Muffeling weirdness

Bozozoid

Platinum Member
Have any of you ever put an automotive fan belt under the flange on your superphonic..anyone see this in oold issues of M.D.?. Anyone ever fill their bass drum with shredded newspaper or feathers?. Anyone go to a fabric store to get that clear material in various thickness using a drum head to cut the size out putting it on your toms?. Tell us about the out of the norm things you've done for muffeling and the results.
 
I had a super buzzy snare that just wouldn't shut up. I put packing peanuts in it. That killed everything. I put bandaids at either end of the wires. It helped some. I took medical tape and bound the wires together at the ends. The bandaids worked better. I tried numerous different types of wires. Still nothing.

Turns out the snare was set up to have extended wires and someone before me undid all of it. Once I put it back the buzzing all but stopped.

We went to the studio and decided to use triggers on everything except the snare. I bought 2 boxes of pillow stuffing and filled everything but the snare. Super dead, real quiet. The feel of the heads changed a bit too, they felt somewhat stiffer.
 
The strangest thing I ever did was to stick MaxiPads on the inside of a metal snare drum. I read about it somewhere. It was supposed to make the drum sound more like a wood drum, and it kinda worked! They didn't touch the heads, just the shell. Since I was using clear black dots at the time, it drew some strange looks.

Also, though it wasn't really for muffling, I made my own black dot heads when I was a teen. Drum heads were hard to come by, but my mom got me some black adhesive shelf liner and I cut circles out of it and stuck them on the heads. They worked pretty well, too.

Fun days!
 
I've put all kinds of stuff in a kick drum (some more acceptable than others):

pillows
carpet padding
clothes
blankets
etc.

I've used weather stripping on drum heads before. Heck, I've even put those foam remo things on the batter sides of the heads. Talk about super-dead (I had no idea what I was doing).

While I didn't do this, I've seen drums completely packed full of packing peanuts before. I think the intent was to trigger them, but it never happened.

There's no telling what all I have done to my drums if I could remember.
 
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