In the mid-1990’s, Tom LaFlame, legendary Pittsburgh drummer, educator and owner of the Crafton-based Drums retail store, designed a tunable practice pad to replace the popular Ludwig Drum Pad that had been discontinued. Tom created his pads cutting by hand the wood mainframe and metal rims. When Tom’s health began to decline, Volkwein’s Music took over production. They standardized the manufacturing process, switched to Russian birch for the main structure, outsourced the production of the metal rims to ensure standardized roundness and offered the pad in four standard colors as well as custom colors upon special request. To honor Tom, we named the practice pad “Tom’s Pad.”