Becky Stern is a Content Creator at Autodesk/Instructables, and part time faculty at New York’s School of Visual Arts Products of Design grad program. Making and sharing are her two biggest passions, and she's created hundreds of free online DIY tutorials and videos, mostly about technology and its intersection with crafts. Find her @bekathwia on YouTube/Twitter/Instagram.
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.
8 thoughts on “Rock Band drum dampening tutorial”
Timursays:
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.
ednozzlesays:
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”.
Matt Tsays:
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
Matt Tsays:
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.
Becky Stern is a Content Creator at Autodesk/Instructables, and part time faculty at New York’s School of Visual Arts Products of Design grad program. Making and sharing are her two biggest passions, and she's created hundreds of free online DIY tutorials and videos, mostly about technology and its intersection with crafts. Find her @bekathwia on YouTube/Twitter/Instagram.
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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.
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”.
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
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