60sec Tip Bits #1 – How to make your Hot Rods last longer

Made famous by the drumstick brand Promark, hot rods are made up of 7-19 tightly fitted thin dowels of wood around 16″ in length. The drummer is left with an alternative to sticks that aid with volume issues and offer a different sound. Similarly, other brands like Vic Firth, Vater and Zildjian have their own versions but the common term for these dowel rod sticks are ‘Hot Rods’. In this blog you’ll get tips on how to make your Hot Rods last longer that have helped me over the years and will certainly help you.

Easily Breakable

As great as Hot Rods are, unfortunately they don’t have great durability and are easily breakable when played forcefully. Not to mention that they aren’t cheap so you don’t want to be going through them often! Even when played lightly, over time comes wood fatigue and they start to fray at the ends. As a result using them in this state becomes a hindrance rather than an aid.

Solutions to make your Hot Rods last longer

Solutions to make your hot rods last longer include:

• You can use gaffa/duct tape to seal the exposed, fraying dowels together. Some brands even provide a rubber ring which fits around the end; be careful not to lose them as they can fly off during playing.
• Alternatively, you can use a basic rubber band to do the same job. The benefit to this is you can adjust anywhere along the dowels you want the seal to be. Also with continued wrapping around the dowels you will have a strong seal with more resistance to sliding off.
• Taping up the dowels. This just means restricting yourself to the one option because you can’t adjust it once taped in place. That said, sometimes you don’t want it to be adjustabe and the one spot will suffice.

Reuse

Should you find yourself with a worse-for-wear pair of Hot Rods, you simply reuse them by removing a portion of the shrink wrap handle. There you’ll find a fresh, bound-together group of dowel rods you can now use as the batter end. Finally, seal up the old frayed ends of the Hot Rod with tape, re-apply the handle you’ve removed to that end and you’re ready to go – This is demonstrated in the bonus section of my video 60sec Tip Bits Ep1 – How to make your Hot Rods last longer

Did this help in anyway?  Do you use any other ways to make your Hot Rods last longer? Let me know in the comments section below.