I occasionally stuff my bass drum with a dead hooker.
I find it really cuts down on all those extraneous noises like police sirens and such
I occasionally stuff my bass drum with a dead hooker.
I find it really cuts down on all those extraneous noises like police sirens and such
You mean to tell me that there are people out there who still put things inside of their bass drums!
That's crazy! There are special heads to prevent the need for that silliness now-a-days.
I haven't stuffed in many years. At least not my bass drum!
For a brief period of time I did drum maintenance on kit in a recording studio, a really nice set of Pearl birch drums, can't remember what kind.
One day I put new heads on all the drums, tuned them very well and they sounded great. The bass drum had both heads on, no port in the resonant head. It sounded deep and full and way punchy.
About a month after that I went in to find that one of the engineers had removed the front head and stuffed the bass drum full of anything he could lay his hands on. All the lug screws were missing and the entire kit looked like it had been dragged behind a truck. That was the end of that.
Whenever I go in there now I make it a point to avoid looking at those drums. Now I'm not knocking people who feel the need to muffle their bass drums, but why take an expensive, well-made bass drum and make it sound like a suitcase stuffed with dirty laundry?
Totally agree. Even before there were pre-muffled bass drum heads, I never put anything inside. I only used felt strips. Now they're just built into the heads. Perfect.
That is hardly wide open. Ya know, nobody likes the remo muffle things really ANYwhere as far as I can tell, but I got one along with each of my kick drums. Didnt buy them, they just came along. And I like them! They give both my kicks and nice loud THUMP and they sound great miked. And how is that any different then an emad anyway? Except they don't break! I will say they are ugly as heck but too bad. I'm using them going forward. I was going to buy an emad today but screw that. I already own these.
One of the wildest things I've seen was Bryant Mills with his Pearl MCM about a third full of shredded newspaper....
The wide open comment is meant to describe the inside of my drum..as in nothing stuffed inside...regarding your other comments...I haven't had an EMAD break on me yet...got two of them (20" 5+ yrs. old, 22" 2+ yrs. old)...the remo rings are different than emad..in that they go on the inside (under head) and cover the bearing edge and also mute the drum considerably more...
I understand this newspaper idea. I like a controlled BOOM from my bass. Pillows and blankets produced too much "thud" for my liking. I read that Rikki Rockitt used Styrofoam packaging peanuts to help produce the BOOM while eliminating the overtones. The idea is to have light pressure on both heads.
I tried it and it worked fine for a while, until the Styrofoam started to disintegrate. After a while, my bass drum had mostly dust and only a few peanuts! A real mess to clean up!
After trying a couple of different materials, I settled on plastic grocery bags. I tossed a handful in the bass drum and rocked the drum back and forth until the bags settle against both heads. PERFECT! I love the sound and the feel, plus no mess.
So nobody just leaves it as it is?