This allows you to practice some additional stick techniques such as rimshots, and it’s designed not to chew up your sticks. The chunky neoprene top is mounted to the CNC-cut Baltic birch base, giving you a sturdy feel along with a countersunk rim. The Blackout series offers the most ‘dead’ feel of its standard pads, with a thick yet soft playing surface that will force you to manipulate the sticks for each stoke while offering a reduced volume level compared to harder surfaces. ProLogix produces some of the most desirable-looking practice pads on the market, and across its busy product line there are plenty of options to choose from. Unlike the foam/rubber ‘drum mutes’ of old, these will maintain your enjoyment of playing your kit, and we love the fact that they’re a fast, temporary solution to killing noise without destroying vibe. They aren’t cheap, but they do perform as designed, and you can even buy a whole set to put over your kit. This means that you can practice on your regular snare without the usual volume, but still get some authentic sound and – thanks to the variable tension of the Black Hole – feel. When struck, the Black Hole will make your drum heads and snares resonate, but with way less volume and attack. Pair it with your snare drum, though, and it takes on an entirely more interesting purpose.Īs much a solution for noise as feel, this nifty playing surface sits on top of your drum’s batter-side rim and creates a gap between itself and the head of your drum. On its own, the Black Hole is a hoop with a tension-adjustable mesh head attached. But what if you simply don’t enjoy the feel or sound that a traditional practice pad creates? Enter the RTOM Black Hole. So far, all of the pads we’ve featured have been standalone models, very much an intentionally separate entity from your kit. Vic Firth also produces Mylar (drum head material) laminates to attach to the Stock Pad, giving you an even more realistic feel. Once again, the Stockpad is 12” in diameter with a wooden base, and the underside of the pad is fitted with a non-slip rubber surface to help fix the pad in place. While that adds up to a slightly less bulky pad, the tonal difference between the two is actually quite large, with the extra thickness of the Stockpad’s gum rubber surface giving you a lower pitched, warmer stick sound. While the Slim model’s reduced thickness makes it slightly more portable, in reality we’re talking about a difference of a couple of mm on the depth of the playing surface and a few grams lighter overall. The Heavy Hitter is available as two models: Slim or the Stockpad which we’ve chosen as our recommendation. Stick giant Vic Firth’s Heavy Hitter pads were first designed by hand technique guru/drumline monster/educator, Bill Bachman, and a quick glance at any one of Bill’s videos online should be enough to confirm that you’re in good, er, hands with this practice pad. We've got all the info you need to fid the right option for you and your budget. Practice pads are portable, come in different sizes, and have different playing surfaces to adjust your feel, plus the added benefit of being quiet means that you can make the ‘where’ and ‘when’ of your practice time much more flexible. Plus, putting in time on a pad allows you to focus on the nuances of these areas for extended periods without the ear fatigue that even a softly-played acoustic snare drum could induce.īy finding the right practice pad for you, and setting it up away from the kit, you can avoid the distraction of breaking from rudimental and technical practice into full-kit playing, meaning that you can set aside dedicated time for working on your stick technique, then take it back to the kit knowing it’s been well honed. By using a pad, you have the opportunity to develop the more mechanical side of playing the drums - developing control, speed, hand technique and muscle memory for sticking patterns in an arguably more focussed way - you don't have the kid in a candy store distraction of a full kit.
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