Velcro in the bass drum, thoughts?

klopee

klopee

Senior Member
I have been having a hard time keeping whatever i use to muffle my bass drum from moving around and shifting durring travel, I was wondering if laying a strip of velcro along the inside bottom of the kick drum would greatly affect the sound, or is all ok?

if this is kosher, how much space should i leave between the end of the velcro and the end of the shell?
 
klopee said:
I have been having a hard time keeping whatever i use to muffle my bass drum from moving around and shifting durring travel, I was wondering if laying a strip of velcro along the inside bottom of the kick drum would greatly affect the sound, or is all ok?

if this is kosher, how much space should i leave between the end of the velcro and the end of the shell?
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Not kosher and you'll just create a new problem- how to keep the velcro attached to the drum.
 
I have the DW pillow, too, but I never bothered with the velcro (just didn't want any sticky adhesive in my shell). The pillow is sized for an 18" depth so I didn't think it was necessary, and it works really well.
 
Les Ismore said:
Not kosher and you'll just create a new problem- how to keep the velcro attached to the drum.
Click to expand...

sorry for not being more clear.. I have velcro with adheisive back

so based on the input, im good to go?
 
I have a DW-style pillow (made by a guy I found on eBay) and I just set it inside my kick, without using the velcro. The adhesive cures on the velcro after 24 hrs. and it makes it tough to get it out. I didn't want anything stuck to the inside of my beautiful, expensive drum. ;)

It makes tuning a little easier, IMO. When I flip the drum over the pillow flops to the opposite side and I can better judge the sound at each lug, when I tap. It falls right back into place when the drum is set back down.
 
I just got really good at jiggling the bass drum to get the pillow right. There have been a few times that it took a few minutes to "undo" the pillow's contortion after a ride in the car! :)

It is kinda nice in that you can sort of set how much muffling you want, depending on where the pillow is in the drum.

-Ryan
 
Just a thought... is there anyway you could tether the pillow to the screws that hold the lugs on the inside of the kick with string or something? That way you didn't have to have anything permanently attached to the inside of your kick but you could have your muffling placed exactly where you want it?
 
klopee said:
sorry for not being more clear.. I have velcro with adheisive back

so based on the input, im good to go?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what DW uses, but 3M's adhesive is on the back of a lot of velcro and that stuff doesn't cure and it produces a horrible smell that builds-up inside a drum. I actually had to throw some velcro out of my storage room (still in the pack) b/c it stunk so bad.

To stick or not to stick. I guess it depends on how you value your bass drum. I had a Premier APK set once, I just drove two drywall screws through the pillow and into the bass drum shell, never had to worry about the pillow again. It only left small holes which you couldn't even see when removed. I wouldn't do this to a nicely finished maple bass drum, but luan/mahogany with black paint... no problem.


Great idea- Drum co's should look into putting threaded inserts inside bass drum shell bottoms. Nice, clean looking affairs you can screw your padding down to. Two little 1/4" inserts wouldn't affect tone, but sure would make muffling the bass drum easier.
 
Another method I have heard of from my friend, is to use little towels rolled up with tape in the center, I have yet to try this method, mainly cause of the inconsistency of the towel placement. . but he really loved it, I guess you place just enough mini towels to cover the bottom of the drum. . that way you dont have to worry about putting velcro in your drum. . you just make sure all the towels are layin in the drum. . . like i said havent ever tried it but it may work for you. . .
 
I use Velcro for all kinds of things and I think it would work very well inside the drum. You might want to put some corresponding velcro on the pillow to help hold it in place. No one is going to pay much attention to what's under the pillow so I wouldn't worry about velcro there.

As a separate issue, you shouldn't need to stuff bedding inside your drum and kill its sound. You can do sound control by using thicker heads and tuning. I wouldn't stuff a pillow in any of my toms either.
 
Deathmetalconga said:
As a separate issue, you shouldn't need to stuff bedding inside your drum and kill its sound. You can do sound control by using thicker heads and tuning. I wouldn't stuff a pillow in any of my toms either.
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I can understand that...but really, does everyone want a big, booming, ringing bass drum? I've tried all of mine "wide open" like this and found that while they sometimes sound really good to me in the room, they record really poorly this way.

I don't think it "kills" the sound of the drum, it just helps put focus on the attack of the beater and gets rid of all those nasty, reflective, bright overtones.

You play an 18" though - which I wouldn't muffle at all either. It has enough punch as it is. Anything 22" or bigger benefits from some kind of muffling (for me anyhow).
 
Deathmetalconga said:
You might want to put some corresponding velcro on the pillow to help hold it in place.
Click to expand...

that was the plan ;)

Deathmetalconga said:
As a separate issue, you shouldn't need to stuff bedding inside your drum and kill its sound. You can do sound control by using thicker heads and tuning. I wouldn't stuff a pillow in any of my toms either.
Click to expand...

I've always hated the sound of a big boomy kick.. i prefer a focused sound without a lot of overtones
 
DW kits come standard with the velcro attached to the shell. I really don't see any huge disadvantage to having two pieces of it stuck to the bass drum, when their purpose in the first place is to hold a pillow in place.
 
ok, so now that its been decided that i AM going to put velcro in the kick, how much of a gap should i leave between the velcro and the shell edge, to allow the skin to reverberate without touching the velcro
 
klopee said:
ok, so now that its been decided that i AM going to put velcro in the kick, how much of a gap should i leave between the velcro and the shell edge, to allow the skin to reverberate without touching the velcro
Click to expand...

I would think you'd want a lot of room there... you're just doing it to keep the muffling pillow in the right place so just put it wherever you place the pillow. I wouldn't necessarily try to put it right up to the edge. Plus in the future if you decide to use different muffling and you have it away from the edge, you could use it for that muffling too instead of having to put more down.
 
i have some velcro thats about 2" thick, and i was planning on running a strip across the inside botton (leaving a gap on either end so it doesnt affect the resonation of either head)

this way if and when i change what i use to muffle, i can just attached a corasponding piece of velcro to the new muffler and can position it anywhere inside of the shell
 
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