Is your mix being sabotaged by overpowering drums every Sunday?
That was us… until we found this partial drum shield. Now our cymbals are under control, we can fine-tune the tones much better, and we don’t have to sacrifice space or aesthetics.
In this video, we give you some before and after examples of how this drum shield improved our drums, so be sure to watch that.
Thanks to Pennzoni Display for providing us with this drum shield to test out.
Our drum kit was so close to sounding the way that we wanted it to, but we still had a little more acoustical energy than we wanted in our 140-seat auditorium.
The drums themselves were not too loud, but we couldn’t fine-tune them in the PA all that much since they were already giving us 80% of the volume we wanted without any amplification.
But the cymbals WERE too loud. Especially for the first few rows. And our drummer is very controlled with his volume. Not to mention, we were getting way too much bleed in our vocal mics. We did have Cymbal shields which helped a bit, but not enough.
The cymbals were not painful 100% of the time but definitely had painful moments throughout the service. And that’s frustrating for the listener and the sound tech.
In our room, a full-on drum enclosure is not an option due to a lack of space. Even a typical drum shield would cause a visual problem since our stage display is right behind the drums. Aesthetically, it would be a big sacrifice.
So I went on the hunt for a short shield that wouldn’t obstruct the view of our LED wall very much. I didn’t find a ton of options and most of the ones I did find were way too expensive.
Until I found Penzoni Display. They had exactly what I was looking for at a very reasonable price. They sell a range of size options but the one that grabbed my attention was the 2ft by 4ft panels. You could buy as many pieces as you want to wrap around the shield as much as you want.
They even have an option for tilted baffles to add a little more shielding to the cymbals and control a little bit of upward projection. So I optioned out with five 2ft by 4ft panels with baffles which wraps around the drums as much as is needed to keep direct wash off of the audience.
Be sure to watch the video to hear the before and after results.
As you can hear in the examples, the shield accomplishes our goal without breaking the bank, and without sacrificing aesthetics. It looks really good and comes in at a great price. It’s an excellent product.
My only complaint was with the hinges we got. They had a bit of a learning curve getting them installed. I did it by myself though which was probably my downfall. It definitely would have been easier with a second set of hands.
After watching a tutorial by Penzoni halfway through the install, it went much quicker. A rubber mallet was an invaluable tool.
You can get chrome hinges which are probably much easier to install, but being a short, partial shield, I wanted as much sound control as possible so I went with the plastic hinges for more coverage.
We tested without the baffles for two weeks and with the baffles for two weeks to see which result we liked better. The baffles were definitely required to get the cymbal volume where we wanted it.
The baffles stand up a little higher than I would like them to, but the improvements they give are worth the small sacrifice.
So, if you’re like us, and need to tame your drums, but don’t have space for a full-on drum shield, I highly recommend checking out Penzoni Display. Click here to see the exact shield that we got.
I need to mention that gating on your drums is very important, especially after adding shielding. Everything is going to be bouncing back into your mics, and gating them will help control bleeding that you don’t want.
Grab our free drum gating cheat sheet here. Then, go watch this video to help you get it dialed in.
