What do you put in your bass drum?

I've tried lots of things: small blanket, pillows of different sizes, foam blocks, cut up camping mattresses. I have a mid size pillow in my 20" mapex pro m bass drum, but I'm not getting enough resonance from the drum.

Anyone try the manufactured kick drum pillows? I think DW makes them.

Any other suggestions?
 
I've been using the DW gig pillow in my bass drum for almost 10 years . Never had any problems with it, or found it to be too much or too little damping, and I play a ton of gigs
every year.
 
In my 16", I cut a hand towel in two, rolled it up, and taped it to the 6 oclock inside both heads.
In my 20", I have a small, dense pillow that when layed inside, touches both heads (its a 14" deep) at the same time.
Neither are ported.
 
Absolutely nothing...used to put all kinds of crazy stuff in there, but learned how to tune the kick to have punch and low-end without overtones.
 
Absolutely nothing...used to put all kinds of crazy stuff in there, but learned how to tune the kick to have punch and low-end without overtones.

+1, nothing at all. learning to tune helps.
 
Lately I’ve been using a medium sized wool blanket rolled up (not folded) so it becomes a snake a couple of metres long. (It’s narrow enough to fit through the smallish hole in the reso head, although that doesn’t really matter.) I coil it up inside the drum, and then it’s easy to play around with how much blanket touches each head. (The reso hole is just big enough to let me reach inside.) Because it coils around itself, I can adjust the snake’s loops so they support whatever part is touching the head(s).

That might sound like a lot of blanket, but it’s actually pretty minimal, and I can go with no blanket touching either head if I want to.
 
26" bass drum.
Coated Ambassador batter.
Homemade rolled muffler for the batter, that goes between head and pedal posts.
Piece of Coated Ambassador for beater patch.
Smooth White front, open head.


Small piece of 1" thick Polyfoam sitting at bottom of shell to suck up excess "oooom" inside the shell that would be picked up by a mic and to speed the sound checking process through PA's.

4" port on 18 & 20x26" shells. 4" port, or no port on 16x26" drum.
 
Usually nothing. Sometimes a rolled towel, sometimes foam......it really depends on the situation.

That said, at the moment I have a bit foam in there. My practice room....which is actually just the spare room at home......has high ceilings, nothing on the walls and is just too bright and resonant. The drums just thunder throughout the house as a result. As I'm unable to make modifications to the room (the ire of Mrs Pocket would just not be worth the grief), I dampen my drums more than I usually would by muffling the bass drum and using Pinstripes on the tom batters. If I do a rare gig, it's back to an open kick and Emperor batters. But for the time being........a dampened kit it is.
 
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My bass drum is 100% air tight and I put chlorine gas in it.
 
I've tried lots of things [. . .] but I'm not getting enough resonance from the drum.

How much resonance do you want? If you want maximum resonance then I guess don't put anything inside the drum at all. If you want something that is easily adjustable and/or removable according to the situation then the blanket-type options are probably the best ideas because you can

  • fold such a thing into a pillow shape and tape it to your batter head or
  • cut it in half/quarters/eighths and subtract pieces until you get the resonance you want or
  • spread the whole thing along the bottom of the drum so it's making contact with both heads but is leaving a large part of the drum un-stuffed

As for me, like somebody already mentioned, when I play in my house I usually shove a bunch of cushions in there to avoid upsetting the wife/neighbours/dog too much; on stage I use an Aquarian Force 1 batter head that is a single ply head with an integral muffling ring. If the kit's unmic'ed I'll leave any additional padding out in order to project as much as possible. Padding or not for mic'ed situations really does depend on a great many variables - size of room, quality of microphones and/or PA, competence of sound engineer, proximity of other band member's amps to the kit etc etc.
 
I've tried lots of things: small blanket, pillows of different sizes, foam blocks, cut up camping mattresses. I have a mid size pillow in my 20" mapex pro m bass drum, but I'm not getting enough resonance from the drum.

Anyone try the manufactured kick drum pillows? I think DW makes them.

Any other suggestions?

You aren't getting enough resonance because you are killing the resonance. Stick bedding, mattresses, etc. will deaden the drum.

Use thicker heads, glue foam or felt to heads to thicken them and perhaps glue some felt or thin foam to part of the inside of the shell to reduce resonance. But you really shouldn't need much.
 
I have a pillow (I think it's a DW) that I stuff in there about half the time. The other half I don't put anything in there. I'm wishy-washy on this topic. I like big open, but I also like tight and punchy. I can't say I have a preference. They're just different.
 
The problem with putting things in the bass drum like pillow, blankets, etc is that it reduces the cubic area of the drum. A 22 with a pillow or a blanket can now have the cubic area reduced to that of a 20 and a 22 with nothing in it can sound similar to a 24 with a pillow. I use an Aquarian sk1 head with a ported regulator front head and thats it and people ask me all the time what size my drum is and when I tell them its a 22 they are suprised and often say it souds bigger than that. If you require more resonance than a premuffled head can give than maybe try the felt strip. Adding things that will reduce the inside area of the drum should be a last resort.
 
Buy an Aquarian Super II kick drum head, and you'll never want to put anything in your bass drum again.

Except maybe a microphone.
 
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