Hey all! I'm creating this post in hopes of settling the debate regarding the muffling of John Bonham's bass drum.
As many know, John Bonham used a felt strip on the batter side of his bass drums. There's no debating that, you can see it plain as day through the Amber Vistalite kit.
However, there seems to be a debate regarding whether or not he used muffling on the resonant head. Some are absolutely convinced that he did not use muffling on the resonant head. I am not one of the aforementioned.
One theory that has been accepted by many people is that John Bonham essentially had a Ritchie ring on the reso side, so I set out to test that theory. To do so, I used my bass drum, an old Ludwig 28x14" marching drum.
The theory goes that a ring was cut out from the outer edge of an old drum head and then glued to the inside of the new drum head.
[skip this part if you're not interested in the how-to details]
For heads, I used a brand new 28" Remo Smooth White Ambassador (closest thing I had to the Ludwig Medium heads he supposedly used), and the head to be cut was a 28" Remo Emperor coated.
I placed an old 22" drumhead on the outside of the 28" Emperor, and used a pencil to trace the outside of the 22" hoop. I used a razor blade to puncture the center of the 28" head, and then a pair of scissors to slowly cut along the line I had traced. Once I was left with just the outer ring, I used the razor to separate the ring from the 28" hoop. In order to avoid having a half of Remo's logo showing through, I used the inner CLEAR ply of the Emperor. Unfortunately, the glue I had available did not end up being as transparent as I had hoped. It looked pretty bad, but I managed to somewhat turn it into something funky by using a wood scraper to shape it into what kinda look like teeth/stalactites.
[IMG]http://vintagedrumforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=54736&stc=1&d=1362383751[/IMG] [IMG]http://vintagedrumforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=54739&stc=1&d=1362384138[/IMG]
Yes, that glue looks pretty bad right now. Live and learn!
[end skip]
Now, upon mounting it on the drum, I noticed that it actually looked like the opposite of what I had seen in the pictures. What I mean by this, is that in the pictures, the center part of the head looked more opaque/more white than the outer ring, whereas on my homemade Ritchie ring type setup, the outer ring is more opaque than the center. So, on this basis, I've concluded that it's more likely that, for at least all the wood kits, it's in fact not an outer ring of an extra head, it's actually a full circle of it on the inside. So basically, a "Reverse Dot" drumhead, as opposed to a Powerstroke style one.
Now, some have brought up the point that it's possible it may have been something pertaining to a decal (particularly his famous 3 rings logo). I considered this at first. However, this "ring" effect is clearly visible much before that symbol came about, right back to his thermogloss maple kit. Upon closer inspection of a few other pictures, you can see that the Ludwig logo on the head is clearly not affected by the modification, therefore it has to be something on the inside of the head, cut into a circular shape.
[IMG]http://vintagedrumforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=54735&stc=1&d=1362383992[/IMG]
In pictures from certain angles, the "ring" disappears, leading some to think that it is merely a shadow. First off, if when looking at the pictures where it's clearly visible, you thought "that's just a shadow", you need to seriously re-evaluate your understanding of light and shadows. Second off, the reason it "disappears" at some angles has to do with the reflectiveness of the drum head. At certain angles/intensities of light, the light will just bounce right off of the head like a mirror, whereas at others, enough light passes through the drumhead compared to how much is reflected, thus the difference becomes visible. Here is a picture of my kit taken during a drum solo, and as you can see, the ring is not really visible. Keep in mind also that Remo's Smooth White heads are less reflective than Ludwig's. These combined totally account for the way it "disappears" in some pictures.
So in conclusion, my opinion at this point is that a circle of approximately 22" diameter was cut from another drum head and glued onto the inside of the 26" drum head.
