Review: Rock Band Drum Pads

Author: Vince | Date: August 4, 2008

I love drumming in Rock Band, but due to some bad drum kit design my neighbors really don’t appreciate it. The loud, constant tap-tap-tap coming from the plastic drum skins travels pretty well through walls and ultimately means an early end for the evenings drumming, but those times are no more thanks to these rather fetching pads from RockBandDrumPads.com.

For a measly £7.50 ($14.99), plus £3 ($6) for international postage from America, you get 8 self adhesive high density foam pads, 4x 6.5″ diameter black pads and 4x 7″ pads, one red, one yellow, one blue, one green, plus you get a pad to stick on your bass pedal too.

First up, postage and packaging… It took a little over a week for the pads to be delivered to me in the UK, and they were well packaged and undamaged. Next up, attaching the pads. Firstly you need to peel off the backings and attach the coloured pads to the appropriate coloured drum on the kit, you can leave them like this but you will not get the full dampening effect and they look a little bit stupid with solid coloured drums…

I was quite surprised with how easily they went on, leaving no air bubbles at all. As the photo above does show, sadly they don’t quite fit exactly on to the drum skin, but you do have to be quite close to notice the millimeter or two gap. Once these are on you can put the smaller black discs on, and this is the tricky bit as you have to guesstimate where the middle of the drum is so that you get a roughly equal gap all the way round, again making sure there is no air bubbles.

I have now been using these pads for a few weeks and can certainly say I’m impressed. They seem to be standing up to the beating quite well and when they do finally perish it will be OK as they peel away with very little enticing, leaving no glue behind on the skin. Also, there is absolutely no loss in sensitivity on the drums, and by that I mean that you do not need to hit the drums any harder just to make sure it registers the hit.

Once on, these make one hell of a difference, the tap-tap-tap becomes a much duller thud-thud-thud, and while it’s not much quieter for the people standing around you, your neighbors will really thank you for it! Plus the drums look much sexier with black skins than the standard gray. Definitely a worthwhile investment for all those Rock Band drummers.

These drum pads are available for $15 via mail order (PayPal accepted!) from RockBandDrumPads.com.

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