TnR Products: Booty Shakers & Little Booty Shakers

The Booty Shakers and The Little Booty Shakers make up a family of incredibly simple drum isolation mounts. They have been well designed by two guys in San Diego who refused to settle with drum tones. They do one thing, and they do it well, which is to decouple your drums from the floor (or the stand they're connected to), thereby preventing the larger mass from absorbing the energy of your drum while it resonates. There are two products in the family. TnR's Booty Shakers, which are designed for floor toms, is a set of three foam boots that you slip over the bottom of your tom stands. It's dead simple and only takes seconds to install. I've tested it out with everything from vintage Gretsch and Ludwig kits to more modern C&C or Yamaha kits with absolutely zero fitting or installation problems. The Little Booty Shakers set is slightly more complicated; it's designed for snare stands and has three tiny L shaped pieces of foam that attach to your drum stand with Velcro. Once attached, all that's needed is to open the stand up slightly wider than before, set the snare or tom in, and you're good to go. It was when I installed my Little Booty Shakers to a tom mounted on a snare stand that I noticed the biggest improvement. The snare stand was choking the tone of the drum, and once the Little Booty Shakers were in place, the drum opened up and matched the floor tom. I record 90% of my drum tracks in a great sounding room in San Francisco, CA, and, when appropriate, I really enjoy using minimal mic setups. The only way to achieve a minimal mic setup is to make each drum in the kit sound its best. It's pretty hard to use drum replacement software if you've only got a single mono overhead mic! I would say the Little Booty Shakers kit is a must have if you mount your rack toms with a snare-style drum stand. These mounts are so inexpensive, will last a really long time, and the difference in tone is immense! The floor tom version was great as well, but to my ears the improvement was much more subtle. In the rare section of a song where the guitars drop out and there's a long, sustained floor tom, this helped achieve the ultimate tone. Beware: if you like to mute your drums, or put a sheet over them when you play, then I doubt you'll hear much improvement from the Booty Shakers. However, if you like your drums open - especially if you use a snare stand for your toms, these drum isolation mounts are more than worth the tiny investment.