There were homemade practice pads before any other. There still are.

The first US patent for a drum practice pad was granted in 1920 to Henry Bower, a drummer and teacher who created a “drum practice device” so that drummers could practice anywhere without having to lug a drum along. There was no claim made about the practice device being quieter than an actual drum, only more portable; Bower’s design utilized a wood base, with a wool batting as a middle layer and topped by a piece of hard fiberboard, the same as was used for drum cases (and which was still used for drum cases, up through the late 1980s, when hard plastics improved enough to supplant fiberboard). The result was a practice pad with a very hard, articulate response and tone which was barely muted at all by the wool batting. Bower then licensed his design to a drum shop in Los Angeles, which then produced the pads in quantity and had distribution rights.

But drummers had made their own pads for private use before Bower got his patent. These homemade pads were essentially one-offs, made by the drummer for his personal use. 

A number of working drummers continued to make and use their own practice pads after mass-produced pads became widely available. Why? There’s no single definite reason. The pads in the first photo below represent different decades in modern drum history, from the 1950s into the early 1980s, when mass-produced practice pads were plentiful and relatively inexpensive. However, most of the mass-produced pads during this time were made with a built-in tilt, rather than flat. (Remo’s tunable pads even came with a slight tilt built into the design, which didn’t really go away until the 1990s. They also cost more than the simple rubber-on-wood pads did.)

Most drummers were still being taught traditional grip up through the late 1970s, and drums were still carried on the march at a tilt (using a webbed shoulder sling and a leg rest) until the early 1980s, when the modern drum corps movement took off. West Coast drum corps such as the Santa Clara Vanguard taught their snare drummers to use matched grip and carried their snare drums as parallel to the ground as possible. These corps inspired and spearheaded development of sturdier drum carriers with adjustable tilt so that players using matched grip didn’t have to wear a shoulder sling. By the late 1980s, more commercially-made pads were being made flat to accommodate matched grip players. 

(Incidentally, when I began learning snare drum in 1973 I was taught traditional grip. I didn’t learn matched grip until I began high school and the section leader insisted on everyone using matched grip for the sake of uniformity. I learned to use both, but whenever I sat behind a drum kit I tilted my snare drum and used traditional grip. I still play that way today, and my practice pad station at home utilizes a tilted platform so I can use flat pads on it with traditional grip. I’m just stubborn, I guess.)

Photo, L to R:

Homemade pads made and used by Jim Dinella, Don Wunn and Norman Grossman. 

The Don Wunn pad (center) is probably a 1950s Leedy pad that was refurbished with a replacement base of plywood and the rubber top reattached. Don Wunn ran a drum shop in Portland, Oregon in the 1950s, and sold the business in the early 1960s.

Jim Dinella was a music educator and professional drummer who wrote articles for a modern Drummer magazine and was a historian for the Percussive Arts Society. His pad was probably made in the 1970s and was obtained from his estate.

Normal Grossman ran a drum shop in New York City and authored several drum methods, while also maintaining a full private studio and performing at clubs around New York. As of 2024 he was reported as living quietly in New York City. I obtained this pad from Jon Singer, who was charged with disbursing his drum equipment and instruments.

Below: a practice pad made and used by Solomon Feldman, a drummer/percussionist based in New York. Made from a plywood base (which looks like it may have once been part of a utility cable spool) with a panel of leather affixed to one side. While leather is not widely used on mass-produced practice pads today, tanned leather has continued to be a responsive playing surface for drummers.**

I continue to look for homemade pads from drummers of an earlier age. I think they’re a great example of “beausage” — something made beautiful through usage, acquiring a patina that could only come from being well-worn. And in this era of mass-produced deck being made unsustainably and shipped from overseas, these old pads carry a poignancy that I really cherish.

(** Tackle Instrument Supply offers a fancy leather pad affixed to a hardwood base. At only 6” diameter and with a retail price of $75, I t’s meant as a coffee table collectible more than a serious practice implement.)

Note: depending on the age and condition of an old homemade pad, and whether or not you intend to play on it, you *may* choose to stabilize older wood by applying a thin coat of wood hardener. Wood hardener does exactly what it says it does — it hardens the wood by filling in the wood fibers. (On furniture projects, it’s often followed up with light sanding and staining or paint.) 

Working in a well-ventilated area, tape off any areas you don’t want to touch with the liquid hardener, apply a thin coat with a small sponge brush and let dry overnight. Choosing to alter and/or play on an old wood is a personal choice that can be influenced by many factors, including the age of the pad, the fame of the drummer who made it, the scarcity of that drummer’s personal equipment and the condition of the pad before altering.

I would never alter my Bower pad! It’s over a hundred years old and extremely rare, and even in better condition I wouldn’t really want to play on it. Conversely, I did make some attempts to stabilize the Jim Dinella pad because it was newer and in relatively good condition. I added a little foam on the bottom to keep it from skidding, and I stabilized a couple of joined corners with a small amount of clear glue. Again, consider all the factors and use prudent judgment.

Happy drumming.

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.

More DIY pad love: From the Philippines

This showed up on the Facebook Drum Pad group today.

Ivan, a young man in the Philippines who marches in drum line (drum corps is huge in the Philippines!) saw the Rudimental Control pads online, wanted one but could not afford it. So he made his own version:

"I just wanted to show my drumpad that I’ve made, rudimental control pads inspired me to make this one, i have used a phenolic board and a yoga matt underneath the drumhead and i have also put snare wires beneath the head, and here’s a soundcheck of me playing the snare break from elite percussion from the Philippines."

Getting any US-made marching percussion into the Philippines is extremely difficult and expensive because of the exchange rate and the high cost of overseas shipping. 

Phenolic board is a lanimated material using wood fiber and resins, similar to MDF but constructed more like plywod, that can be cut, sanded and painted. It's heavy and dense, and can be difficult to hand-saw, especially into a round shape. Ivan did a nice job on this, and even got a nod of approval from Nissan at Rudimental Control.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

UPDATE from Ivan: “I have repainted the base wood and cleaned the rims and the tension rods.”

If he had to clean up the hardware, then he got it used from another drum.

If you look closely, you can see that the round was hand-sawn. That’s super hard to do.

Very nicely done all around.

Kudos to this young man for working out his own solution. Happy chopping!

When is a piece of vinyl not a piece of vinyl?

Awhile back, I offered a post about specialty brush pads. My discussion was limited, partly because I didn’t own many myself and partly because there was a lot of redundancy of design and construction among the pads available.

After I shared a link to the post on the socials, Anthony Stanislavski reached out to let me know about his brush pad, being made by Prologix. It was essentially a piece of thick vinyl with a coating and graphics showing the path each hand should take while playing brush beats, with a thin nonskid surface affixed to the bottom. At the time, it sold for over $50, which I thought was a little ridiculous at the time. I carried on and forgot about it.

Now, Stanislavski has gone independent of Prologix and is selling the same design at his own web site. It’s the very same item sans the Prologix branding, and it sells for $70.

I can’t know what prompts artists to step out from behind their endorsing brand and go it alone — or elsewhere — though this isn’t the first time someone has done so. It won’t be the last, either. Retail is a fickle mistress and market forces currently require companies to scale up in order to remain profitable. If the item doesn’t keep up with the scale, it gets dropped. If a company can’t scale up, it folds (as was the case with One Beat Better, which made one of the smartest brush pad designs ever and sadly couldn’t compete with the mega-companies) or is bought out by a larger company (as Prologix did with the original makers of the Chopping Block practice pad — they leveraged their size and scale to merge with the smaller business and then came up with a redesigned version that frankly isn’t as nice).

Here’s the original “Choppin’ Block” pad.

If you click on the link it will still take you to Synced Up’s web page, but you’ll find that the original design is gone, replaced with the new version being sold in “partnership” with Prologix, which is making the pad.

In fact, within weeks of the change, nearly all references to the original pad were gone from the Internet, no doubt erased by Prologix’s request in order to concentrate attention and clicks on the new version.

The speed of the change resonated with me in a negative way, though I can’t exactly articulate why.

But I digress.

The challenge with this vinyl sheet brush pad is the retail price. It could easily be replicated at home by anyone with access to an old industrial binder cover (made of flexible vinyl and large enough to cut a 13” circle out of), some neoprene and some superglue. Add your own graphics with a ruler and permanent paint pen, clearcoat as needed, let dry and voila! You’ve got the same thing for less than ten bucks.

However, the other reality is that there are fewer and fewer Americans who know how to work with their hands in even the most elemental ways. 

Before computers became ubiquitous, generations of ordinary people knew how to do simple repairs around the house, like taping and repainting a room, hanging Sheetrock, repairing a broken table leg with glue and a wooden dowel, and even making their own practice pads. I have a number of user-made pads in my collection, some dating from as late is the 1960s and the oldest dating from the 1930s. The earliest known commercially sold pad dates from the early 1910s and can be found in the 1912 Ludwig & Ludwig catalog. It consists of a circle of solid maple covered with a calfskin head and stuffed with wool until firm. It’s meant to provide the same feel as a drum (which in those days also used calf heads and lower tension than we know today) with far less volume.

 

 

 

 

 

It could easily be made at home today. And if I can get my hands on a broken calf head I might give it a try. But almost no one else these days is interested in making their own stuff -- either because they can't imagine how, or because they don't want to get their hands dirty.

And that’s why there will be ready buyers for these new brush pads, just as there are ready buyers for any of the cheap, mass-produced practice pads on the market. The combination of consumer trends, educational and workplace demands and the entire generational shift of the last thirty years has resulted in a landscape where people are willing to pay far too much money for mass-produced stuff that involves little or no real craft.

 There are, of course, practice pads on the market that are made one at a time by people who understand the value of craft and how that translates to quality and durability. I've mentioned many of those makers elsewhere in my blog so I don't need to re-list them here.
But if you want those craft makers to continue doing what they do, support them by buying their products and encouraging your friends and students to do the same.  That's the only way those craftspeople can stay in business and not be entirely subsumed by mega-corporations that put quantity and profit above quality.

And if you want to make your own brush pad, there are numerous materials out there that are free for the taking which you can experiment with. Those gigantic industrial binders can be found at many businesses that are going fully electronic, and they'll happily give you one or two before tossing the rest. Neoprene wetsuits make great nonskid material and can be found cheap whenever someone needs to replace theirs due to sizing or age. Yoga ats are also a fine nonskid material and can sometimes be found for free at the curb. Hardware stores sell industrial-strength scissors that will allow you to cut through these materials -- buy two or three sets and keep them handy for all your craft projects. (And remember to work outside when using super-glue or any other industrial adhesive so the off-gases have time to dissipate into the atmosphere!)

The mega-companies will keep making their cheap stuff and using every tool they have to steer drummers -- especially kids -- towards their products. The best thing any of us can do is to show up at the park or band practice with something more sustainably made and chop on it.

Happy drumming!

Homemade pad Number 18: Ta-daaaaah!

Since I started making pads at home fifteen years ago, I’ve counted them up.

Based on that count, this is Pad Number 18.

Made from scrap wood, 1/4” gum rubber, wood glue and a few stabilizing screws.

The number is from an old telephone pole numbering system that dates from the 1960s. I scored this when an old pole was replaced and I asked the workers if I could have the old numbers. They shrugged and told me to help myself.

Why eighteen?

In the Jewish tradition, the number eighteen carries significance. Its Hebrew spelling translates to the word “life.” Multiples of eighteen are seen as multiplying life.

Since practice pads are a significant part of my pleasure in life, I saved those tin numbers for my eighteenth homemade pad. Here it is and it’s a keeper.

DIY Percussion: Homemade practice pad

Inspired at least a little by the Live Edge drum pads, where someone took a tree round, dipped it in flex seal and charged a hundred and fifty bucks for it, I decided to make my own.

It’s not pretty.

I used the bottom deck of an old Remo practice pad. The second generation of these pads used hard plastic rims that would chip if you hit a rimshot too hard, and eventually the rims cracked completely. I removed the screws, the broken rim, head and foam insert.

Roughed up the bottom, poured successive thin layers of Flex Seal liquid, let each layer dry for two days before pouring the next. (Outside, in the shed, with the screen window wide open. Don't do this inside your house!)

I had trouble wrangling the can and the liquid and made a bit of a mess. But I wore protective gloves and shop glasses, and got it done.

The end result is surprisingly functional. Best with concert or drum kit sticks.

You may want to glue a closed-cell foam backing to the bottom to give it more muffling and a nonskid surface.

I ended up doing three of these pads and I’m giving a couple to friends as gifts. I probably won't try this again, as a can of Flex Seal starts at around 18 bucks. 

Right now, this pad is drying outside because I decided to glue an ensolite foam pad to the underside.

I think it will help with the tone and slightly reduced vibration.

 

Video below shows the pad in use with jazz sticks, concert sticks and light marching sticks.