How I Built a Floating Drum Pad

I started playing the drums when I was 16, a few years after I started guitar (skip to Here's How I Did It if you don't care). It fed a different need—one that had me drumming on my steering wheel to a turn signal metronome.

A few years after I rented an apartment in Los Angeles, it came time for me to find a neighbor-friendly electronic drum kit. These kits have some issues, though. If they're affordable, they probably sound like crap. Kick drums always seem to slide around, even with a dedicated rug to sit on. I needed something stable that sounded authentic.

Like manna from Heaven, I found the answer—the Roland TD4KP. A lightweight kit with a kick drum attached to the frame. It folds up, and it doesn't sound half-bad either. 

Unfortunately, Roland discontinued the TD4KP somewhere around 2018. I only discovered this change afterward, having declined buying one for half price during B&H Photo's Christmas clearance sale that year. I thought it could wait, but my unicorn vanished, never to be seen in stock again.

I wandered the internet in vain for years hoping to find one. Most used ones cost more than their condition warranted (one guy sold a kit without hi hats, MacGyvering a tom pad there instead). 

Just when all hope seemed lost, I found one in San Jose—5 hours from Los Angeles—in great condition. My girlfriend and I road tripped up the coast, picked up the kit, and brought it back to the hotel room where I played it for a few hours. 

The Problem

My practicing continued the next morning. I was working out a cool fill when I was suddenly interrupted by someone below us pounding on their ceiling. Like, pounding on their ceiling, dude.

I was shook. Even electronic drums piss off the neighbors? Is an electronic kit no better for an apartment than a regular kit? Was I going to be stuck without a drum kit forever? There had to be a way.

After doing some research and watching this dude's how-to video, I was confident that a tennis ball isolation pad would do the trick. 

What Good Does an Isolation Pad Do?

Did you know that air is the worst medium for sound to travel? Vibrations can't grab hold of anything to move along, so they dissipate quickly. The next best medium is liquid, which explains why marine animals seem to have clairvoyant navigation abilities. 

The best medium? Solid objects, like wood floors. Vibrations glide through them like butter, which is why there's an emerging market for speakers with no acoustic chamber that work by resonating flat surfaces.

With electronic drums—or any acoustic device—floor vibrations carry far and wide. Even if your kick pedal hits nothing but quiet rubber, the stomp and impact will still bother your neighbors. This isolation pad would use tennis balls as shock absorbers, taking in all the loud energy before it hits the floor.

Here's How I Did It

Materials needed:

• 2 - 3' x 2' 11/32 plywood
• 1 - 3' x 2' scraper rug
• 8 - 7/8" rubber feet
  
• 11 - pressureless tennis balls from Walmart
• 10 - zip ties
• 2" hole saw bit
• 4 - utility clamps
  
• Carpet adhesive strips
• Painter's plastic to catch sawdust
  

Living in an apartment makes it tough to drill anything, let alone 11 2-inch holes. Also, hole saws are frustrating. The wood gets stuck and you'll spend double the time clearing the bit before getting back to cutting. 

I laid out some painter's plastic so that the sawdust wouldn't coat my entire kitchen.

My workspace for the day

Because the TD4KP only weighs ~30 pounds, my platform didn't have to be super strong. I did want it to last, though. 

Here's the plan I drew up for it, with everything measured in inches.

Start by clamping the two pieces of wood together and marking one of them for cutting. 

With the pieces clamped together, drill out holes for the tennis balls. Again, the hole saw is frustrating, so... be ready to get frustrated.

Next, drill out holes for zip ties. I spaced mine an inch from the edge of the board—roughly the width of a tape measure.

Drill pilot holes for the rubber feet on the bottom board. One of the photos below is outdated because I relocated the middle two feet to better support the middle of the warped wood. This new design works much better. 

Sand everything down afterward because there are a million rough edges. Don't forget about the saw dust trapped between the boards too. If you don't clear it out, it'll leak all over your 1-bedroom apartment.

Install the rubber feet so that the board sits balanced as you put the tennis balls in. Then, put the other board on top.

Install your zip ties.

Finally, lay down the carpet strips so that the rug stays on. 

When it's all done, it should look something like this. 

Roland TD4KP on isolation pad

Does It Work?

You're probably wondering if this floating pad thing makes any kind of difference. Yes, it does, but I'll let these before and after seismograph readings do the talking. 

Before the tennis balls

After the tennis balls

Radio Silence, Man. 

The vibrations from the drum kit are weaker than my lightest footsteps, and all it took was procrastinating work all day (something I'm still doing as I write this blog) and watching everything that could go wrong, go wrong.

My only issue is that, as far as stability goes, the platform isn't rock solid. While it's strong enough for me to stand on, it wobbles quite a bit. Doesn't affect my playing, though. My arms are dead from whacking these drums every hour since I finished. 

So far, no one's pounded on their ceiling for me to stop, so I'll take that as a win.