Where Do You Position Your Beater

Witterings

Silver Member
Roughly where do most place their beater, I've always put mine so it lands dead center of the kick but looking at a few videos recently and an awful lot of people have it land certainly higher than the mid point.

If I do raise it apart from more power are then any other advantages / disadvantages and how much above mid point should it be ... roughly 2/3rds of the way up??
 
I only ever encounter 22 inch kicks and I put the beater so it hits two inches above centre of the batter head (so the beater head is 13 inches from the bass pedal bottom plate).

JoJo Mayer describes in his Secret Weapons no.2 video that on a 20 inch bass drum, he puts the beater 1.5 inches above the centre (so, beater is 11.5 inches from bass pedal baseplate).

He does this off-centre approach for sonic reasons (rather than rebound e.t.c.). Personally, my ears can't tell too much difference, but I do enjoy the extra power.

Moving the beater higher will give more power as you rightly say, but will also make the pedal feel heavier/more sluggish.

JoJo describes a great method of using beater weights to counterbalance the feel (i.e. have a weight lower down the beater shaft) of a heightened beater.

I love JoJo. Seriously recommend the purchase of both his videos.
 
I position mine so that it's pretty much dead center on a 24" kick. However I no longer own a 24, so they hit a little above center on my 22" and noticeably above center on my 20". On my 18" (which does not have a riser), I have to lower my beater about an inch from where I normally keep it. But that works out, as I like to hit that bass drum a bit lighter, and the shorter throw helps with that.
 
22" kick drum, and dead center (or really close to it).
 
Actually I hadn't thought about it in terms of how big the drum is and the one I'm using at the moment is actually a Roland pad.

they've mad them so there's a large gap at the bottom and it's about 19" off the ground, there a very obvious trigger area in the center, I'm guessing as long as the beater's hitting somewhere within that zone it'll be fine but just down to me to experiment and see where I prefer it both for power and rebound.
 
Never in the center. Too little rebound, and kind of a dead sound there.
 
Odd man out here, but I choose beater height based on the feel. Where it hits is of secondary importance to me. I use the same beater height on my 24" bass drum and my 18" bass drum. They both sound just fine.
 
I also just do it by feel for the most part. IDEALLY, I like it somewhat off center for the sound, and I believe that the 2 pedals I use are setup to be that way on any size kick but I haven't checked in a while, and unless the kick fairly open sounding I don't seem to notice one way or another.
 
Odd man out here, but I choose beater height based on the feel. Where it hits is of secondary importance to me. I use the same beater height on my 24" bass drum and my 18" bass drum. They both sound just fine.

Ditto. I have it placed based on where it ended up when dialing the pedal in. I don't change it regardless of which kit I put it on and am regularly changing kits depending on where I am playing (home, two different churches both with house kits and different diameter bass drums). I think the sound production differences are minimal and the playability on a 20" vs. 22" is even slighter than that.
 
My gig kit is a 20" bass but the practice kits are 22 as are most backline kits I have to use for certain venues. I always have the beater hit about an inch above centre. Have done this for years. I don't know if it has any effect on the tone but it just feels right. As with everything else on a kit such as throne height, snare height, tom height/angle it comes down to personal preference. Take a look at Procul Harem's drummer for instance where he sits so low he's referred to as "an octopus in a bathtub". If it feels right...play it that way.
 
It's strange I've never thought about this much... I guess it's usually center unless it's a smaller drum and then it's a big higher... I don't want to adjust the beater height each time I move to a new kit.
 
Some pedals cause the beater to be a bit off center right or left the way the rim mount works and because the head is round it would be the same as being off center vertically. Some adjust left and right as well. Mine is intentionally about one inch above center vertically.
 
More or less centered, usually just above center, never below. Determined more by feel than any particular sound.
 
I extend the beaters on my pedal to a wee bit under their max length. That gives me the best feel. I bounce between 22” and 24” kicks and on the 22” it’s an inch or two above center but I could care less about where it lands on the head. Optimum beater shaft length and the resulting feel are what matters to me.
 
Centre on my 22, 18 and 16. I've cut down the beater rod and use a different pedal for my 16. The centre of the head of my 18 is at exactly the same height as the 22 because of the riser - I've not adjusted my beater height for years, if ever.
 
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