DIY Drummer: Make it yourself. PLEASE.

These two pads just went up for sale online. The same seller is offering them on eBay for an opening bid of $65 each, and a Buy-It-Now price of $85. Shipping is extra.

A. RealFeel knockoff, made with gum rubber and solid ash base.

It's a nice enough pad, likely homemade (by the seller or someone else).
The ash base will give it a different sound than the MDF base found on the original HQ pads and their Evans successors.

The gum rubber is glued a little sloppily to the base. You can see excess glue at the edges. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't pay this much for a pad that looks slapped together, especially when I can do a neater job of it myself.

You can easily make the same pad at home for a fraction of the seller's asking price.

Gum rubber is available from Zoro, Grainger and other online industrial suppliers. A 12" x 12" square of gum rubber, 1/4" thick will set you back $18-20. The base can be cut from scrap lumber, or made with a repurposed wood cutting board, either of which might be found for anywhere from Free to around five bucks at a thrift store. A small bottle of glue or epoxy can be found at Harbor Freight for less than ten bucks. Your total shouldn't be more than around thirty bucks, depending on where you course your components.

B. Duplex knockoff, made with gum rubber and solid ash slabs.

This will end up costing even less, owing to a smaller piece of gum rubber and the fact that you can easily source scrap lumber pieces to make your own pad. Wood screws hold it all together. If you size it right, the gum rubber can be glued on top of the screw heads to hide them for a cleaner appearance.

I scored a Duplex pad exactly like this at a thrift store for five bucks. But if you want to make one, it shouldn't cost more than about $15-20, tops. Again, the seller wants a Buy-It-Now price of $85 plus shipping.

Practice pads don't have to get out of hand. Make your own, saving money and enjoying chopping on something you made yourself.

Happy drumming.

DIY drummer: refurbishing a vintage QuietTone pad

I had an opportunity to purchase an old QuietTone practice pad from the 1960s, back when Henry Adler still owned the company and was selling them out of New Jersey. Various drummers had tried to warn me off pads of this era, because of the worry that the internal base was made with asbestos. I researched this thoroughly, even talking with a former coworker of my mother’s from Georgia-Pacific. Now in his eighties and an amateur drummer himself, he showed me his two old Adler QuietTone pads, one of which he was refurbishing for his grandson. “There’s absolutely no asbestos in there,” he told me. “The internal base was made with compressed paper/cardboard fiber. By the 1960s, asbestos was a popular building material, but it splintered easily. No one would want a practice pad that gave off hundreds of tiny splinters with every stroke.”

My fears calmed, I made on offer on the vintage QuietTone pad and it was accepted. It arrived this week, and I set about refurbishing it into playable condition.

The pad was well-used, worn and showing its age. I took it apart and examined each component.

The original fiberboard base was intact, though badly warped from years of compression as the tension was increased over time. I decided to try and save it. Using some wood hardener, I brushed both sides of the base, allowing the liquid to soak in. I waited ten minutes for the surface to become tacky to the touch, sandwiched it between two pieces of chloroplast (the plastic material used for campaign signs), weighted it down and let it dry. I knew that the sign might stick to the treated base, but not too badly.

Then I tackled the metal bands with a Kool-Stop rust eraser, left over from my bike shop days and great for removing obvious rust. I followed that up with a small piece of Nevr-Dull and the metal bands looked much better after that. I was glad that the original white rubber “feet” were still intact; a tiny spot of super glue under each would ensure they didn’t fall off.

When the wood hardener had dried several hours later, I removed the weights, carefully lifted the base, and saw that it was much flatter than it had been. There were grooves worn into the base by the metal bands, so I made a mental note to reinstall the base at an angle to avoid damaging the grooved parts further. The last thing I did was to fill in a few small gouges in the fiber board with some wood putty, which I let dry and then sanded flush.

Finally, I traced and cut a couple of cardboard circles, a couple circles from very thin yoga mat material, and a circle from an old Mylar drum head. The original head was beyond hope, so I replaced it with a newer used head I had on hand. (NOTE: the QuietTone pad is designed for concert and jazz drum practice, and works best with smaller sticks and a Remo Ambassador head. Anything heavier or thicker will deaden the response and tone, providing a less satisfying experience.)

Then, I reassembled the pad upside-down: 

— drumhead laid into the hoop

— Mylar layer

— two yoga mat circles

— the base, set at an angle in relation to the tension rod holes

— two layers of cardboard 

— the metal bands

It came together beautifully. Eventually, I’ll replace the hardware so all the tension bolts and nuts match, but for now the old, mismatched hardware works well enough. The result is a really nice practice pad that will enjoy many more years of use.

If you want to learn more about using and caring for QuietTone practice pads, Rick Dior has made a very informative video covering all of that, plus some history about the development of the pad. It’s worth your time.

DIY update: practice pad station

A few years ago I scored some plywood, and got my brother-in-love to cut it into two rounds for me. I took them home, painted them and used them as platforms for practice pads.

One of them was used on a drum carrier, so I could add drumming to my walking therapy while I tried to recover from Long Covid. I used that for about a year in earnest, then less often as my symptoms receded. I stopped using it last fall when I could walk in a straight line again.  I sold the carrier and recycled the wood earlier this summer.

The other was mounted on a sturdy concert stand so I could put practice pads on it without having to funble with the basket adjustment for pads of different sizes. Changing pads became fast and easy.
I still use this today, but have upgraded it into a serious practice station in my studio.

At the time, I modified the second round in a quick, clumsy way. I was never fully satisfied with the result. About a year ago I upgraded the whole thing with better padding materials and a much improved installation of the angle bar. I added a stick quiver and have been using it daily ever since. But I forgot to share photos here. A discussion about pads on stands yesterday prompted me to amend the situation.

This old Hamilton concert stand is heavy, but strong enough to support a heavy practice pad, even on a tilt. I replaced the cracked basket rubber pieces with new aftermarket ones, and replaced the bottom rubber feet (one was missing anyway) with plastic champagne stoppers so they would grab the carpet better. I took a chain and used it to hang a drum key off the angle bar for my tunable pads, and taped the contact points so it won't rattle while I play.

The whole thing probably cost me about forty bucks in parts and labor, including the vintage Hamilton stand and the stick quiver