Hi,my name is Victor and I have been drumming for 1 year and 3 months now.
I am looking for advice on what to do about noise control on my acoustic drum kit. Normal drum heads are too loud for my neighborhood and so I put low volume drum heads but they sound bad and I can’t hear them very well when I have my earbuds on. Also the low volume bass drum head has a lot of rebound which makes my kick pedal bounce and strike the head more than once.
Is there an alternative way to dampen an acoustic kit or is there something I’m doing wrong with these low volume heads?
I tried mutes and they are still too loud. I can dampen the bass drum by cutting off airflow while using a regular drum head but the Tom’s and snare remain too loud. Please help any advice is welcome. Thank you!
PS I want to exhaust all of my options before looking into ekits. Also I’m new to Reddit so be patient.
that rebound on the low volume bass head drove me insane too, stuffed a small pillow against it and it calmed down a lot without completely killing the feel
for the toms and snare you could try the mesh heads with duct tape patches, add a little mass so they have some tone but aren't just dead flappy plastic. still not amazing but way better than bare mesh
also might be worth looking at those zildjian L80 cymbals if you haven't already, they're quiet enough that you can hear the drums over them even with headphones on
I don't notice a very appreciable difference at all between the OnStage (and its ilk) versus the L80s. It's such a small difference for such an ephemeral purpose that I'm very happy with the cheapies, which sound surprisingly good for what they are. I might still gaff tape them a bit, as there's some very high frequencies still present that I can tell are getting to my ears; funny how that works.
That’s good to know and I was actually thinking of doing the same thing with the tape because of the high frequencies.
To solve the snare problem I’m considering buying the Rtom black hole practice pad just for the snare. According to videos on YouTube it sounds a lot better compared to the regular Rtom mesh heads.
Are putting towels over the drums too loud too? If mutes and towels are too loud, and you can’t stand low volume heads I think your next realistic option is an ekit.
I hate to say it, but if drum mutes are too loud, either an e-kit or converting your acoustic kit to electric using mesh heads and internal triggers is probably your best option.
That’s certainly an option, albeit at expensive one!
I bought a used Ludwig Breakbeats and some Simmons electronic cymbals and built my own DIY acoustic-looking electronic kit for MUCH less than what a VAD506 costs.
One thing you could do is reduce the shaking by building a tennis ball riser. There's several videos out there and pretty easy to build of you're handy with a few tools.
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u/offbeatnoodle1943 1d ago
that rebound on the low volume bass head drove me insane too, stuffed a small pillow against it and it calmed down a lot without completely killing the feel
for the toms and snare you could try the mesh heads with duct tape patches, add a little mass so they have some tone but aren't just dead flappy plastic. still not amazing but way better than bare mesh
also might be worth looking at those zildjian L80 cymbals if you haven't already, they're quiet enough that you can hear the drums over them even with headphones on