Bass drum claw gaskets

[DaveInNZ]

Hi all,

Anyone tried making gaskets to go inside the bass drum claws to prevent hoop damage? It's a particular dislike of mine, seeing chewed up bass drum hoops. My father put felt under the claws of the Hilite I now have so the hoops are 100% mark free, I'd like to do something similar with my Vintage Series.

Sidenote: bugs me that this is standard fitment on an AQ2 but isn't on the Vintage.

[Jules]

Well, you have to consider that it is a Vintage. I get your point about not wanting to mar up hoops, but at the same time they were doing a throwback. One could equally get in a twist over the shell mounted tom mount brackets. I think my main gripe is the T rods. I know they are rocking it old school, but I have contemplated retrofitting (way wrong use of the word) the old school T rods with square rods. Makes then easier to load into a bag and I don't fine tune my bass drum often enough to be aggravated by the need for a key.

[SonorBart]

I just made claw gaskets for my Vintage Series bass drum a couple of weeks ago. I used Fel-Pro Rubber Fiber gasket material from an auto parts store. I made some for my Sonorlite bass drums about 20 years ago with brown rubber sheets from a hardware store.

[DaveInNZ]

I don't suppose you have a template for them do you? Do you know how thick the rubber is that you used?

[SonorBart]

I used a piece of paper first to make the template. The gasket material is 1/32" thick and needs to be bent by hand a bit before fitting it in the claw. I planned to use rubber, but Ace Hardware no longer carries it and the gasket material worked fine. I would estimate ithe rubber I've used to be about 1/32" thick.