Am I the only one here that hated the Kick Port?

I just recently removed my kick port and am so glad I did. I think they look really good, but in my case, the weight of kept the reso head from resonating. The result was no matter what I did tuning wise, the bass was deader than Lincoln. I currently have it on craigslist.

Am I the only one???

You are not alone

I know what Kickports are intended to do, and they might work on some drums with some heads with some tunings, better than others. I haven't been tempted to use them, and have never had a problem with low end either acoustically, or mic'd.

The height of absurdity occurred a few years ago when they introduced a little Kickport for toms (can you imagine how that would kill the resonance on a 12 or 13" tom that you want to sing??) and lately they are toying with a Kickport for the snare side! That's really gotta help sensitivty!

I will continue to pass on them.

Bermuda

I put one on my 24x14 with a PS3 batter and ported Ambassador reso (no other muffling), and didn't notice much difference. I wasn't crazy about the look of it so eventually took it off. Again, I didn't notice much difference.

I love hating stupid stuff as much as the next guy, but all I could muster for this thing was indifference.

Random thoughts.

I had a listen to one and found that it did make a perceivable distance, both with the mic and far from the kit. I personally did not care for it, and disliked the branding ascetics.

As an engineer, I know that any time air flows past a flat plane, there's turbulence, which manifests itself as distortion. Adding a flange to the ingress and egress reduces the turbulence. Adding a distance between the ingress and egress can change other attributes.

The kick port appears to address some of this, if only by accident. It's weight also dampens the resonant head and applies quite a bit of torque because the head supports the weight.

If I were going to sit down and pencil out a port which does what the kick port 'claims' to do, I would flange both sides, support it internally in the bass drum rather than torquing the reso, and make it telescopic so that the length was adjustable. I would make a highly elastic fitting where the outer flange contacted tone reso head to reduce the impedance and dampening.

And after all of that... it probably still wouldn't be a guaranteed improvement or produce a meaningful difference. Remember, a BD port is not like a subwoofer port. There's no 3DB gain because you're putting a hole in the resonator. Imagine porting a subwoofer through the speaker-cone. The best you can hope to accomplish is to reduce distortion and make the sound directional.

No hate but like Bermuda, I've never been interested in using one.

I bought one on a lark about a year and a half ago. I used it for a while and then decided to go full frontal again. About a month ago I decided to tive it a try again at a miced engagement. I used a Carvin D-44 mic. Maybe the sound guy really knew what he as doing better than I did, but the bass drum sounded thunderous. I got a lot of compliments on the sound.

KamaK said:

And after all of that... it probably still wouldn't be a guaranteed improvement or produce a meaningful difference. Remember, a BD port is not like a subwoofer port. There's no 3DB gain because you're putting a hole in the resonator. Imagine porting a subwoofer through the speaker-cone. The best you can hope to accomplish is to reduce distortion and make the sound directional.

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That's the issue I have with it. You can tell a difference in sound, barely. Not enough of a difference to justify the cost of the Kickport. It's mostly just a muffler via weight.

I've discovered a much better thing to the KickPort on my ported bass drum: The Shure Beta 91A pressure zone mic that sits on the small blanket inside my bass drum. At that point, my sound is being picked up before the kickport if I was ever going to use one

bermuda said:

The height of absurdity occurred a few years ago when they introduced a little Kickport for toms (can you imagine how that would kill the resonance on a 12 or 13" tom that you want to sing??) and lately they are toying with a Kickport for the snare side! That's really gotta help sensitivty!

Bermuda

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Completely agree with you Jon. Absurdity is an accurate term here. If you want to kill head sustain on a tom, then they're just fine. They shouldn't affect shell resonance though, but TBH, I'm not even sure of that.

My thoughts - if you port & muffle anyhow, then Kickport in a bass drum reso may be a valid muffling form choice for you.

I love them for low end - intermediate level kits, because in my experience, they make a world of difference, but professional tier kits typically sound great as they are.

I've never had them dampen a head to any sort of extremity. They dampen a bit, but I've never experienced an excessive amount.

I first used it on my 20" kick with stock heads PS3 batter and Yamaha reso, it sounded great. Then I put it on my 22" with an SK1 batter, and same reso. as the 20". Still sounded great. Then I bought a new SK1 for the 20" and it didn't sound as good. It took me a long time to figure out that it was the kick port causing the problem. When I removed it, the drum sounded great. The 22'' sounded great with the stock PS3 and the used SK1 from my old kit.

Tried it on my 14x24 Blaemire bass drum, absolutely killed the sound. I ended up putting it on a reso head for a PDP kit that I picked up for my nephew, The previous owner had butchered the hole, and the kickport cleaned it up nicely. They look good. ;-)

I have one on my 14x24 bass drum and I love the sound of the drum. When putting the kit together, the head already had a rough cut 4 inch hole in it so I needed something to clean up the look of it. I don't know how it would sound without it, I really don't attribute the sound of my bass drum to the kick port, just to the superkick 2 and my tuning.

I have never quite understood the need for more "bottom". I get more than enough and often have to cut some on the kick drum mic.

i am currently on a NO-port binge on all my kits. especially after i went from a ported head on my 20" to unported remo smooth white PS3. the tuning range, tone, feel, punch and everything went thru the roof. felt like i could actually TUNE the drum w/ my tune-bot for the first time.

i'd also like to start a haters magazine to feature all the sound guys who demand you run a ported kick. :-D

I've tried kick ports on several kits and they DO NOT always improve the sound. However, I had a Pearl Reference 18"×20" and it slammed with the kickport. Made a world of difference on that particular drum and was well worth it!

Not as much difference on other drums in my experience.

double_G said:

i am currently on a NO-port binge on all my kits.

i'd also like to start a haters magazine to feature all the sound guys who demand you run a ported kick. :-D

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I do exactly the same, but dodge the jaded-sound-guy issue with an internally mounted beta52.

I am not sure where I found this animation, it may have been from a thread on this web site. But, besides being funny, it seems very appropriate to this discussion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGbcnZ-3CJQ

When I first started playing, many years ago, I used to take off the front bass drum heads and I would pack the other drums inside the bass drums. I would stuff the bass drums with a large pillows when playing.

When I started playing again, I took some time to learn how to tune the drums. I experimented around with different options, but I would not cut holes or add ports or take off the front heads. The drums sound much better with two complete heads and they both serve a purpose.

My 22 x 18 Renown bass can boom with a kick port. So tuning is the issue. If I tighten the reso head the sound is too loud playing as I normall do. Without the Kickport my drum seems weak. That too is tuning, but I found the best range for me is with the Kickport.