Tons! A lot of the questions you ask have been asked time and again and responded to, time and again. There has to be 'a few' fairly recent threads in the archive - if you look there first.

Moleskin depends on what kind of sound you're looking to get out of your drum. Strictly personal taste sound-wise. It does lengthen the life of the head, but again, it depends on how hard a hitter you are. Someone with a 'good touch' on the pedal will not need moleskin. A heavier hitter, yes.

For me, no. I like to tune my bass drum to it's lowest fundamental note. I do want to hear a low 'note' though (not a dead thud,) when I hit the drum. If you're looking to deaden the sound/resonance of the drum, then a patch of moleskin smack in the middle of the head will help. If you want the drum to 'sing' and you have a good touch on the pedal, you're better off not using something that is only going to muffle the sound you're after.

Do a little homework in the archive, it'll answer many of your questions for you before you need to ask.

Hope my response helps you out...

John

It helps! I was looking for an alternative to the Remo patches, which still work to protect the bass drum head...but sometimes it makes for a slappy sound. Utlimately, I like the batter head raw with nothing on it, but the problem is that the head tends to wear out kind of quickly (for me anyways) in that spot. So, I'm just condsidering a few alternatives.

Just know that something as heavy as Moleskin -will- deaden the sound. It'll make your heads last forever though. Toss-up.

John

Yeah, I guess I could see that. The molefoam seems a bit thick. I may even just run the bass heads raw for awhile. It always seems to sound best that way...

I especially like the sound of a Moleskin patch. I try to have calf skins on all my basses & toms, but on some sets w/ mylar heads, the simple moleskin patch gives something close to that calf voice. There have been several different versions over the years, I like them all, (dense suede-like material). (I would never use a plastic reinforcement dot, or black dot head because of the awful strident plastic sound.)

When I first got my 65's the original heads were on all the drums, moleskin on the bass batter side, looks like 65 too! My guess it will make your head last a lot lot... longer, if you like the tone.

I have used moleskin before,I used a very small patch,and found that it definitely cuts down the "click" in the attack,but with a small patch like I used it did not inhibit resonance much at all, I used a two sided felt/plastic beater,and if I wanted a little more click and punch/volume/cut I would use the plastic side.

I find the observation that moleskin deadens the sound too much interesting because I will bet a lot of people on here excluding the die hard jazz guys use some sort of pre muffled head like a ps 3, super kick or e mad, so I guess moleskin may seem to deaden those a

lot. I used an sk I and the skin def cut the attack,but did not seems to affect tone or response appreciably.

i have used moleskin squares only when i play a wooden beater to protect the head. the wooden beater still projects sound through the head pretty well. i use the wooden beaters alot because i like the feel of them.

mike

Thanks for the responses....guess it's worth a try. It's probably easy to remove if it doesn't work out well.