Vintage corner: Yamaha snare pad (by Xymox), mid 2000s

So this has maybe a couple more years to go before it's "officially" vintage, but it is over twenty years old and at this point all the kids would call it vintage so I'm going there.
(Just wait until all the kids get vintage!)

Scored this on Facebook marketplace. Lady was trying to sell it but no one was biting. When the price dropped to five bucks I asked if she's ship at my expense, and she said yes. It arrived this morning and it's a little rough, but absolutely delightful.

This little guy was made in the early to mid 2000s by Xymox for Yamaha. The rubber from this time period is especially nice and if the pad hasn't been abused it's often still in fine, playable shape. (I don't bother with modern corps pads with cracked rubber, as I like my modern-era pads to be playable.)

Base measures 8 x 8" and the snare beads are packed just loosely enough to make a nice, satisfying sound that's not too loud. I could take this on the bus and bother no one.

The rubber is in excellent shape, no cracking or hardening anywhere, and the response is lovely under a pair of lighter weight marching sticks or even 2B sticks.

A keeper for sure.

Facebook Marketplace sometimes yields up practice pad treasures. You have to search often (I look almost every day), and skip around the country to find new listings. (Simply change the location and expand to maximum range.) If you live far from the seller, it's worth it to ask if they're open to shipping at buyer expense. Often, they say no, but if you watch an item and keep coming back to see if it's still available, then at some point, some sellers may be open to shipping. 

I got this pad from a woman who'd tried without success to find a local buyer for three months. We agreed on a total cost and the transaction went smoothly. Mind your manners and be patient.

If the seller isn't into shipping, either get a friend who lives nearby to buy it for you, or let it go.
And don't fret. There are plenty of used practice pads out there. 

Vintage Corner: 2008 Blue Devils commemorative pad by Promark (Xymox)

Between 2008 and 2011, the Concord Blue Devils drum and bugle corps was on a roll, winning DCI worlds in multiple years and attracting the best musicians from across the country to come audition and marching with them. (Side note: Poaching talent, especially from smaller corps, was nothing new; in the late 1970s the Blue Devils poached regularly from the Spartans in Vancouver, WA -- the drum corps I marched in for a season -- so often and so brazenly that people started calling our little Class A corps a feeder corps for the Blue Devils.)

During this period of time, Promark and System Blue teamed up to provide the Blue Devils with the latest in drums, sticks and accessories. Promark offered marching members of the Blue Devils -- and at least one indoor percussion group I'm aware of -- commemorative drum pads with a custom laminate showing off the group's drummers. To my knowledge, the pads were primarily made for the marching members, and not sold widely to the general public. Promark didn't make these pads -- Xymox did, and simply licensed the snare bead design and the laminate process to Promark.

The pads, made between 2008 and 2011, are rare now. So when I came across one at a thrift store, I snapped it up.

This pad was played hard and often, and there are small dents in the MDF base and a couple of small gouges in the laminate. The pad itself is still quite whole enough to be played, and while laminates aren't generally my thing, it's a nice piece of practice pad history to add to my stable.

I like the feel of the laminated rubber under a pair of marching-weight sticks. Rolls are especially nice and responsive. 
However, the snare beads are packed in pretty tightly so there's not a lot of room for them to move around. This pads dates from a time before hybrid and "suede" heads, when high-tension drums were still cranked insanely high and the drums lacked any depth. So the tight response in the sound of the pad may be expected. 
(In the mid-2000's, shortly before laminated pads became a thing, Xymox was still making and selling pads without a laminate, only thick black rubber. Most of those pads had a snare bead assembly that wasn't packed quite so tightly, and these pads offer a sound that's what we could call a little more "wet." The earliest laminated padsshowed up only a couple of years later, and came with a tighter, "drier" sound.

I'm pleased to have found this pad and it's really interesting to chop on. But if I'm being totally honest, laminates still aren't really my thing.
So after living with this pad for a little while, I've rehomed it with a friend who marched a lot closer to this era abd who loves chopping on laminates. 

Product Review: Prologix Green Method Pad -- and the pitfalls of redundancy

I'd been wanting to try one of the Prologix pads for several years, but the price of their early models was a little steep for my budget back then. Last week, an old college friend with some money reached out to me. Her son plays in a school band program and she wanted to gift the drumline with a matched set of practice pads. The school's band director isn't a percussionist and couldn't decide which pad to order with this lady's generous gift, so my friend read my reviews and got some info that way. She'd heard about Prologix pads and noticed that I hadn't reviewed them, so she arranged for me to buy one and put it through its paces. ("It's the school colors, green and black," she enthused. "Perhaps this would be a great way to go!")

It arrived a few days ago and I've had some time to hang out with it.

Prologix Percussion makes pads with different densities of rubber compound, and the idea is that you select the density you need based on your playing style and goals. The green compound is designed for "light" resistance, meaning it will provide more of a rebound and allow you to approximate the feel of an actual drum. (They also make compounds with higher levels of resistance, meaning you mjust work on "pulling" the strokes out of the surface, a great workout for hands and wrists. Check their web site for more info.)

I ordered the 12" Method pad, a two-sided affair which Prologix calls their "base level" pad, suitable for drummers at all experience levels. One side has the green rubber surface; the other side uses recycled tire rubber to achieve a feel that's harder and closer to a modern marching drumhead. Both sides have their purposes and both work well.

The pad is heavy enough to stay out on a tabletop, and large enough to work in a standard snare drum stand. At 12 inches it's also portable and will easily fit in a backpack or book bag.

The feel of the light green surface is quite similar to what you'd find on the Evans Real Feel gray chop pad.
The subtle difference in hardness between the two means that on the Prologix you will still have to work a little more to achieve good technique.

The reverse side of recycled rubber is harder and less forgiving in terms of natural rebound, so that you still must use good technique but will get a sound and feel that is tighter and more like a high-tension Kevlar head.

The thickness of each surface is evident from the side view. Both surfaces are mounted to a standard compressed wood platform that looks sturdy and durable for most purposes.

 

 

 

 

 

 Here's a very short video demonstrating the difference between the playing surfaces.

Below is a photo that explains my quandry: All three of these pads -- early Xymox (Promark), Prologix and Evans -- utilize a very similar rubber compound that is designed to offer a high degree of natural rebound while also remaining quieter than a real drum.



But the difference in feel between the three pads is SO subtle that I have to ask:
At what point does all of these different models become redundant?
And at what point should manufacturers take a step back and begin to ask this very question of themselves? The photo above demonstrates just three of the many pad makers out there who are creating pads using similar rubber compounds. Other pads using a silicone base and achieving similar results should be asking this question as well.

..::ducks to avoid flying debris from people who love free market capitalism::..

To be honest, there are already perfectly good pads out there that serve the same purpose as this one by Prologix. And they are similarly priced, which only serves to make things more confusing.

The Method pad is a nice pad. It costs $35 from Prologix, placing it in a similar price-point as the Even Real Feel pad. A smaller 6" version is available for $20. But to my perspective it doesn't really break any new ground from a technical standpoint. And since the Evans Real Feel pad has been around a bit longer, it's easier o find used pads at a considerable savings, something I generally encourage for individual students on a budget. There really isn't enough of a difference between the Real Feel and the Prologix Method pad for me to say one is unequivocally better or worse.

Because of all the redundancy in modern pad design, I've decided that, going forward, I will probably focus more of my attention of pad designs that truly count as breakthroughs, rather than re-hashes of similar designs already out there.  Nothing against any of these brands; but in a world where environmental and financial concerns are only increasing it makes sense to focus on that which is truly innovative.

Happy drumming!

Full Review: Xymox Hybrid Snare Drum - and an UPDATE (Dec 2020)

Back when I still thought I could play Kevlar and learn to like it, Xymox Percussion released a new product called the Hybrid Snare Drum. Not quite a drum (because of its size and lack of portability on the field), not quite a pad (because of its weight and volume), this "hybrid" of the two was something new, and I admit it caught my attention.

(Without going into the whole backstory of Xymox's fulfilment woes and everything, I will say that, in all of my dealings with the company, as long as I was polite and friendly, they were the same way to me.)

Very late last winter, when I was feeling flush after some especially great gigs, I went ahead and ordered the Hybrid Snare from Xymox. As usual, I expected there would be a wait, and I was not wrong. Thanks to their ongoing supply issues, plus a global pandemic, it took a few months to get my order.
In fact, it arrived the day after my Rudimental Drummers Chop Pad.
Because I was so stoked about the Chop Pad, I decided I would not open the box from Xymox right away. Tonight, I finally opened it, and here is my review.

1. Construction. The Hybrid Drum, since it's marketed as a drum and not as a pad, seems to be made with a shocking amount of plastic, and only enough metal to provide snare mechanism, lugs and lug bolts. The shell and rims are all plastic. Now, sure, it's supposedly a high-strength sort of plastic that shouldn't easily break after a rimshot or three, but it IS plastic and that doesn't inspire confidence in a high-0tension DRUM. Still, it looked clean and stylish and well-thought-out.

The drum is a single-headed affair, with gut snares lying directly against the underside of the Evans Hybrid (high-tension) batter head. There are adjustment screws at each end of the snare mechanism (which makes sense since there's no strainer involved). And there's a thick heavy plastic panel that's form-fitted to the inside of the drum. This panel can hold the snares in place, or it can be used to hold a dampener in place.

When I first pulled out the drum, the snares looked especially slack. I decided not to mess with them until I'd played it, to see how it felt and sounded.

It was pretty awful.

Almost no response from the snares, and the head was clearly too loose. So I tightened the head VERY carefully, using very small incremental turns of the drum key. (Again, the lugs and lug-bolts asre metal, but the drum is plastic. I didn't want the thing to collapse from over-tightening too soon.)

The first video demonstrates the sound with dampening insert. The second video demonstrates the pad before any real tuning is done.

 

 

2. Adjustability. After experimenting with the tuning a little bit, I turned to the dampening pad. According to the instructions provided with the drum, the pad is designed to be inserted under the heavy plastic panel, which requires removing the four screws that hold that panel in place against the underside of the drum. According to Xymox, this change can be done in three minutes or so. It took me over five the first time because I wanted to be careful about working with metal screws in a plastic drum. (There are metal threads beneath the plastic, but still.) Subsequent changes took less time but I still never got it down to three minutes.

 

The dampening insert comes with a hard side of recycled rubber, and a soft side of foam rubber, which goes against the underside of the drum head on the snares. The instructions don't make it clear, but you can sort it out visually to decide how much of the snares you want exposed when you lay the dampening insert down.

I tried it both ways and found that exposing more of the snares at either end provided a better fit and sound. The dampener entirely cuts off the snare sound and provides some muffling for the drum, though it's still pretty loud even with the snares dampened.

Finally, I decided to tighten up the head further, and also to see if I could adjust the snares themselves. Xymox suggests experimenting with various tensions and tunings, but gives no guidance as to what a suitable range might be. The only clear instruction they give is: "When first tightening the drum head, allow for a minimum of 1/4" space between the top of the lug (not the tension rod) and the bottom side of the top rim. Utilize this space for continuing tightening of the drum head over a period of time."

Following these instructions, I tightened it to about a 1/2" gap. Mindful of the ratio of plastic to metal I continued to have concerns about the overall strength and durability of a high-tension drum made mostly of plastic, even industrial-strength plastic. Even with metal threads beneath the plastic -- because what is that receiving nut attached to? And how is it kept from stripping out in the event of over-tightening?

(To be fair, I admit that my concerns are colored by playing both the Drumslinger and Rudimental Drummers pads, both of which have metal where it counts and are far more durable as a result. Possibly also colored by having taught teenagers for years. Adolescent drummers are beastly-hard on gear.)

Nevertheless, I did tighten things up a fair amount, which helped.

After removing the dampening insert, I attempted to adjust the snares so they'd be a little bit more taut. This proved to be somewhat frustrating, as the adjustment screws are designed to be finger-tightened (probably a good idea consider overall construction), which meant that getting purchase on the screws was difficult at best. I was able to tighten the snares only a very little bit; the tensioning screws were not evenly set at the factory, and so it was difficult to know where to begin and end on my efforts.

I can only imagine what it would be like for someone with larger hands and fingers than mine. The screws are right up against the underside of the head, and not positioned well at all for actual adjustment.

When I tuned and tightened as much as I dared, I put it back on the stand and played it again. It did sound better, and much closer to the desired high-tension drum sound commonly found in modern drum corps and marching band.

3. Summary. In all honesty, this drum is a little bit of a letdown for me. While the construction is very interesting and showcases some real innovation, the final product seems less like a real drum and more like a salesman's sample, or an elaborate plaything. Knowing the high tension required to bring out the optimal sound of a Kevlar-headed marching drum, I have real concerns about this drum's durability in a regular practice setting. Its size and portability make it easy to take anywhere, but at that point, why not just take a pad? It will be lighter and fit in a backpack more easily than this. And if you want a real drum sound, then just play on a drum; isn't that what practicing is ultimately leading us towards anyway?

The Xymox Hybrid Snare retails for a base price of $184.00; adding a custom "skin" to the shell will cost extra, and then there's postage and handling, which will easily bring it to over $200.00. At that point, you can easily find used floating tension marching snares for sale online, sometimes including a carrier as well. The drum weighs six pounds; for comparison, a Dynasty wedge drum weighs about ten and a full-size marching snare weighs around 15 or so. (Having carried both wedge and full-size high-tension drums I can say that the modern snare drum is a very heavy thing on an aging lower back.)

About the only real-world application I can see for the Hybrid Snare is in the pit, sitting on a concert snare stand and being used as some kind of color instrument. (Now that everything is mic'd, volume shouldn't be a problem.)
But that takes me into territory about the state of modern marching percussion, and that's not a discussion I want to begin here.

Abut the only reason for me to keep it at this point would be as a curiosity in my collection of practice pads, even though it's not really a practice pad. Otherwise, I may just sell it in the spring.

I think if Xymox wants to get into making an actual drum, then they should make an actual drum, with metal hardware all around and a way to carry the thing. If they can keep some of these innovations while beefing up the construction so it inspires more confidence, then the results could be interesting and useful. But as it is, it's more of a toy, and an expensive one at that.

UPDATE, December 2020: According to the latest online buzz, the owners of Xymox have left southern California. There is no one answering the phone or returning emails; orders have gone unfulfilled for months and in some cases more than a year. The couple who own the company recently celebrated their wedding in Washington State, and no one seems to know where they are right now. It is highly probable that, without a class action suit filed on behalf of the many customers who purchased Xymox products online and can't get a pad or a refund, this may be the end of the company as we know it.

Based on how many people are claiming publicly that they've never gotten a pad, a refund, or even return communications, I'd have to advise that you do NOT buy anything from Xymox Percussion. There are plenty of other excellent drum pads out there from companies that can supply you without an unreasonable wait time.

"Pocket" pads: a historic comparison

The idea of a practice pad small enough to be truly portable has been with us for decades.
As far back as the late 1950s, drummers valued the ability to toss a pad into their suitcase for hotel room workouts between gigs, with enough substance to the pad to give them something that felt "real" while at the same time being quiet enough to avoid disturbing the neighbors.

I've made three videos of various examples of these smaller travel pads.

1. WFL "Porto-Pad", early 1960s.

This is a solid hunk of rubber shaped like a wedge to simulate the slant of a "side" drum and accommodate traditional grip, which was almost exclusively in use by kit drummers at the time.
The rubber is surprisingly bouncy for its age (over 50 years old!) and in a pinch would serve well enough. But it's not so bouncy that you don't have to do some of the work, which makes for a good workout. Sadly, the rubber isn't quite "grippy" enough to avoid a little skidding on a tabletop, or even when placed atop another rubber practice pad.

2. Rick Trankle "Pocket Pad", 1978.

 

In the late 70s, studio drummer Rick Trankle developed a very small, portable pad consisting of a steel plate sandwiched between two slices of pure gum rubber. The result was a pad heavy enough to avoid "creep" and bouncy enough to approximate the surface of a drum. Its small size (3" square) required greater accuracy. A 1/8" thick rubber slice and a 1/4" rubber slice could be switched back and forth to approximate the feel of either a concert or marching snare drum.

In 1979, my high school drum section leader got one of these, declared it awesome, and strongly suggested required that everyone purchase one. At nearly $20, this was not cheap for a freshman with a $4 weekly allowance, but I didn't want to appear poor (because what teen does, really?); so I scored some extra babysitting and lawn mowing jobs to pay for it faster.

It was one of those rare times that I agreed with my otherwise chauvinist ass of a section leader. The pad was amazing. It felt great on either side, was small enough to fit in the pocket of my homemade stick bag (sewn from a pair of jeans), and it forced me to be more accurate with my strokes.
I still have this very pad today, mostly because I babysat too many nasty little children to buy it. It's still a great little pad, but I no longer travel with it because if I lose it, I can't find another one.

3. Xymox "Pocket Pad", 2008.

Xymox patented a pad with a mechanism of steel beads inside that allowed the pad to sound a little like a fake snare drum. It was an interesting way to entice kids to practice more, and it worked, because soon other companies were paying Xymox for the right to use the patented design in their pads. Eventually Xymox was making their pads and stamping them with other companies' names (like Ahead and Promark). The pocket version did not include the fake snare sound.

This is a Xymox-branded Pocket Pad that I got online from a music store that was closing and had a couple left.  It's the lightest of the three pads shown here. The very thin rubber sheet on the bottom does help a little with reducing "creep" but if you hit this hard enough it WILL move. The rubber surface on top gives a satisfying bounce and diddle exercises are fun to play. It also just fits in an actual pocket. I got it to add to my collection of early Xymox pads.




Pocket-sized pads need to be heavy enough to avoid "creep" and bouncy enough to be satisfying to practice on. two of these three come close enough to fitting the bill that I'd toss either of them in a bag; the WFL gives me pause but if it were my only pad I'd use it until I could get another model.

Next time: how heavy a stick do you warm up with?
Happy playing!