Drum Accessories-The Good, The Bad, The Worthless

[017]

Bearing edge conditioners and/or lubricants are worthless. Most notably when you're using modern plastic heads.

 

[rsmittee]

I just bought the little TnR booty shakers for my snare stand. I have a crappy old Pearl tom that totally chokes on the tom mount, so we'll see if the booty shakers on a snare stand do the trick.

 

[richardh253]

Hoop mount stick holder... used it for a couple days. It barely held two sticks at crazy wonky angles... I was using 2Bs at the time. I know why they stopped making them. Anyway, it mounted to where I wanted to put my cowbell holder. In a box she went... still there. I saw a rusty old one on Reverb for $75, oh the shame!

View attachment 567597

Ludwig also had a splash cymbal mount that went in the same space, where your cowbell ought. I recall they gave them away as freebies with, I think, the initial ads for psych red and mod orange.

 

[richardh253]

And the Ludwig cowbell holders that mounted under a tension rod, making the rod unturnable, metal to metal contact with all its sound and abrasive bonuses, and the sympathetic tom resonance when you hit the cowbell. Featured on the blue note kit as I recall

 

[hsosdrum]

Just for s**ts and grins, last year I bought a couple sets of "Original Booty Shakers" for my floor-tom legs. They're 3"-diameter foam cylinders (made from two different kinds of dense foam) that the leg tips insert into. They're supposed to increase floor-tom resonance and although they indeed did increase FT resonance, they increased it way too much, making the drumset sound unbalanced. And speaking of unbalanced, the foam caused the floor toms to shake around way too much under my sticks and made it very difficult to shift the positions of the drums on the floor.

After using them for a few days they went into "The Drawer Of No Return".

 

[Rich K.]

Great accessories...
Crash Pad drum rug. Can fold and roll up to fit a hardware bag. The block keeps the bass drum from moving. Only thing is, they used to be $40, now they're up to twice that.

Cymbal crowns. They have 8mm and 6mm for most stands. They'll work on 1/4 American stands as well. You don't need the felts, though I use one anyway. If you have old cymbals with small holes, you can easily file the top nub down and use old As and Ks.

A roll of real gaffer tape. (NOT DUCT TAPE!! Big difference.) Great for muffling. You can remove the piece and reapply it for years. Just PLEASE don't make that stupid fold. One guy did that a million years ago, and everyone else did it. There's zero reason for it..
Plus, with gaffer tape you can, in a pinch, repair any stand or pedal, yet when you remove the tape it won't leave a gooey mess.

Those remo O ring or similar by other brands. I keep them nearby on every gig. They really do the trick for small rooms, or times when you really don't need lots of ring (rings to reduce ring!!). Easy to take on and off... can do it in a second.

Not "worthless," but accessories I don't really get (anymore).
Moongel, drum dots, dollar store window clings, etc. They do a good job, but they can get messy and if you move or remove them, it's a pain to reuse them. Gaffer tape is just so much better for the same thing.
Any cymbal topper that comes off, like those wing nuts that you pinch and slide instead of threading on like a wing nut. I just don't get it. They can still come off and fall down the back of the stage while you're setting up. I guess if you like to "clamp'' down a felt for muffling a cymbal it might make sense, but I never used them.

 

[TheBeachBoy]

Brushes don't sound like sticks played quietly. If that's the sound you want, just learn to play quieter

The sound is the tradeoff. I know how to play quiet - the problem is physics. One gig we played a school classroom and we had to be so quiet that tapping the drums with my fingers was almost too loud. Same with a coffee shop gig we did. There is no way to play "A Hard Day's Night" or Led Zeppelin with sticks and still be quiet enough in those rooms with tile and open space. We were hired to play our set and I did what I had to do to play at the extremely low volume and that included using the "wrong" tool, which really was the right tool for the job.

 

[bpaluzzi]

A roll of real gaffer tape. (NOT DUCT TAPE!! Big difference.) Great for muffling. You can remove the piece and reapply it for years. Just PLEASE don't make that stupid fold. One guy did that a million years ago, and everyone else did it. There's zero reason for it..

Hard disagree. A flat piece of tape sounds dramatically different from a piece with one “wing”, and adding more wings makes an even bigger change.

 

[Rich K.]

Hard disagree. A flat piece of tape sounds dramatically different from a piece with one “wing”, and adding more wings makes an even bigger change.

And a watched pot doesn't boil. I doubt there is any difference...it would make no sense. Dramatically different??

 

[bpaluzzi]

And a watched pot doesn't boil. I doubt there is any difference...it would make no sense. Dramatically different??

How would it make no sense? And yes, dramatically different. Have you actually tried it?

 

[BlackPearl]

Where do you figure this one falls on the good to worthless spectrum ( from a 1991 Modern Drummer)?

 

[mtarrani]

Where do you figure this one falls on the good to worthless spectrum ( from a 1991 Modern Drummer)? View attachment 567794

The ad does emphasize showmanship instead of utility supporting musicianship or anything practical, so I suppose it would fall into the useless as a tool category. As for the 'cool' factor, I guess that depends on who you are trying to impress and in which decade (or in this case, century.)

 

[6topher]

No Nuts are far, far superior to grombels.

Remo quick release clutch. The gibraltar one is way clunkier and ball bearings are bound to fail eventually.

Gibraltar floor tom suspension feet. Cheap and not goofy looking like the pearl ones, so really great for vintage kits.

I don't use them but the Big Fat Snare Drum products work. You can tune your snare high & tight but get instant fat blues snare with them.

Moongels. Still the best bang for your buck. I use 1 on my snare and it goes closer to the rim when I need resonance to cut, and closer to the center when I'm close mic'd and they never fall off.

3 in 1 oil. Just a drop or 2 on any metal to metal parts. Don't put it in the lugs, apply just a bit to any threads.

 

[Malc]

The good

The bad.

The worthless.

 

[DanRH]

Many, but top three for me…
LiveBPM app.
Rock n’ Roller cart
Drum Dial

 

[TheBeachBoy]

Remo quick release clutch. The gibraltar one is way clunkier and ball bearings are bound to fail eventually.

Gibraltar floor tom suspension feet. Cheap and not goofy looking like the pearl ones, so really great for vintage kits.

I prefer the Gibraltar clutch because I feel the ball bearings are more solid and help spread the load better. It feels like a pneumatic hose connector to me whereas the Remo only has two little metal prongs, one of which broke on me after a couple years. The Gibraltar has now lasted me at least twice that long. The Remo does look more streamlined but the Gibraltar has grown on me.

I also think the Gibraltar suspension feet look nicer. I haven't done a side-by-side sound comparison with the Pearl feet but the Gibraltar feet give me a nice open floor tom.

 

[DWSlingerland45]

Meinl Ching ring
Meinl Mike Johnston cowbell can't remember the name " groove bell"?
Big Fat snare drum
Snare weight several models owned use them all

 

[BlackPearl]

The ad does emphasize showmanship instead of utility supporting musicianship or anything practical, so I suppose it would fall into the useless as a tool category. As for the 'cool' factor, I guess that depends on who you are trying to impress and in which decade (or in this case, century.)

Its actually review of the item, not an ad - I think the reviewer was struggling to say something nice about it when he talked about showmanship

 

[BruceOrl]

Just for s**ts and grins, last year I bought a couple sets of "Original Booty Shakers" for my floor-tom legs. They're 3"-diameter foam cylinders (made from two different kinds of dense foam) that the leg tips insert into. They're supposed to increase floor-tom resonance and although they indeed did increase FT resonance, they increased it way too much, making the drumset sound unbalanced. And speaking of unbalanced, the foam caused the floor toms to shake around way too much under my sticks and made it very difficult to shift the positions of the drums on the floor.

After using them for a few days they went into "The Drawer Of No Return".

They got me too. Mine currently reside on the bookshelf of shame, right next to the white "Need more cowbell" cowbell.

 

[mtarrani]

Its actually review of the item, not an ad - I think the reviewer was struggling to say something nice about it when he talked about showmanship

Believe me, in that magazine a review was an ad.