Vintage Corner: George Way’s “Henry Adler Tone Control” practice pad, 1950s

Readers will remember that last year, I acquired an early generation Henry Adler adjustable practice pad and was over the moon.

Well, I now have what is really the mate to that pad, existing at the other end of the historical arc. 

George Way’s version of this pad was licensed from Henry Adler and made by George Way Drums in the mid to late 1950s. This version of the design was manufactured for less than a decade, and when George Way was forced out of his own company by Camco Drums the pad was discontinued. It’s a rare pad and hard to find in any condition. A few years ago, one of Way’s pads was sold on eBay in poor condition, without the internal mechanism or the moving side doors; bidding was fierce and it sold for over $200 — too rich for my blood at the time.

But this was the version of the pad I’d been looking for all along. And I had an opportunity to buy one last month. It arrived this week.

 It works, though the slider tends to move when open and struck on top. The internal arms that hold the side doors are attached by means of a small leather piece that seems to provide for greater ease of motion; however, one of the leather pieces is gone, replaced by a small piece of steel band attached with a large thumbtack. The leather piece on the other side is intact, and got hit with some paint. I may look for a way to stabilize it further and keep it from rotting. The result of this mismatched repair is that one of the doors opens farther than the other, and doesn’t close fully with the lever is moved to the closed position.

The other issue is that Way chose to redesign the pad — he was always tinkering with designs — so that the door hinges are at the top, rather than the bottom as on Adler’s original design. He also replaced the simpler wood knob with a metal assembly that uses a sliding lever to open and close the doors. I actually think Adler had the better idea, as the weight of the open door would help to keep it in place to wherever it was adjusted; and the wood knob means fewer parts inside to potentially fail. Having the doors swing out from the bottom means that weight could cause the doors to fall slightly closed again, and that’s the case with this Way pad.

A previous owner applied white paint (Killz? Flat base? No idea) on the top panel of the pad. 

I was able to remove a lot of the white paint from the sides of ths panel by gently scrubbing it with a sponge and some warm water. The white paint on the top appears to have been applied directly onto bare wood where the yellow paint had completely worn away. I'm going to take it to my local paint supply and see if they can help me match the color, and if they can I’ll sand the to lightly and cover the white with a new coating of yellow.

I doubt I plan to do much more than that. The original red rubber on top still has rebound — though the rubber used on George Way pads always tended to be firmer than gum rubber anyway — and I won’t bother trying to remove the circles that someone drew on, probably with a ballpoint pen. The pad works, and I very happy to have these two historic “bookends” in my collection.

UPDATE: There was a strange little noise when I played on the pad that suggested cracks in the wood. I found the cracks.

They were mostly running through a couple of the side panels, which I sealed by inserting a tiny screwdriver, wedging the crack a little farther apart and dribbling glue into it. Then I removed the screwdriver, wiped away the excess and weighted it down overnight. After it was dried, the buzzing sound I first got when playing had gone away. It’s too bad that one of the worst cracks ran through the middle of the decal. After the glue dried, I applied a thin clear coat over the decal to preserve it.

The next day, I called four different places to find one that would sell me the smallest jar of matched paint, then went and got some. They tried to match as best they could, and warned me that it’s nearly impossible to match dirty, aged paint. They got close enough.

I decided to sand lightly and apply over the white, plus touching up a few other spots. 

Looks better than the white on top did.

I can live with it.

This is never going to be a museum piece , probably why I got it for a good price. But I’m happy with how it turned out.

The pad, after two light coats of paint. I tried to blend some of the paint over the original yellow so the different yellows wouldn’t look quite so stark. I think it worked out.

A little video, comparing the two pads, before I painted.

Vintage Corner: Henry Adler adjustable practice pad, 1940s

I’ve been looking for one of these for a very long time. I had all but given up hope when suddenly this one appeared online for sale. I hesitated for a few days, then finally decided to go ahead and buy it.

It arrived in complete and functional condition.

As the photos make clear, the pad is in surprisingly good shape for being almost eighty years old.

However, the rubber was hardened and deeply cracked with age and exposure [to sunlight], and in its original condition wasn’t really playable.

After researching possible ways to renew the rubber, it became clear that the damage was too great, and I would either have to let it be or replace it.

I took a couple of days to consider my options.

Leaving the pad as is would mean that it would be relegated to a strictly historical artifact, a museum piece destined for a plexiglas glass display case and inertia.

Replacing the rubber surface would greatly reduce its historical value — and possibly its monetary value —  to collectors. But it would also make the pad playable again.

I had to be honest with myself and admit that I had always hoped to find one in playable condition. But before I took the leap, I sought opinions on fellow drum pad enthusiasts.

Most encouraged me to make the pad playable again, and after considering all the responses and my own feelings, that’s what I ended up doing.

Removing the original rubber was a slow, painstaking process. I took my time, not wanting to damage the wood underneath. I lightly sanded down the wood surface to remove the worst of the glue and allow the replacement rubber to lay flat.

Then, I selected a 1/8” thick piece of gum rubber and trimmed it to match the shape and size of the original, so that the overall aesthetic wouldn’t be too altered. I had considered using 1/4” thick rubber, but I decided on something that would give me greater articulation and also allow for a wider range of volumes without my having to hit the pad so hard. It IS almost eighty years old, after all.

I carefully glued and weighted down the rubber on the wood, let it dry and tested it. So far, so good.

Finally, because the wood was unfinished as far as I could tell, I decided to seal it with a clear coat of wood hardener, which would protect and strengthen the wood surface all around. It would also protect what remained of the decal, which shows Henry Adler’s name and the address of his New York shop and studio. (If you click on Henry’s name above, it will take you to an interview with him by Jim Dinella. I own pads from each of them now.)

(Later versions of this pad would carry a decal from George Way, who’d been licensed by Adler to produce and sell the pads. These later models also had a metal lever rather than a wooden knob, and were painted red or green like Way’s other pad offerings. When George Way was bought out by Camco, the Adler pad was no longer made. 

Here is a later version of the Adler design, sold by George Way in the 1950s. Note the sliding metal lever, and that the doors are hinged at the top rather than the bottom. (Photo still taken from Instagram video, courtesy of Michael Windish.)

Adler’s patent for this design was granted in 1950 and the pad was in production for less than ten years total. I believe mine is an early, pre-patent edition of this pad dating from the late 1940s.)

The original white “feet” were very small and one was missing. I removed them all and swapped in some  slightly larger white feet from a Ludwig pad. They tapped into the existing nail holes nicely.

The whole thing was allowed to dry outside under cover from the rain all day. When it stopped being smelly, I brought it indoors to become accustomed to the indoor temperature, and I was done.

I’m not sorry that I brought this pad back to life. I’m pleased with how it turned out and will enjoy it for a very long time.