Rock Band Drum Silencers

At first I got the drum pad silencers and held them up to the rock band drum pads and thought "this isn't going to work." Check out your RB drums. You'll notice a thin plastic rim around each drum. Well I expected these drum pads to fit inside that ring. Nope, if you stuck them on, they would go over the ring and then sort of float on top of the actual drum pad and MAYBE make contact in the center, where the pressure transducer is that picks up your drum strikes.

So, to install these drum pads, you must TAKE OFF THE PLASTIC RIM around the drums. It takes a few minutes, but isn't hard. You have to pull the striking part of each drum off individually. It takes a lot of force, but be careful not to yank out the wire underneath. If you look at your RB drums from below, you'll notice 3 or 4 small rubber wedges sticking through the plastic base. These are what hold the drums into the frame. Once you've pulled off a drum pad, unscrew the plastic rim, take it off, and reassemble...Read more

Considering how much bad press the Rock Band peripherals have received since the game's launch last November, it's not surprising that something like this would be looked upon as a gimmicky, band-aid solution to a less-than-perfect drum set.

Sure, there are better kits being developed by Harmonix and Red Octane for their respective upcoming sequels, but if you own a Rock Band drum kit now, then these silencers are actually pretty good for the price. First of all, they're a bit more stylish than the gray plastic pads that you'd normally drum on. Second, they reduce the drum noise considerably, even during more demanding songs. Third, the material reverberates much, much better, allowing for better runs and rolls, and you get far fewer missed and/or duplicate notes in the process. Finally, these things are easy to apply, sticking right over the pads themselves. At first, it seems like a cheap way to attach them, but the adhesive holds up--just make sure you center them...Read more

I picked these up liking the idea that they'd make the drums a bit quieter and add to the bounce on the drum head. They do make it look a little nicer, they do make it quieter, and they do add a little bounce...

...but they also kill your accuracy. I put these on and started playing and immediately started wondering if maybe the calibration on the system had somehow gotten off. What I ended up doing was going to practice mode and doing a roll on each pad at the beginning, just before the song started. I could watch the pad missing hits. Take the pad off, everything gets caught correctly again.

I tried hitting the pads in different places, with different amounts of force, but it pretty universally took down about 10% of the hits, regardless of force or location.

I'm taking these back today. It's unfortunate because they do look good and they totally do a good job at noise reduction.