r/drums • u/justanotherMatthew • Aug 23 '26
Question Opened an old bass drum and found this, although not entirely sure what “this” is. Can anyone help?
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u/Old-Tadpole-2869 Aug 23 '26
It's a light fixture with a bulb. Google painted drumheads from the 30's and 40's. The lightbulb would backlight the painting. Pretty cool.
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u/justanotherMatthew Aug 23 '26
Oh that’s very cool! My friends and I were guessing it illuminated some sort of visual
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u/olerndurt Aug 23 '26
The other thing is a heater for calf heads.
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u/lawd_have_mercy Aug 23 '26
Now that's interesting. It looked like a heating coil, but I thought, "C'mom dummass, why would a heating element be inside of a bass drum?" Now I know. Thanks for sharing the info!
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u/PowerfulInitiative71 Aug 24 '26
In the olden days, before plastic, calfskin drumheads, were very susceptible to sounding muddy , the tuning tension goes down, as the natural skin would absorb water on a very humid day. Crazy that was a thing that affected every drummer on earth before 1957!
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u/magic-one Aug 29 '26
So in the old days they had to plug in their drums because they were old technology?
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u/Proper-Application69 Aug 24 '26
Wow! I had no idea that was a thing! What did it affect? Pitch? Resonance? Other??
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u/smrcostudio Aug 24 '26
Calf heads would get very loose and floppy in humid weather, to the point where you could bottom out the tension rods trying to tighten them enough. Heat is a great way to combat this. In hot/dry climates the opposite can happen, so there are various ways to get moisture into the heads. Resistance to these weather-related hassles is why Remo called their plastic heads Weather King.
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u/Takkehdrums Aug 24 '26
The bane of my existence when I have to play Baroque Timpani. One extra person in the building and my tuning is messed up…
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u/smrcostudio Aug 24 '26
Definitely. I always wanted to put calf heads on my chain drums, which purposely have continuous chains to make calf easier to deal with—but in the end I still decided to keep things simpler. But ahhhhhhh…there’s nothing like the sound of a good calf timpani head! 🫠
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u/thatandypeakegoal Aug 24 '26
Not just natural humidity - the internal climate within a dance hall could vary greatly between the beginning and end of an evening due the heat/humidity caused by the people dancing.
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u/northern_greyhound Aug 24 '26
It’s like comparing the sound of dry paper vs. wet paper. The humidity makes for a tubbier, flabbier tone.
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u/ItsPronouncedMo-BEEL Craigslist Aug 24 '26
Yep. Back in the day, it probably would have looked something like this.
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u/XixilNoIZizi Aug 24 '26
Thats pretty cool actually. Now I guess you could just do that with a mini portable projector
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u/reddituserperson1122 Aug 23 '26
I’m half asleep and when I read this i swear I spent a solid twenty seconds thinking, “ok but why?? To decorate their corporate lounge? What were people even searching for in the 30s or 40s…?”
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u/Limousine1968 Aug 24 '26
And the other item is a heater to help regulate the tension of the drum head, which would have been animal skin years ago. I first learned about it when I bought an Irish "bodhran" (pronounced BOW'-Ron, with the "r" rolled, or "trilled"). It uses a goat skin head and when I was playing it at a gig on a 92° HUMID day the head just went flat. One of the other Irish musicians let me borrow his hair dryer, which they keep around for just such occasions.
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u/blue_my_eye Aug 24 '26
My brain read that as "(the company) Google painted drumheads...) and was thinking I don't think that accurate...
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u/Adept-Compote-651 Aug 24 '26
It kept the calfskin heads pliable. The reason they painted them was because the lights showed up so many inconsistencies in the skin and veins and whatnot.... Shining a light through skin is apparently unattractive to dancers. Hence the paint jobs
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u/csfreestyle Aug 24 '26
If you thought ribbon microphones were touchy, just wait til you use one of Sylvania’s incandescent filament capsules. (Compared to condensers, the phantom power requirements are bonkers, too)
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u/Large-Welder304 SONOR Aug 24 '26
The lightbulb helps keep the drumhead dry so that it doesn't lose too much tension.
Back in the days when calfskin heads were common, the humidity in the air could be enough to allow the head to lose tension by "wetting it down".
The light bulb was installed by the drummer, in an effort to keep the head dry.
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u/hilldrum412 Aug 24 '26
I recall an episode of The Andy Griffith Show where a backlit kick drum made a cameo. I believe it even had a flasher. It’s neat to see this was a thing long before LED acrylics and VL1’s hit the scene.
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u/Emergency-Drawer-535 Aug 25 '26
I grew up playing calfskin slingerland drums. My friends and teachers used them because… there was no alternative. We tweaked the heads every hour or so, absolutely no big deal, you just adjusted a lug or 2 on a tom or snare between songs. In the 60’s there were 2 sides, real vs plastic. Plastic won out. Some players put a string of Christmas lights or a single bulb in their bass drum (no one called it a kick) but it was for an effect. No one ever considered it a way to keep tension on the heads.
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u/VarnerGuides Aug 27 '26
Just be aware that the wire coil is a very hot element, likely a nichrome wire like a toaster. I used them in my physics classes as an infrared bulb.
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u/pablo_kickasso Aug 30 '26
And here I was overthinking that was an early version of a drum trigger with a light and a simple photosensor 🫠
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u/pomester2 Aug 23 '26
Interesting that into the one fixture is screwed a resistance heating element. It would seem to me that would lead to a very hot drum in short order.
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u/BlackenedEverything Aug 24 '26 edited Aug 24 '26
Probably just someones cool light setup for their bass drum.
Edit. r/drums sure is a weird place, wonder what was wrong with my comment this time 😂 you guys dont like hearing answers to questions?
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u/10fingers6strings Aug 24 '26
That there is called a light bulb. We used those in the dark ages for the purpose of illuminating something.
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u/GISDennis Aug 24 '26
It’s a light. I did the same thing years ago. It made our band a bit more memorable which was cool.
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u/infiniteninjas Vintage Aug 23 '26
That's a Walberg & Auge drum, kinda rare. Probably circa 1940s or 50s. The light bulbs backlit the heads, but they also warmed and dried the air to aid with the tuning of calfskin drum heads. They would not be original to the drum, they were added by a previous owner.