Rock Band drum dampening tutorial

DrumPads.jpg

Thomas made this simple tutorial on how to dampen the loud sounds of your Rock Band drum pad controller using some self-adhesive foam and felt. I think the color coding would help me play the game better, too! Thomas shows a video with altered and unaltered pads so you can hear the difference. (Thanks, Matt!) - Link.



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Posted by: Timur on January 14, 2008 at 4:20 PM

If you go to the Rock Band forums, you'll see that using foam is considered a bad idea. Gum rubber pads are preferred. The foam can cause loss of sensitivity in the controller, and they also reduce bounce-back of the drums sticks, which makes drum rolls harder.


Posted by: ednozzle on January 15, 2008 at 2:06 PM

I haven't tried this solution, but I have tried the gum rubber solution, and I didn't find it to be noticeably quieter. I also found the extra padding made it necessary to hit harder in order for the game to register it...which basically negated any quieting effect it may have had.

My next attempt was rubber tipped drum sticks. Success! I found it to be much quieter than the pad modifications, plus it has the benefit of not requiring any changes to the actual drum kit. No gluing, no circle cutter - no nothing! Plus, the sticks are thicker than the Rock Band kit's sticks. The only downside is that if you break a stick, you have to buy a new set.

A search for "rubber tipped drum sticks" will show you what's out there. Mine are "Xymox Deadbeats".


Posted by: Matt T on February 2, 2008 at 7:28 AM

This is such a cool mod. I wish these would have come default on Rock Band - oh well, maybe next time. Anyways, I just ordered some from http://www.drumpads4rockband.com/ and was pretty happy with the results.

Matt


Posted by: Matt T on February 2, 2008 at 7:29 AM

This is such a cool mod. I wish these would have come default on Rock Band - oh well, maybe next time. Anyways, I just ordered some from http://www.drumpads4rockband.com/ and was pretty happy with the results.

Matt


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