In the mid 60's, some of us used lightly crumpled newspaper. It worked well.

I told a young neighbor who was just starting out with drums about this over the phone one day. Later, he called to say he was having trouble getting enough paper into his Kent bass drum. I went over to his house to find he'd been twisting up pieces of newspaper and dropping them in the vent hole....lol. Well, we removed the front head and fixed him up with two full sheets.

Can't say I have seen tin foil in drums, but have seen everything from cuffs of thermal shirts to feminine napkins stuck to drum heads.

Me? I prefer gaffer's tape.

I don't mean to laugh, but that made me spit out my wine just now. Bless him. And it reminded of a story my dad told me, of when he was driving the local buses. He got back to the depot one night to find the young apprentice mechanic STILL filling up the buses with oil. It turns out he was pouring it IN through the dip stick hole. Not only that, he was filling it right to the top of the dip stick hole. Easy enough I suppose, if you don't know.

The bass drum at the rehearsal space is full of the guy's laundry! I'm not kidding, towels, underwear, tee-shirts, you name it, this guy stuffed it into the bass drum to muffle it. The drum sounds like a cardboard box. It's his drum, I just sit down and play. I don't get into discussions with him about it. I use my own kits for gigs anyway.

Laundry[SIZE="2"]?[/SIZE] Go figure...

John

I use rolled up chef pants in mine, works pretty well and actually has a cool pattern on it if you use clear heads/acrylic kit.

Can't say I have ever heard of using tin foil.

You using those cool "pepper patch" ones or the black with white pin stripes or the old school "hounds' tooth" ??

Kev, (chef for 29 years)....:D

An extremely thin plastic dry cleaners bag just loosely thrown into the floor tom is excellent. I have also used a handful of cotton balls thrown into the floor tom.

My current favorite bass drum treatment is to cut out a felt circle about a full 19" 'round (for a 20" head) and glue it into the inside of the head- I do this reso and batter and then leave the drum completely empty. Sounds excellent with a wood beater.

Old school hounds tooth. It hides stains better hahaha

Nick (sweating in the kitchen for 8 years A.K.A my entire adult life)

PS3,s both sides no laundry..Works the best for me in over 45 years.