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.

Interview with David Loendorf of Quiet Tone

David Loendorf grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey and began playing drums in the early 1960s, while still in grade school. He attended Rutgers University for a time and by the late 1970s he was taking formal lessons with Henry Adler in New York City.

Henry Adler had started developing what would become the Quiet Tone Mute in the late 1960s, but because of his work teaching students, running a drum shop and performing, production was sporadic and limited and “advertising” was strictly word-of-mouth.

David was part of the team (with Adler and Glen Sorge, another of Adler’s students) that turned Quiet Tone into a going concern beginning in 1987. After a short time, Sorge stepped away from the business, and eventually David took over the Quiet Tone operation himself. During this time, David was making the mutes in the basement of his New Jersey home, with some help from his wife. 

While building mutes and managing the Quiet Tone business, David worked as a teacher and percussionist, performing with multiple ensembles in the NYC/NJ area including the Monmouth Symphony.

In 2000, Quiet Tone was sold to the Sabian corporation and the operation moved to Canada, with David staying on to consult in production and to work on other projects for the company. He stepped away from Quiet Tone completely by 2004. Today, David is retired and living in Maine. 

While researching the history of Quiet Tone, I was given his name by Robert Boyd, who’d run into him at trade shows. Before I’d had a chance to look David up on the socials, his name popped up as a suggested Facebook friend. It was eery, but also helpful. I reached out to him asking if he was indeed the David Loendorf who’d been involved with Quiet Tone pads and if so would it be okay for me to talk with him? He responded in the affirmative on both counts a couple of days later, and we talked by telephone for a little over two hours. 

Here’s our chat, edited for clarity and brevity:

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BH: So you started drumming in school?

DL: Yes, in sixth grade, in 1963. My music teacher noticed that I could play a little and put me on drums. I played all through high school, learning as I went along by practicing and watching other drummers. 

BH: You grew up in Bayonne, so you must have known about the Bridgemen [drum and bugle corps]?

DL: Oh yeah. I played with them for around three months. Practice consisted of being lined up on either side of a long wood table and being given rhythms to tap out on it, over and over. Then, we got on a bus and headed to the New Jersey Armory, where we were taught to march. Dancing and playing at the same time? It was not for me. So I quit and went back to my high school band and was quite happy there. I played everything from snare drum, bass drum to cymbals and timpani and enjoyed it. 

BH: What other kinds of drumming did you do between public school and your studies with Henry Adler?

DL: Through the 1970s, until I got into the orchestra in 1981, I was playing lots of country, pop, and swing. We had some interesting times -- because we were working in Union City (NJ), Les Paul came and started watching us play. He really loved my guitar player, Paul Jones. We started hanging out at his house and his studio, which was filled with guitars — I had fiddled around with guitars before really getting into drums — and I saw some amazing, beautiful stuff. I saw some of his prototypes and got to try some of them. We also got to visit Media Sound in NYC, across from Carnegie Hall, where we worked with John Phillips and got to do some interesting things. I got married in 1979 and went into orchestral percussion not long after that. But that time was fun! We made $35 a night and spent $45 (laughs).  I also worked on the sales floor at Freehold Music before I started working with Henry Adler. 

I was capable but my hands were kind of weak in terms of technique. So after I dropped out of college (I studied English at Rutgers, with a professor who was from Oxford — I couldn’t do anything right by that guy!), I started taking lessons with Henry Adler.  I studied with Henry in Freehold while I was working on my house there. Eventually I went in for more regular, formal lessons with Henry at his New York studio, which was on 46th street across from Manny’s Music. I studied with him for around 6 years, formal lessons every couple of weeks. We’d go through the Buddy Rich book with traditional grip, then he’d have me start over using matched grip, and then he’d make me start again with varying degrees of bounces. Lots of repetition, over and over, so I could apply different kinds of technique and get better at each one. If I’d studied with him longer than I had, he probably would have made me go through that book nineteen different ways!

BH: How did you get involved with the Quiet Tone mutes?

DL: Henry [Adler] had started making Quiet Tone mutes in the late 1960s at his studio on 46th Street, and drummers he knew liked them so he’d make more by request. By the mid-1980s, when I started studying with Henry, I was helping Henry make them with another of his students, and we began making them in greater quantities. Drummers would hear about them, come in and try them. They sought out the mutes and we started selling a lot of them. Quiet Tone was formally incorporated in 1993, and we were making mutes in larger and larger batches. That included some contracts with the military. 

BH: I have here an early flier for QT that shows mutes for 14-inch snare, 13 and 14-inch toms and a bass drum mute. You also made larger mutes, for awhile, yes?

DL: Yes. We also made a 15-inch mute but we quickly discontinued it in favor of a 16-inch size. When tom sizes got bigger they got softer — the 16 tom was, well, a bit mushier, you know? So I thought, let’s put them out the way they feel and sound. So the 16-inch mute sounds and feels like a 16-inch tom. In early 1994 I patented a Quiet Tone bass drum mute. People were telling us we really had to have one, so I designed one and we brought it out, but it was something of a disaster. It just wasn’t that good, and we didn’t make them for very long.

Around that time, I took over the entire Quiet Tone operation from Henry Adler. I continued making the pads at home for awhile, while at the same time playing in ensembles in the area and teaching drum students. Drummers sought us out to talk about QT mutes and about drumming in general, and I traveled to trade shows and festivals to market the mutes for a number of years. I’m grateful to have befriended and hung out with some of the best drummers in the world because of my work with QT. I didn’t try to seek endorsers, it was mostly just drummers coming to me to ask about the mutes, then spreading it by word of mouth to other drummers.  David Weckl, Vinnie Colaiuta, lots of other drummers, they all tried the mutes and loved them. They did a lot of advertising for them just by raving about them.

(Below: original QT mute, from Editor's collection.)

An interesting story: One of the larger batch orders was for the US Army’s Old Guard [fife and drum corps]. My wife was helping make the mutes in our basement by then, she was a nurse and she’d come down to the basement after her shifts at the hospital and assemble mutes with me. Some of those early mutes wound up with the Old Guard. Just a few years ago, I saw a video for the Army that showed the Old Guard rehearsal barracks, and while the camera swept along the room, at the back were some of the earliest Quiet Tone mutes on drum stands — my wife had made some of those pads years before, and guys drumming now at the Tomb of the Unknowns were still practicing on them!

BH: When did Sabian get involved?

DL: In 2000 I retired from performing, and the mutes had grown more popular than in-house production could keep up with. Around that time I sold the Quiet Tone brand and design to Sabian. They moved everything to their facility in Canada, which allowed them to ramp up production considerably to keep up with demand. They used some parts sourced from our suppliers in New Jersey for a while. Eventually -- after I left Sabian -- they scaled up even more by transferring all of the Quiet Tone manufacturing to Taiwan. 

I worked with Sabian for three years as part of the management team for percussion and accessories. My wife and I sold our house in Freehold and bought a property in Maine, which put me closer to Sabian’s facility in New Brunswick. Sabian had a building in Houlton, Maine, a big empty building that we turned into a soundstage, and I spent a lot of time inventing there, but my actual office was up in New Brunswick.

I was able to continue playing here in Maine, and artists visiting the area would stop in to say hello and perform on the soundstage there. I continued to work with a small number of students here, including Dustin Fitzpatrick of Drum Science. He studied for four years with me, mostly on hand development. He got so good, over the top, that he scared me.

BH: Tell me about how the Quiet Tone was constructed. Where did you source parts?

DL: Well, before Sabian, the rims and hardware came from China, the heads came from Remo and the fiber board base — you know there’s no asbestos in it, right? — the very first base we used was basically acoustic sound tile material. Later, we switched to something called Homasote [a versatile, eco-friendly structural fiberboard made from 100% recycled paper and wood cellulose compressed under high heat and pressure without harmful formaldehyde adhesives - Wikipedia].  We used closed-cell Homasote, made in those days in Trenton, as the base. Then a layer of open-cell sponge [similar to what’s used in neoprene drum mutes now - BH], then a layer of flat Mylar and then the drumhead. It’s a good combination of components for a good feel and response.

BH: Were you still with Sabian when they brought out the mesh head version?

DL: No, that was after I left. I haven’t tried it. 

BH: Since you stepped away from Sabian, have you been drumming much?

DL:  Well, I recently bought myself a new drum kit and I’ve been spending a lot of time tuning it, outfitting it with extra things and just having fun with it. I find myself playing along with recordings of my favorite bands; right now it’s a lot of Yes, especially their "Live at the Apollo" recording from 2018, it's just really great stuff.

(Below: David Loendorf, 1967)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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After a delightful conversation, we agreed to swap email addresses and eventually photos of our favorite drums and pads. I’m truly grateful to David for his time and for sharing his story.

Vintage Corner: The original Quiet Tone mute, by Henry Adler

I had the amazing opportunity to purchase two of the first-generation, original Quiet Tone pads, designed and distributed by Henry Adler. They arrived today, and I am fascinated.

I purchased both from the same fellow, a 14-inch Snare Mute and a 13-inch Tom-Tom Mute. The pads were originally designed not as practice pads, but as drum mutes designed to be placed atop drums for quieter practice. These mutes came with coil springs with hooks on each end, that allowed you to attach a mute to the top of a drum and keep it in place during indoor practice. 

The fiber base is the same as that found on the next generation of Quiet Tone pads that came with tension rods and replaceable heads. However, this original version bears a label that says “Pat. pending,” placing these in the late 1960s.

Also, the legs on this earliest model are screwed into a sliding nut on the underside of the two vertical rods. Sliding the nut allows you to place the legs where you want, and tightening the threaded leg into the nut (finger tight) keeps it where you set it.

Sticks are shown in one of the photos with the 13-inch mute to show scale. I’ve places small pieces of folded paper between the horizontal rod and the two vertical rods, to reduce the rattle of metal-on-metal. 

This first generation came pre-tensioned, and could not be adjusted. The pitch is lower than that found on later versions of the pad, and has a lower tension that more closely resembles jazz drums of the 1960s. 

These are photos of the 13-inch Tom-Tom mute. 

As you can see in the video, the head sits lower from the top of the rim than on later versions of the Quiet Tone. This earliest version was probably not designed to be taken apart by the player; the rods connect to the rim with rivets. Subsequent revisions would allow for tuning adjustment and head replacement, a thicker fiber base and eventually the addition of a foam rubber layer to strengthen the construction and allow it to be used as a real practice pad.

These earliest examples of the Quiet Tone have their limits and would probably not withstand the demands of the modern drummer, but they are a significant piece of practice pad history and are extremely rare in complete condition. I am very glad to have them, and honored to be their next caretaker.

Vintage Corner: Quiet Tone practice pads, from the early days

According to verbal history, Henry Adler designed the Quiet Tone practice in the 1960s as a way to practice drumming quietly.
It could rest on a tabletop or on top of a drum, and worked as advertised. 
The earliest version featured a plain Mylar plastic head and rim laid over a muting base (made of some kind of fiberboard that, contrary to rumor did not contain any asbestos). The earliest version of the QT pad had very primitive tension that was difficult to work with and did not offer much of a tuning range. 

The patent for the design was actually awarded to Merton Glick and Joseph Mancari in 1969. I am still researching the Henry Adler connection to see if he was involved in any way, but so far I can find nothing.

Below: drawings from the patent application:

The earliest versions of the QT pad, before the patent was awarded, are extremely scarce and very hard to find today. So imagine my surprise when I found listings for two of them, at a surprisingly low price for each. Of course, I snapped them both up.

14" pad, meant to fit on top of a snare drum:

 

And the 13" size, meant to fit on top of a tom or a piccolo snare drum:

As you can see from the blow-ups below, the tensioning mechanism was far more primitive on this earliest version, which used a simple nut and bolt design. This would be replaced later by a drum tension rod, which provided more adjustability.

While this earliest tuning mechanism was too primitive for real world applications, having examples in my collection makes it easier for me to see and show the full development of an important piece of drum pad history, and I'm glad to have them.

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.

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.