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.

DIY Drummer: repairing and restoring a Beetle Last Pad

The Beetle Last Pad originally came as a doublesided pad with two playing surfaces and long tension bolts holding it all together. It was capable of very high tension and meant for modern marching drummers who wanted a pad with a Kevlar head on one side and a Mylar head on the other. 

Later, Beetle released a singlesided version of the Last Pad, meant for lower tension and a Mylar head. It was sold as a pad meant for old-school rudimental drummers, and if you installed a coated head it was also good for brushes. (I have such pad and to my surprise it has become my favorite brush pad, though I also like to chop rope drum style on it. The foam insert makes it feel very buttery.)

The seller bought a singlesided Last Pad and proceeded to assemble it with a Kevlar head and high tension — *not* what it was designed for. I’d guess he did this to save money, since the doublesided version costs far more. (The singlesided Last Pad currently retails for $180; the doublesided version costs $260. Both are worth the price when you take into account the sustainability and the amount of care and craft involved in their construction.

This singlesided Last Pad became available on eBay a couple months ago, and I watched it with interest.

Originally, the seller wanted $180 plus nearly $90 in shipping.

His description: “Beetle pad I bought not too long ago but don’t want anymore. Has some cracks from running but have changed the head with the cracks there, just don’t tune it too high. It has a Remo White Max Head.”

Sadly, in the process he cranked the tension so high — which is necessary for a Kevlar head — that he cracked the baseplate in the process.

I figured that the damage was rough, but repairable. I made a much lower offer, which was rebuffed. So I watched the listing and waited. So did at least fifteen other people.

I watched and waited for over a month, and the price fell over time. Finally, when the price fell to under a hundred bucks and the shipping became, frankly, more realistic, I felt ready to bite the bullet. I bought the pad and planned on repairing the baseplate with wood glue and clamps, and would see how it turned out. (I also planned to swap in an Emperor head and use lower tension.)

The pad arrived about a week later. The seller had simply tossed it in a box without any packing material. The cardboard box was ripped apart and crudely taped up again. The pad had bounced around inside the box and there was far more damage to baseplate than the listing photos had shown.

I gave the seller a mediocre review and told him to do better. Then I turned my attention to the pad.

I took it apart, and discovered that the previous owner had cranked down the tension so much that two of the bolts snapped when I tried to loosen them. Additionally, ten of the twelve washers were malformed from overtensioning. There were only single, large washers, not the second set of smaller washers that my singlesided Last Pad had come with.

I set aside the head, rim and bolts, and got to work on the baseplate.

Detensioning the hardware made the cracks narrower, so I had to slip a flathead screwdriver into the crack and widen it a little. I poured some wood glue into the crack, pressed it in with my finger and poured some more. Finally, I clamped the crack closed.

I repeated this with the crack in the second and third areas of damage, and set the baseplate aside to dry.

Then, I slipped the big washers into my bench vise and straightened them as best I could. That turned out fine and I felt comfortable reusing them at lower tension.

I chatted with Bradley at Beetle, who confirmed that this was probably a very early release of the singlesided Last Pad because it used only large washers. Subsequent versions have included two sets of washers and this works far better in terms of strength and durability.

I went through my parts bin and came up with replacement bolts and a set of smaller washers (old bicycle axle washers, nice and thick!) to add to the assembly.

Then, I waited for the glue to dry. Because I couldn’t be sure how far down into the cracks the glue could seep, I left the baseplate clamped all day. When I removed the clamps in the evening, the repair held solidly. Before stopping for the night, I drilled some vertical holes through the baseplate, two at each repair area, to receive hardwood dowels for greater stability.

The next day I got the fluted hardwood dowels to glue into the six stabilizer holes I’d drilled. The flutes carved into the dowel allow for glue to set in firmly with the wood and create a better bond and seal. When I ran this by Bradley, he suggested that the glue would do the job all by itself and that perhaps the dowels were overkill; but the bicycle mechanic in me really wanted to make sure the repaired baseplate wouldn’t come apart under stress. 

Valchromat (aka ForesCore), the material that is used in the baseplates and inserts of all Beetle pads that aren't built around solid wood, is made from compressed, finely ground wood fiber and a special glue. This is basically like MDF, but Valchromat uses very little formaldehyde and is much safer than ordinary MDF. Also, it's impregnated with color during the compression process so when you chip or scuff it, you don't lose color the way you would with wood that has simply been painted externally. It's also harder than MDF, and therefore a much better material all around. 

That said, if you're going to sand or drill Valchromat, it's still important to do so in a well-ventilated area and wear eye and mouth protection. Safety first!

In this photo, you can see where I’d had to build up the edges of the baseplate that had broken off. For this, I sanded everything, applied scotch tape around the missing part of the edge to form a “wall,” and poured in the glue to set overnight. When I removed the tape in the morning, a tiny bit of wet glue beneath seeped out, causing a slight collapse of the “wall.” Enough of the glue had dried that I didn’t worry about it. I knew that there would be enough of a repaired edge for my purposes, let the remainder of the glue dry and called it good.

The pad came with a 3/16” tire rubber insert, which would normally be too hard for my tastes. Bradley offered to make me a new insert with gum rubber so I could achieve something much closer to the feel of my 15” marching snare drum. While waiting for that, I decided to assemble the pad with the parts I have and see how I like it.

I let the glued dowels dry all day, and shortly before dinner time I assembled the pad with what I had on hand, including the harder insert and an old Emperor head. While I’m glad to experience the 3/16” recycled tire insert under a tuned head, it’s not really my thing and I will replace it with either a thin gum rubber insert or a 1/4” recycled tire insert, either of which will feel a little nicer for my hands. And I have a new Emperor suede head on order at Revival that should be here next week. 

Gosh, what a cool pad. I’m happy to have a second Last Pad for harder Mylar chopping, and thrilled to have repaired this at home.

(I was tempted for about twenty seconds to send the video to the seller, but my schadenfreude doesn’t run quite that deep. Mom raised me better than that.)

If you want a Last Pad, both versions are available on the Beetle Percussion web site, and are worth every penny.

Happy chopping.

Pad Interestingness: a roundup of recent activity

In the last week or so, I’ve been devoting time to all sorts of pad research, DIT an improvements and a couple of acquisitions. Here's a roundup.

1. Vintage practice pads made using solid wood can be far more resonant — and louder! — than later pads using plywood. I like to make mutes for these older pads I’m scrap foam. This is my latest, using leftover scraps of ensolite camping pad material that I stacked, glued and shaped to fit. Works beautifully.

2. In high school, my section leader acquired a brand new pad that had just come out, called the Trankle Pocket Pad. He had money and his parents got him whatever drum gear he needed or wanted. The pad wasn’t cheap — over $20 in 1979! — but after trying it we all wanted one. I finally got one in college, and took it everywhere with me. But by the mid 1980s the company had folded and suddenly you couldn’t find the pads anymore. I sold that original pad to a classmate and always regretted it.

Last week, I bought another from a guy who’d had it since college. When it arrived, I could see and feel that the gum rubber was in bad shape, so I decided to replace it. It’s not pretty but it does work, and I’m happy with the results.

3. Six months ago, this little pad appeared in an online ad. The seller had offered it with sticks and an old woodblock, all from his uncle’s estate. He wanted $60 cash, in-person for the lot. I asked about buying just the pad but at the time he didn’t want to ship. So I thanked him, and waited. Occasionally, I’d check to see if the listing was still active. Two weeks ago, the pad appeared in a new listing by itself, now for far less money. I reached out to the seller and asked if he’d consider shipping it to me. He agreed. I mailed him a money order, he mailed me the pad and now it’s here. It’s the only pad from Pep Products (a small drum parts manufacturer based in Kankakee, Illinois during the mid-twentieth century) that I’ve seen that wasn’t made of a solid block of rubber.

It’s a calfskin head stretched over some kind of frame — plastic? Wood? I’m not sure — and mounted on a small wood platform with a tilt built in. It’s a small, delicate thing, likely from the late 1940s or early 50s, and I wouldn’t chop seriously on it at this point. But I’m thrilled to have this here for examination and research. If anyone can share more info about the Pep Products company, I’d be grateful.

Happy drumming!

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.

Timp mallet repairs, an ongoing project

Replace worn mallet heads on Duff-style threaded handles with felt cymbal washers and leather cut into washer rounds. Probably better for drum kit and concert toms than for timpani, though they will "break in" and soften with use.

I like how they turned out.

 

DIY Drummer: Odds-n-Ends -- repurposing, refurbishing

 On my way to swapping out for a smaller bass drum for my West Craft kit, I had an idea.
I asked Kaleb if he'd be interested in taking on a small side project in addition to refurbishing my bass drum. "No rush," I said, "I just wonder what it would look like if you gave this the West Craft treatment." Kaleb was intrigued and took home one of three vintage Ludwig practice pads I had.
All I told him was, "Do it up in shades of blue, and don't worry about the rubber because I'll clean that myself when you're all done."

Less than two hours later, he sent me three photos. He was intrigued.

When I get the finished pad I'll be sure to share it here.

Also, I received in a batch of sticks a mallets an extra, unmatched pair of vintage Ludwig timpani mallets. Both had badly degraded felts, and the heads had been glued to the shafts so removing them for replacement would be risky. They weren't so far apart in size and shape that I couldn't do SOMEthing with them, though.
So today, I decided to turn them into multipurpose mallets. I wrapped the harder of the two mallets with a few turns of the soft wool yarn to help equalize the hardness and size of the heads a little more. Then wrapped both heads vertically in rotating loops, the way yarn mallets are traditionally wound. I had taught myself how to do this in college, from a little booklet on mallet repair (I also used to recover my timpani mallets with new felt, using the instructions from the same booklet).

These mallets turned out to be a little on the big side, but that's okay. I figure they can be used for soft rolls on timpani, drumkit toms and maybe even some cymbals.

The yarn I chose was very thick ply, designed for use in scarves, potholders, hats and other thick things. It turned out to be quite useful for this application, because it's thick and soft.
Finally, To keep a couple hairline cracks from growing, I decided to wrap the wooden shafts in white stick tape. I added a second layer in the handle area to help improve the balance a little.

I'm pleased at how it turned out.

I have a couple new pads coming my way soon, and I look forward to putting through their paces and reporting about them here.

A reminder: If you or someone you know is connected to a company that makes pads, or that has historical documentation about pads the company made long ago, please let me know! I am always looking for new pads to test and review here; if you work with a company that is willing to send me a sample to test, that would be great. I don't have infinite funding to spend on this so I appreciate it when companies are willing to send me a pad. I also seek historical documentation about the design and development of practice pads, especially prior to 1940. If you can help, please let me know by reaching out to me through Facebook.

Thanks and happy drumming.

the ritual: taping up new sticks, and more

It's early summer, and the beginning of the marching season for so many of us.
Whether you march with an uber-modern DCI corps or your community band, summer is the time to play outside!
And so I've been readying myself and my gear.

1.  The heads that came with my Ludwig drum were, along with the snare hardware, pretty beat. The snare-side head had a hole almost as big as my pinky finger. It wasn't too close to the edge of the shell or I would've replaced it sooner. Still, when I noticed a split forming in the batter head -- a CS black dot that was almost as old as the drum -- I decided to bite the bullet and replace both heads.

2. While I was at it, the original strainer mechanism was beginning to fall apart. The tensioning screws for each individual snare had fallen out, and a few snares were missing. The remainder were showing a little surface rust. So after pondering my options, I replaced the entire thing with something simple and more modern (Gibraltar, for all its plainness, sells excellent, serviceable parts that stand up well to daily use). After all, this was never going to be a showpiece. I bought it as a player and the random scratches in the finish never bothered me. I got some trade-in on the parts at Revival, and the new hardware went on fairly easily. I only had to drill new holes for the butt plate.

3. I finally managed to re-shape the steel leg rest I'd scored, so that it would fit my older, larger thigh. (Don't blame that on weight-gain; my quads are a lot bigger now from all that cycling then they were when I was fourteen, and the platform had to be spread a little.)

 Early 1970s Ludwig 10 x 14" marching snare, with angle bar and new heads and strainer.

 With only eight lugs, there is no point in putting a super-high-tension head on this drum. It was meant to have Mylar heads and that's what it's got. I opted for the Power Stroke, which is what my marching snare drum had my senior year of high school. A tad later than the drum, but it sounds crisp and clean.

Mylar heads are tuned lower, meaning that the player has to do a little of the rebound work themselves. But if you tune the batter head a little high than the snare head, you'll get a crisp, dark sound that those of us of a certain age still know and love.

4. Next up: Sticks. After trying several different makes and models, I finally took my friend Mary's advice and went with the Vic Firth Jeff Queen signature model. Although Jeff designed it as a "solo" stick, honestly it's a fine ensemble stick, especially for smaller hands and for use on Mylar heads. With my arthritis, it's the stick I've kept coming back to. So when I pulled out my sticks after my last band practice and saw the telltale ridge (see photos), I knew it was time to buy new sticks and wrap them in fresh tape.

The ritual used to go like this: I'd go to the music shop, spend about half an hour finding two sticks of the same model that matched in pitch (in those days I'd settle for 1/4 to 1/2-step apart if I had to); then begging the shop owner for a quantity break on 4 pairs (he almost always said no, unless he'd just smoked a bowl), and then taking them home and setting out the stuff I'd need to wrap each pair in a fresh layer of white electrical tape. In high school, this would be trimmed in thin stripes of royal blue tape at both ends to make the sticks match our school colors. (In corps we didn't bother with trim, because the snare line went through sticks too quickly on tour. I swear, sometimes they'd tape up new show sticks every two to three days.)

This is something of a tiny ritual for me, and taping up new sticks always takes me back to my teen years as a marching member, in a sweet way.

I'm mostly packed for Honk! weekend, and looking forward to a great time playing live in the streets of South Seattle this weekend. I'm playing with the Unpresidented Brass Band. If you read this blog and come to the festival, find our band and say hello.

 

Above: a little vid. I'm just farting around, playing whatever I feel like. Sometimes it's nice not to have a plan. Cheers!