I picked up one of these while waiting for my Aquarian Super Pad to come back in stock. I'm drumming in an apartment, so any way I can reduce volume on my acoustic kit is worth a try.

This beater actually feels pretty decent, obviously a little squishy and the rebound isn't quite the same as a normal beater. The width of the head makes it unusable for a double pedal, but I think Tama makes a half size one that will work in that application.

So the volume reduction isn't as dramatic as playing on a silent stroke head/black hole/superpad, but it IS much quieter than a felt beater on a normal drum head. I'd say maybe a 40-50% attenuation, and it takes off a lot of your drum's attack.

The verdict? Good for reduced volume, but not THAT reduced. Not quiet enough for an apartment, but quiet enough for a house where you don't want to rattle all of the windows.

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I have tried just about every bass drum mute. Most mutes won"t stay in place for any length of time. One mute I own actually does stay in place but it creates an impact point too far away from the drum head — which will really mess up your timing if you practice with it a lot. The Tama Soft Sound beater fixes the problems with bass drum mutes by moving the muting to the beater. It does an excellent job of quieting the bass drum (about 80%) and has a realistic impact angle. For my single kick setup, I finally found something that works well. Now the negatives: the egg-crate foam pad with its hard plastic backing is quite wide and probably would not work for a double kick setup. Also, the foam impact surface is very soft so the rebound is not good and I am not sure how durable it will be. Still, overall, it is the best bass drum mute I have found and I am very happy with it.

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