I've seen drums where the moisture picked up by the 'laundry' in the bass drums gets musty / moldy. I'm sure it's fine initially while the drum is being played, but over time, stored in a moist basement, you're just asking for trouble. I took the head off a stuffed oyster blue pearl bass drum once and the moldy smell was like a punch in the face. The shell was stained on the inside as well. Bad idea all around. If you need muffling, a felt strip works great, or any of the latest creations in drum head technology will do just fine.

My take on this from a while back...

http://www.vintagedrumforum.com/showthread.php?t=18626

Blankets, towels, sheets, pillows and drums. What strange bedfellows! I have a great pic of Art Blakey in the studio with a blanket draped over his bass drum. Then there's the famous white towel on Buddy's floor tom. Back in the day when a lot of us were playing 6 nights a week at the same venue, we would leave the drums up on the stand and just cover the whole kit with a sheet. The dead bass drum era gave us the chance to look into the drummer's soul...er bass drum and view the ugly array of pillow, blankets and even bricks and cinder blocks! Recording was a nightmare in those days. The engineers, armed with duct tape and HIS idea of what YOUR drums should sound like always requested the removal of the front BD head to avoid "unwanted overtones". He then proceeded to stuff the drum with a blanket, towel or pillow. Hey I was playing a bop kit with an 18" BD tuned high...I wanted them to ring, sing, bleed and sound like ONE instrument. Not like 4 different sized cereal boxes. Sorry...getting off track, maybe a thread for another day. No! That stuff should not be left inside the drums for reasons already stated concerning moisture, mold, and creatures.

I think I'll muffle my bass drum with the next sound guy that says, "You know, you really should..."

I feel ya!!

>>Ouch! That's nasty. Looks more like it was sitting in an inch of water for a couple years!

Naw the rims are fine. If'n it had been sitting in water they would be gone as well. Wet pillow all the way. Very bad. Just about back to life though.

Creighton

Oh yeah... you give a guy a microphone and they think they know something.

> BTW: I have seen kick drums with what looked like a mattress stuffed inside em. LMAO!!!!!

That's no joke, man. When I auditioned for the last band I worked with, I used their drums, at their studio, a fairly new Ludwig Epic kit. The bass drum was stuffed to the rafters with somebody's laundry! Tee-shirts, underwear, funky towels, it was all packed into the drum in a heap. It weighed a hundred lbs. (I needed to reposition the drum and I left my arms behind,) and it sounded like wet cardboard. Mind you, the band leader complimented the sound of my bass drum at the first gig we did where I brought my own drums. I told him, 'No skid-marked BVD's inside, that's what accounts for the great sound!' lol

John

A buddy if mine in highschool. actually found his dog passed away on the pillow in his bass drum...

Poor dog, but pearl export so no big deal.

Oh man, that's so sad....but very heart warming. It was probably where the dog slept every night. Hey..he didn't get an idea and invent this did he? Sorry.[Attachment: 56070]