Anyone have experience with the Gary Chaffee designed external muffler?

Never heard of it, so decided to do a Google search. I'm just going to say it...what a contraption! I get what it does, but, looks like a mechanical high school project. I may take flak for this, but that's my :2Cents:

I still have my Ludwig bass drum muffler from the late 60's and it does the job. I also have internal MIJ Sonor clone mufflers on the tom and bass drum from my 60's Crown kit. They work great, too!

-Mark

Well, my continued, not necessarily realistic, resistance to drilling weighs in favor of something like this. It looks to me like he insisted on maintaining control of the whole process: design, production, marketing, and everything else.

I wonder if he'd chosen to license the idea to Gibraltar or whatever, he may have had a more viable product.

It's clunky looking but versatile. To me, all the external mufflers, including the vintage ones, look a little weird. They're not complicated by any stretch.

What I'm saying reflects ambivalence in drilling the drum -- even though I installed a shell mount cymbal arm without a second thought.

I checked out the DFO thread -- yes it's very helpful! All kinds of measurements.

But after I posted asking if anyone might still have the diagram, a drummer responded that he'd installed one on his drum and regretted it. He said it's a faulty design.

I think that he was referring to the fact that the bottom end of the strip would always be in contact with the head.

To wrap this up, I installed a new Pratt muffler on the 18 Yamaha. It took some creativity in order to keep the bottom attachment of the felt strip fully away from the head -- I really like to have a wide open tone in addition to the muffled one.

Trial and error, but a successful outcome.

Thanks to all for guidance!

Can you post pictures?!!

-Mark