Hello e-drum colleagues,
I am Gerdy and writing from Germany.
Please excuse my English and used terms I could not get translated.
If you are interested, the whole drum kit setup can be found here:
http://www.dmdrummer.com/index.php?topic=3316.0I must start by saying the following:
1.) You do not need this, if you can practice without disturbing your neighbours and / or family.
2.) The pedestal is a heavy construction and thereby non-qualified as a transportable “stage pedestal”
3.) I cannot guarantee that it works with your drum rack and bass drum too.
Please understand I had to mention that.Let’s talk about the impact noise hitting the floor:With every beat you do on your drum kit, you are producing noise and an additional “shock wave”. You can keep the noise inside a room, but not the impact noise. The “shock wave” moves through the drum rack and hits the floor. Depending on your beat, the drum rack and its material, the “shock wave” is different in its strength.
The bass drum pad produces very strong “shock waves”, because it’s directly on the floor.
And do not think it only concerns the next room beneath your room. The “shock wave” moves along the floor, affects the walls and transfers the “shock wave” up and down.
That’s the reason, why you can “hear” neighbours anywhere inside of a house doing DIY with a hammer.
Initial situation:I’ am living on the third floor in a nice attic flat. My drum kit is setup in the living room and enables me practicing at anytime. Certainly the families in the second and first floor were informed in advance. (And believe me, I looked into big eyes^^)
After receiving the drum kit I did some tests and asked the families, if they can “hear” me. Yes of course, they did, all of them. Damn, I expected it only a bit on the second floor and not on the first floor too. And believe me the whole house is of heavy building. And here we got the reason. The reinforcement inside the concrete transported the impact noise along the floor into the walls. Especially the bass drum was the heaviest delinquent. It sounded like a rhythmic DIY hammer session to them.
Pads and cymbals disturbed them only a bit. That was unacceptable to all of us.
Should I rent a rehearsal room and spend money to all additional costs coming up with it ?
No, I had to do this with my acoustic drum set and would not have bought an e-drum kit to give up at this point.
The Hellfire-mesh-conversion brought me a small step up. Especially the impact noise caused from the bass drum pad was a bit reduced.
The final solution was a pedestal with impact noise insulation.
Simply adding wooden boards and rubber pads together do not do it.
We need something which decouples our pedestal from the floor.
Unfortunately flying carpets are sold out, so we have to use another trick.
Here it comes: Halved tennis balls
Did you ever try to compress a tennis ball ?
To be honest the pedestal construction using halved tennis balls was not of my idea.
A German e-drummer showed it on Youtube.
How does it work ?Most of the impact noise is absorbed inside the pedestal construction. The halved tennis balls underneath are decoupling the pedestal from the floor and ensure a small locating surface.
And here is it what it looks like:Size: 1,62m x 1,52m x 18cm / 64 Inch x 60 Inch x 7 Inches
All materials are from the DIY market…and the tennis balls are stolen from the nearby tennis court. Ok, do not slide into trouble, but you may ask if you could get used tennis balls for low costs. Ebay and some sports shops selling used ones. You do not need high quality.
Let’s look to the material we need:- Drum mat or carpet on top of the pedestal.
- Old carpet. Later it lies between pedestal and floor.
- 2x wooden boards in your preferred size. 2cm / 0.8 Inch or 1 Inch thickness is ok.
- “Anti-vibration rubber mats”. A special rubber used underneath washing machines.
- Tennis balls. 9 to 10 are ok.
- Power adhesive gel / Power glue gel. The heavy stuff, you know, to build for eternity.
We do not use any nails, screws ore something like that, because metal transports the impact noise. All components are only glued together.
Preparations:We cut the rubber mats in slices 30cm x 30cm / 12 Inch x 12 Inch.
Afterwards we take 3 of it and glue it together.
That way we build 12 rubber cuboids.
Now we cut the tennis balls into halves. Believe me it is not as simply as you might think.
Take a sharp box cutter to do that. In my case I used 9 tennis balls and got 18 halves.
Setup:The sketch shows you how I placed the rubber cuboids (black) to the upper wooden board and together with the halved tennis balls (yellow) to the lower wooden board:
The halved tennis balls are glued with its “good side” to the rubber cuboids.
Later on its “open side” is directly on the floor.
And here are the layers how it has to look like:From up to down:- Drum mat or carpet
- Wooden board
- 6x rubber cuboids, each with 3 slices
- Wooden board
- 6x rubber cuboids, each with 3 slices
- Halved tennis balls
- Old carpet saving the floor against “foot prints” from the halved tennis balls
I recommend a helping hand.
Remember, everything is only glued together.
After you finished it, you can leave the pedestal opened at its edge to keep the “constructional look”. Or you can add some nice looking cloth around it. Please do not close the edge with wood. The pedestal needs to “breath” and sways also a little bit.
In my case I used the “pipe insulation foam” from the previous post “Drum rack dampening and vibration eliminating to solve trigger problems” > “Dampening the rack pipes”.It fits without glue and we can remove it at any time for cleaning inside. To go around the corners it only needs a small V-cut. And it works like a light bumper-bar too.
Please take care to ventilate your room over a longer period because of the glue fume.
Our new pedestal is build for eternity. And it carry’s us, our drum kit and the hole family, believe me.
When you enter the pedestal, you can directly feel its first functionality. It bounces and sways a little bit.
And when you start playing with your drum kit, you can directly feel on your own feet its second “shock wave absorbing” functionality.
A small joke at the end:I build my pedestal during the wintertime and could not ventilate very often.
Because of the surrounding glue fume, I was very close to drum cover Iron Butterfly’s “In A Gadda Da Vida” (my drum teacher in 1980 wanted me to get it right).
Ok, that’s it. Thanks a lot and with kindly regards,
Gerdy