DRUM DAMPENING

D

Dbol

Junior Member
Is it worth buying a drum dampening pillow from your music store of choice or just go to Walmart and buy a economy pillow? Please post what you use.
 
Neither.

I've never used pillows or ever put anything in my drums.

If I need to dampen for some really quiet gigs (boomy coffee houses, musicals, etc.) I use moongel, about 2-3 per tom/snare.
 
I don't put anything in my bass drum unless there will be a microphone put in the drum or one facing the front port. If there is a microphone, then I put a large bath towel in the bass drum. I lay the towel on the inside bottom of the drum just touching the batter and resonant head.

If you use a store brought pillow it will probably not touch the heads like it should. The ones made for bass drums are usually long and flat.


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From my humble beginnings in the early 70s, I think I've done everything: bed pillows, big oriental pillows, blankets, etc.,.... When I go with nothing, both front and back heads are PowerStroke 3 or 4, and that gives you a nice round tone with its built-in muffling. But if miking it, then a ported front head goes on and additional damping are put in the drum. I like DW's pillows because for whatever depth of bass drum, the pillow lightly leans on both heads - my 18" depth works great with those pillows. I have another pillow that lightly touches both heads on a 14" depth drum.
 
If looking to save some cash I'd say an official drum pillow is an unnecessary expense. Towels or small folded blankets of given dimension would do...it certainly did for thousands of recordings of drums.
 
No dampening whatsoever, and no pre-muffled heads either. I've used an ordinary pillow in the bass drum in the studio a long time ago, but that wasn't my choice.
 
Gottliver said:
An old hooded sweatshirt works well too.
Click to expand...

We've only recently started putting my bass drum and snare drum through our PA. We don't have a bass bin but the two powered tops we have deliver enough oomph that the bass drum certainly gets felt and having the bass player and guitarist DId into the PA makes everything more controlled sounding.
Anyway, I have an emad batter head and unported front head, sometimes we can put the mic on the front head and it works, other times there's a boominesss there that has us ending up by micing the batter side. A solution I tried a few weeks back was to lean my stick bag against the front head. Result. At Sunday's gig I pre emptively took off my hoodie, folded it neatly and laid it on the floor against the front head. Again, result. I'll probably go down this route in future, its adjustable plus I know where my hoodie is at the end of the night.
For toms and snares I use Aquarian or Evans Studio Rings. In one band I'm always fully micd through a large PA so every drum gets one, in the other I leave my toms free and whether or not my snare gets a ring put on it comes down to how it sounds as we sound check. It is the quickest and most efficient fix so I tend not to use gel or tape or build up incrementally, it's either all or nothing.
 
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