All musicians know only too well that it can be very dark on a club stage. When playing a gig together with a number of other bands, you have to change over very fast. So we all bend over backwards to get it done as quickly as possible, and we know it’s easy to make a false move. In the case of drummers, that false move means a dropped cymbal stand wing nut or a felt washer. This, in turn, forces us to dive in amongst stand tripods, floor tom legs, and under the snare or the floor tom, to find a gray or black piece of felt on a gray or black rug. In half-light. We would say every gigging Drummer and Drummerette knows this problem, and professional drum techs would have a few stories to tell.
Our editor, Marcin ‘Viking’ Leitgeber, has also gone through that kind of obstacle course in his career as a drummer. When mounting cymbals (crash, ride, china, splash) on stands and holders, he has been able to control unruly felt washers most of the time. However, dropping the bottom hi hat clutch felt washer when putting the top hi hat cymbal on or taking it off became so frequent that one day he decided to do something about it: “It was driving me up the wall each time I’d drop the felt washer when putting the top hat on or taking it off the clutch. I was always in a hurry, there was never time, and I’d have to dive down on that stage (sometimes practice room) among the drums and stands, wasting time, which is priceless during a changeover. That thing niggled me to the point that I decided to try 3 to 4 drops of glue for metals to see if it would sort me out. Well, it did. I’ve been using this trick for a good 15 years and the problem has never bugged me since.”
This is our colleague’s story. We, however, are interested to know what en.beatit.tv viewers would have to say about it. Enjoy our vid starring our very own Viking and a hi hat clutch, and feel free to comment on it…
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