New Drum Booth

[I have written an updated post on building a Custom Drum Booth…click HERE to see that post.]

This past week we made some long-awaited changes to our platform.  I have been lobbying for this since last December and was pretty excited to see this finally happen.  The drum booth that has been here since long before I came on staff last year just wasn’t cutting it.  The design was terrible.  We couldn’t see the drummer because it was mostly solid wood with just a little clear plexi on the top, and it didn’t contain sound in our room because there was no lid on the thing.

The first step was to remove stair-step choir risers at the rear of our platform.  We kept the elevation at about 14″ above our main platform so that the drums would be up a bit, and now in the center of the room.  There was quite a bit to rebuild and we still had to have a second step because of existing concrete.  Then we installed carpet to match.

I designed a new drum enclosure that has full plexiglass on the front and sides, with a sound-absorbing lid.  I did not do a full enclosure with a back because we wouldn’t have any way to control the temperature in the booth, and since we live in the desert…that’s a fairly important consideration.  To handle the sound coming out the back of the booth we’ve placed a couple initial panels directly behind the booth, and then installed Owens-Corning 703 rigid fiberglass insulation covered in burlap on the walls at the rear of our platform to absorb a good deal of the sound.

We’ll still be working out the kinks and tweaking things for the next few weeks, but the difference has been very obvious right away.  Our Audio Tech Crew will now be able to control more tone and levels and mix the drums into the mains.  This allows for so much more control over the volume in our room, an important component to mixing worship services, or any live band for that matter.  Another huge benefit is that our entire team can now see each other.  No more missed cues to the drummer, or between the drummer and bass player because he’s hidden behind a wall.

Thanks to everyone on our crew who helped make this happen!

Andy