Tag Archives: isolation mount

Isolation Mounts

These are methods of mounting the drums of a drumset so that the mounting does not interfere with the ability of the drum to resonate freely. Essentially we want the drum to behave and sound as if it is simply floating in mid air

It used to be the case that
all toms had a mount attached directly to the shell. Worse still, many manufacturers cut a hole in the shell and had a suspension arm entering the body of the drum itself as well as having a mounting bracket on the shell. If you have spent a long time searching for your drum kit and evaluating shell woods and thicknesses, depths, head selection and assuming that you want your drums to deliver the tones that you have tuned them to generate, then you will want the drums to resonate as freely as possible.

For rack toms there are essentially two variations that do this, both are based on the same principle.

RIMS

Suspension mounts that fit around the drum shell and attached to about half of a drum's tension rods. This kind of mount sits under the hoop so that there is no contact with the shell.

ISS

These fit to the hoop
itself. There is some discussion about the pressure of the drum on the hoop and how that may affect the sound.

My personal preference primarily for the sake of concenience, is to use the ISS mount as it is smaller and more easily changed. Loosen two or three lugs and the unit can be adjusted or removed. whereas with RIMS you are obliged to de-tune the drum and remove the tension rods to take the mount off. I have one set of ISS mounts that I exchange between my two primary kits.

Floor toms should also be freely mounted. Instead of having leg mounts attached to the shell, there are solutions which attach to the tuning lugs, RIMS again do this, but this time they fit to the bottom of the drum between the hoop and the lugs and floor tom legs fit to the rim.

One word about the RIMS floor tom mounts though, you will need to buy a case about 2" bigger than the diameter of the drum as they increase the physical diameter of the drum's footprint, I have my 14" tom in a 16" case.

About isolating drums

There are important decisions to be made regarding the way that a drummer mounts the various elements of their drum kit. A snare drum stand for example normally has a snare sitting in and on rubber in a cradle or basket; drummers tend to tighten the basket around the bottom hoop of the snare in such a manner that the snare and stand can be lifted as one unit by just lifting the snare.

Doing this can easily 'choke' the bottom head of the snare and the shell itself, making the drum less responsive and not representing the snare sound that you tuned it to deliver. A snare should rest on the protective rubber and the basket claws tightened sufficiently
so that it will not fall out of the cradle but enough that it will still be held in place.

If bringing out the full sound of a well presented drum kit is a priority then the kick drum should not be used as a holder for the rack toms, instead they can be mounted using the isolation mounts above on a rack or on stands. The front of the bass drum should be angled off the floor slightly (1"-2"), thus raising the whole base of the kick off the floor so that it is not being muffled by the carpet or other floor surface on which the drum is placed.