Kick Port

This was a product that I was looking forward to getting my hands (and ears) on since I made it one of my favourite products from the winter NAMM show in LA back in January. I bought mine from Sound Attack (yes, I repeat, bought) because I wanted to know if it really worked as well as it sounded at the show or was it a gimmick?

There has been lots of talk about this on the mikedolbear.com forum over the past 6 months, such as here and here.

So what is it?

For years we have been stuffing pillows or any other dampening products to archieve a better definition and punch. In doing so the natural resonance of the drum is sacrificed in various ways, 1) it chokes the tone and reduces volume 2) damping materials reduce the resonant space.

The Kickport is designed to enhance the sound by porting the bass drum in the same way as a bass reflex tube on a speaker cabinet boosts the low frequencies, but it also adds damping directly to the resonant head which allows you to remove internal materials and focuses the air to exit the bass drum and this focus increases the punch.

The Kickport works in a 5" to 5.5" inch hole and comes with a hole-cutting template and is easy to fit and remove.

What does it look like?

It looks like a short length of wide plastic drainpipe which flares out at one end with a large rubber washer that goes behind the flare which fits tightly and secure into the cut hole in the head from both sides.

Does it work?

I put this on an 18" Gretsch custom bass drum that was mic’ed from the front and used the drum in a live environment. First I really noticed the difference in volume that I got from behind the kit in an acoustic situation, which is what I was looking for. When playing live I like to get a good acoustic kit balance from behind the kit and this was always going to be a challenge on a small bass drum but it worked. I still got the punch that was required for the front of house but was getting extra volume with out the extra tone from behind the kit. I took out all internal damping from the drum and had an Evans EQ2 bass drum head.

The Kickport gave no unwanted rattles or tones which I was a little concerned about and really did improve the volume, tone and sound of my bass drum for a relatively small amount of money.

Conclusion: I really liked this product and it really did work. It was easy to fit and remove so could be used on various other bass drums. My only small criticism was the plain design, for me it works but I am a middle aged man! But it could be jazzed up a little by making it in various colours or designs for the younger generation of drummers out there, but maybe this has already be rectified by now.

For more info www.FPCDRUMS.com  or

From Sound Attak here

Or on YouTube here

Price £45.00

Mike Dolbear