True, the Axis is much lighter than an Iron Cobra, so it will not be as loud. They were built for speed. I still have my Double longboard from when I played metal, and still use it in the band I'm in now. To remedy the volume issue, I use Gibraltar round felt beaters, use no muffling in the bass drum, & I have unique tuning where the batter head is higher than the reso, which is in jaw tuning. I tend to tune my drum slightly higher than most rock drummers b/c the bassist I play with uses a lot of low end EQ and gobbles up the really low frequencies. Of course if you mic your kick drum then volume is not and issue a all.