Cheapskate’s Corner: drum dampener

Keo Percussion has offered this lovely drum dampener for a few years.

It’s basically a hunk of wood and rubber with some magnets attached on the backside, so the pad will adhere to the inside wall of the drum rim.

It’s a smart design, and I went looking for one.

The only one I found was being sold used on Reverb, for twenty bucks.

Then I tried finding one new and saw that they start at $35 retail. If you can find one.

Apparently, Keo Percussion recently shut down and their products are now quite hard to find.

After pondering my options, I decided to try and make something similar for myself.

Using scraps of leather, drum mute foam, cork and some magnets, I created a similar product.

Since I don’t have commercial cutting tools at home, the best I could do was to use sharp scissors and cut my chosen shape over and over for each layer. 

The results weren’t gorgeous but they lined up well enough for m e to glue the layers together and call it good. (I may paint a little glue around the edges to seal the cork and keep it from crumbling.)

What turned out to be slightly off-canter also added a nice accidental feature: I affixed the magnets so that the dampener could be set two different ways to adjust the degree of dampening, something the Keo version didn’t look like it offered. It’s a nice bonus, and it works really well.

Homemade timpani mallets

 

DIY practice pads (for kids and others on a budget)

Let's face it. Decent practice pads are not cheap. Even the RockJam pad, can run $20 or more with shipping. On top of that, a lot of stuff still ends up in the landfill when it doesn't have to, including scrap wood.

So after a great conversation about DIY practice pads for those on a tight budget, here's a simple way to make your own practice pad from repurposed wood planks (cut to size if necessary) and gum rubber.

Gum rubber, available in 12" x 24” sheets from Grainger Industrial on eBay. I use heavy-duty industrial scissors to trim to size. Make the rubber at least 1/2" to 1" smaller than the wood platform all the way around. Make sure both surface are clean and dry. (Depending on the wood surface, you may wish to sand it lightly for better adhesion.) If you want to make several drum pads, you might want to divide the 12x24" sheet into equal sections of 6" or 8" square so you can get more pads out of the gum rubber; it's not necessary to have a 12" practice pad if you're just working on rudiments or chopping out a part, and making a 6" square pad on an 8" or 9" square wood platform is a cost-effective way of getting more perfectly good pads from one sheet of rubber.

Working in a well-ventilated area (like an open garage), apply a thin line of super glue gel in a spiral, starting in the center and working outward in a spiral (each line about 1/4" apart from the next) to about 1/4" from the edge of the rubber, then carefully place the rubber panel glue-side down on the wood platform and weight down (with heavy books or other practice pads) and let dry overnight.

On the reverse side, you can use pieces of an old thin gaming mat -- glue them with the rubber side showing -- to give the pad a non-skid surface. Glue down and weight down the same way and let dry overnight.

1/4” thick is perfect for chopping rudiments. 1/8" thick may be preferable for those who play Kevlar-headed drums.

Here’s the very first one I made. It travels well and fits in my book bag; when I've toured as a singer-songwriter, this is the pad I've taken with me on the road.

Those with young drum lines may want to buy larger sheets of gum rubber and turn this into a DIY project for your drum line. Repurposed wood gets saved from the landfill and you can use it as a team-bonding activity. Just be sure to do this in a well-ventilated place (like a large garage with the door up, or a park bench).