’re a regular reader here, you know that I’ve never been a huge fan of laminates on practice pads.

Growing up on Mylar, I just never felt the need for adding something  that resembled Formica to what was already a perfectly decent pad.

So over the years, I’ve tried lots of laminated practice pads, and I have found most of them ranging anywhere from pointless to horrible.

I originally tried this pad three years ago, and because at the time I was doing a lot of drumming on older vintage drums with Mylar heads and standard tuning, I didn’t really appreciate the pad at the time.

More recently, I had an opportunity to buy this pad used and decided the price was worth the risk. Maybe my hands and head were in a different place now.

The Carlos Botello signature pad from Beetle Percussion is designed in partnership with percussion instructor, arranger and performer Carlos Botello, who teaches drumlines across the country including the Crossmen Drum & Bugle Corps. He’s also the creator of the multi-volume instructional series of books, The Left Hand Path (which are available online).

Carlos Botello and Bradley Lomax designed a really nice practice pad. You can click on the link that will take you to the Beetle page for this pad and read about the details that go into making it.

Disclaimer: I bought this pad used in a private party sale. The construction is identical between my used pad and the pad currently sold at Beetle’s web site. My pad is an early iteration of this model and lacks the graphics on the top laminate, but otherwise it’s the same pad.

My pad has been through the wars a bit — dropped, scuffed, played a fair amount (though happily, my laminate has no dents in it) — but works as advertised.

The top of the pad has a 1/4” thick recycled rubber surface, covered by a Mylar laminate. One might think that this is just another hard, unforgiving Formica-like playing surface, but they’d be wrong. 

This side plays like buttah.

It’s soft enough that the laminate offers useful articulation instead of undue resistance. The Valchromat base is more durable than MDF and if you drop it, there’s no surface paint to scrape off because the fibers of the Valchromat are impregnated with the plant-based color all the way through.

The rubber rim is soft, but embedded deeply into the base so it will stay put, and gives just enough presence for you to know if your rim shots are accurate or not.

The bottom surface includes Carlos’ signature and a 1/2” thick layer of dense, soft foam. This side is meant to give you a place to build your wrists and get a good workout. There is almost no rebound at all, which makes it similar in intent to the pillows we used to practice on while on drum corps tour, and when you play on normally-tensioned Mylar heads, such workouts make sense.

If I were still possessed of younger, stronger hands and not bothered by advancing osteoarthritis, I might find this surface useful in my practice. But working on such a surface now would actually be quite painful and potentially harmful for my hands and wrists, so I will likely just avoid this side completely. 

(NOTE: I’ve reached out to Beetle Percussion and asked about the possibility of swapping in a non-laminated recycled rubber surface to replace the foam. If they can cut a Floppy Disc to match the shape on the underside of the Botello pad, swapping the two shouldn’t pose a problem, and I can do the swap myself.)

I think the combination of the recycled tire rubber and a real Mylar laminate (similar to what’s used to make a drum head, though perhaps a little thicker) makes for an ideal practice surface, especially for Rudimental and marching applications. It’s articulate without being harsh in feel or sound, and the surface will indicate your accuracy immediately without hesitation.

Having tried other Beetle pads with a rubber rim, I can say that the rim is a little soft for my liking, and I wonder how long it will remain durable enough to help me gauge my rimshots. Because this pad is so used, I may stiffen the rim a little by adhering a very long zip tie to the outside wall of the rim. I’m waiting to hear back from Bradley at Beetle for his thoughts first.

The pads are currently available at the Beetle web site, but be warned: high-craft pads like this are made one at a time and you could be waiting a month or more for yours to arrive. Also, pad models are made on a rotating cycle (because the cutting machinery must be reset for each pad’s thickness and diameter.

Various models of Beetle pads go in and out of stock depending on the model schedule, so if a model is out of stock, contact Beetle and ask when it might be available again.

Beetle is my absolute favorite American practice pad maker today, because they pay attention to their impact on the environment and do all they can to reduce negative effects by incorporating as many sustainable manufacturing practices as possible. This does make their craft-made pads more expensive than mass-produced rubber-on-wood pads, but in my humble opinion it’s worth the extra cost.

This Carlos Botello model could became my new favorite rubber drum pad for awhile.