Kick Drum Mute

roboboticus

Junior Member
I'm looking for a way to get my kick practice in without driving the housemates insane. I'm in the basement, so just a little volume dampening would do the trick; my main concern is not the amount of volume cut, but the feel/rebound. At the moment, I'm considering either a Vic Firth Bass Drum Mute or a pair of Hansenfutz practice pedals.

Has anyone tried the one of those mutes on their kick drum? How does it feel? Any opinions on the Hansenfutz pedals? Should I save my money and just put some cardboard on the bass drum head?

Thanks
 
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I'm looking for a way to get my kick practice in without driving the housemates insane. I'm in the basement, so just a little volume dampening would do the trick; my main concern is not the amount of volume cut, but the feel/rebound. At the moment, I'm considering either a Vic Firth Bass Drum Mute or a pair of Hansenfutz practice pedals.

Has anyone tried the one of those mutes on their kick drum? How does it feel? Any opinions on the Hansenfutz pedals? Should I save my money and just put some cardboard on the bass drum head?

Thanks

Get a mesh head, no one will hear it and you'll get a good feel.
 
Get a mesh head, no one will hear it and you'll get a good feel.

That's a cool idea, and mesh would be great, but it's out of my price range — all the mesh kick triggers I see are at least $250. Plus, I'd have to move my double pedal back and forth between my kit and the mesh all the time, unless I got a separate pedal as well.

I'm really curious to hear any feedback on the feel of the Vic Firth bass drum mute. Anybody?
 
I use those mutes every time me and my band practice at my house. They get the job done but I never use them when I practice by myself.

I think it probably depends on the stuff you are playing. I do a lot of double bass stuff, for example, and the rebound of the mute is not good at all, so sometimes I don't attempt the double bass stuff that I normally would do with the pad. I feel like if I played with the mute all the time it would really mess up my foot technique. If you aren't doing a lot with the kick it might work better for you.

Also I should mention, that the bass drum mute, specifically (the other mutes are fairly durable) seems to fall apart easily. My first mute was like the one in the picture on the link you provided with the pad in the middle. After no longer than a week of playing on this mute, the foam that the pad is attached to started to come apart from the rest of the mute and eventually fell off. So then I bought a Sound Percussion mute that is basically flat, with no pad in the middle, and these seem to last longer. However, I do have to replace them every few months (remember, this is with my using them only at band practice, which is about once a week).

Anyway, as I said I use the mutes and they work, but they are imo not fun to play on at all, and the bass drum mutes fall apart easily.
 
Get a mesh head, no one will hear it and you'll get a good feel.

The mesh heads on bass drums have to be high quality. I had a Pearl mesh head on mine and it was trashed within a couple of weeks.Either that or get a Falam Slam pad to put on the impact zone.
 
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