Rock Band is great. Everyone says so. Great in almost every way, except for those damned instruments. Putting aside the defect issues surrounding the first batch of instruments – as I glance at the email from Jimmy describing his seventh plastic guitar – the main thing about the drums* is that they are just kinda loud.

You might ask yourself, what can I do about this? You've already woken the baby with your incessant banging, and furthermore you cannot seem to drown her out with the limited volume available on your stereo. Conundrum!

Drumshhh is the answer! Yes, Drumshhh. A product name so bad that it's actually good, because it's impossible to say without sounding like a drunken idiot. That tends to stick in the memory. Somewhere out there, there is a product manager who giggles every time they make someone in the world say it. They probably hang out with that other product manager that is responsible for making us all say "Grande" at Starbucks, laughing all day in their underground Product Manager lairs.

The Drumshhh (a Drumshhh? A set of Drumshhh?) – consists of four circular felt pads affixed to some EVA foam and backed with giant stickers. However, you do NOT stick these to your head as you might think, but rather ingeniously to your Rock Band drums. The set we received at the BBPS were the "pro" look, which are completely black and sized exactly to the RB drum heads. There are other variants with different colour patterns available, which cost more. Basic black will set you back $15.

Installation was quite easy. One need only peel off the back and try not to act like a spaz when applying them. The fit is very tight, almost too tight for the red and green drums which resulted in a very small bit of wrinklage at the edges, although this didn't affect anything (and is practically impossible to see). The instructions state that the things can be removed without damaging your drum heads later on, but strongly hints that the actual Drumshhh pads probably won't survive the process. It's not a permanent mod, but it is a one-shot deal.

As for how they work... the difference can be summed up thusly: stock Rock Band drums make a capital-T Thwack when you hit them. After installing the Drumshhh I would classify the sound as a small-t thwock. This might not sound like much, but it makes a big difference. Overall volume is probably half of what it was, but more importantly the character of the sound is changed quite drastically to a lower-pitched effect that is much less irritating overall. You'll have a much easier time hearing the game's soundtrack over your own hits with these things in place.

Stick rebound is affected slightly as well. The felt obviously dampens a bit of the "springiness" of the stock drum heads, but the EVA foam underneath the felt itself restores much of that rebound, so the net result is pretty much a toss-up. I found that I needed to hit the drum heads very slightly harder than before, but this was an improvement to my playing, since I was no longer holding back my hits. If you like to play a bit on the heavier side then these are a huge improvement.

Now, it is entirely possible to go down to the craft store and spend a few bucks and re-create these things. But you have to ask yourself, for $15, is it really worth it? The most difficult part would be cutting the felt to the exact size of the Rock Band drums. Cutting circles is hard. So hard, that as it turns out there is even a special tool for doing just that, called (somewhat abstractly) a circle cutter. See how complicated this gets? I know. Just buy the things. I'd spend $15 just so I didn't have to visit the hot glue isle at Michael's. I have bad, bad memories involving hot glue.

www.drumshhh.com

* if your bass pedal has cracked, you might argue otherwise.

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