Review: Eastrock Drum Mutes

Setup & Installation

These were super easy to install. The drum pads just lay right on top of your drums, and they have a tactile surface underneath to keep them from sliding around which helps keep them in place. For the cymbal pads you’ll need to remove any wingnuts or the hi-hat clutch to install them. The cymbal pads have two holes for attaching to a cymbal stand, so that actually makes them a little more flexible in terms of fitting on different sizes of cymbals.

The kick drum pad is one area that kind of was annoying with during installation, so that’s another negative points for the kick drum mute. It has two Velcro strips on the back and the Velcro attaches to the drum head with a very strong adhesive. It’s easy to install, and the Velcro allows you to remove and reattach the mute fairly easily, but when I tried to remove the adhesive Velcro strip completely from the drum head I felt like I was going to damage the drum head. Luckily when I removed it it didn’t damage the head, but it did have me worried while I was trying to pull it off.

Volume Reduction

These drum mutes do a great job of taking down the volume of your drum kit. When testing with a decibel meter I was getting around 10-20 db of volume reduction with the mutes on the drums, depending on how hard I played. I would say these reduced the perceived volume of the kit by around 30-40%, which seems to be pretty typical for most drum mutes.

I found that I didn’t really need to wear hearing protection with the mutes on the kit. But I think hearing protection is still a good idea since the kit can still get close to 90-100 db even with the mutes on and fairly aggressive drumming.

The biggest things the mutes change about the kit are the overall projection of the sound, the sustain, the resonance, and the piercing sounds that can come from the snare and cymbals.

Sound Quality

The sound of your kit will change quite a bit with drum mutes installed. The mutes work by deadening the sounds of pretty much everything around the kit. The deadened sound can sound more like a “thud” versus the usual resonant tones. I like to think of it as turning your kit into a bunch of practice pads in terms of sound.

The snare and toms are deadened quite a bit in terms of their sound. They still produce a little bit of resonance from the bottom resonant heads, but the tone changes and it looses it’s resonance and sustain.

There is also a snare wire mute pad that you can use on the bottom of the snare, but I went without it. I didn’t feel that the snare wire mute really had much of an effect on the volume and I thought the snare sounded better without it.

The cymbals are affected quite heavily as well. Thinner crash cymbals seemed to sound the best with the mutes installed, but they loose their brilliant characteristics. Heavier cymbals such as thicker ride cymbals sound more like a clank or a clunk and they loose most of their sustain and resonance overall. Hi-hats actually sound pretty decent since you still get some of the crunch and sizzle, but you loose the resonance of the top cymbal since it has a mute laying on it.

The kick drum sound seemed to be the least affected in terms of tone and resonance. I still got some good sound from my kick drum with the kick drum mute installed, but the overall volume was reduced.

Feel and Play-ability

The feel of the drums changes with these mutes installed, but not in a terrible way. The material has a little bit of a rubber feel to it, and it helps keep the rebound feeling pretty decent when compared to the regular drum and cymbal feel. I was still able to play the same without feeling like I was being hindered by the feel of the mute pads.

If your cymbals rotate while you play you could run into issues with the mutes rotating out of reach. Personally I didn’t have much of an issue with it, but it’s something to be aware of. You can always just tighten down the wingnuts on the stands and other parts more to keep them from rotating.

The bass drum mute changed the feel of the bass drum pedal more than I would like. The bass drum mute is about 1.5 inches thick and it changes the beater swing to a much shorter stroke. When playing I had to adjust my pedal technique a little bit to compensate for it.

In fact, I consider the bass drum mute to be the weak link of these mutes. It doesn’t strongly cut down on bass drum noise as much as the other pads, and it changes the feel of your kick pedal in a negative way. I think you’d be better off just stuffing your bass drum with blankets, towels and pillows and using a softer beater to reduce the noise of the kick drum while retaining a decent feel, instead of the using the bass drum mute that comes with the set.

Build and Durability

These pads seem like they’d hold up to a decent amount of play time. I could see them wearing out over time, especially if you’re using damaged drum stick which will eat away at the pad surface. But as long as you use clean sticks these pads should hold up. These pads are so cheap that if you do manage to wear them out it won’t cost much to replace them.

New Rubber Smell

These had a little bit of a rubber smell when I first removed them from the package, but it went away really quickly and wasn’t anything that created a sustained issue.

Drum Mute Types and Sizes

The Eastrock drum mute packs come in several different variations which include different combinations and sizes of pads. The pack that I picked up was the fusion pack which fit my drums well. I have a 21″ crash/ride that was just a little too large for the 20″ cymbal pad, but it still worked fine even though it didn’t completely reach the edge.

Here’s the different size packs available

Cymbal Pad Pack:

• 14″
• 16″
• 18″
• 20″

The Verdict

If you need a cheap set of drum mutes these are a decent option and the price is right. The drum and cymbal pads work fine. The kick drum pad is what I mostly had issues with. If you decide to pick up these mutes, I’d recommend that you just use other techniques to mute the bass drum rather than using the kick drum mute pad. Even if you don’t use the kick drum mute they still provide good value.