Building an ISO wall for drums

[ChadGrieser1979]

I am currently working on building an isolation section for drums. I have a finished basement with 8' ceiling. i plan on putting the drums in one corner and making a 90" by 90" wall on the open sides. I am wanting to use foam board and acrylic paneling. I want it to look similar to the iso booths that you can buy from sweetwater or elsewhere. Anyone have any suggestions on how to assemble the foam board and acrylic together? I am using the foamboard to go up about 3 feet from the floor and acrylic to go up to nearly the ceiling. I am not sure how to assemble them together. Should i glue them together, or get some wood and use screws to screw the acrylic and foam board together? Thanks for the advice and suggestions

[Phil O'Keefe]

Wow, that's a really good question! I honestly have never tried to make anything like that, and don't know how you'd go about making something like that and holding the "seams" together. I would think you'd want to use some sort of full length "hinge" that ran the length of the panels at the "seams". In terms of attaching those to the acrylic panels, you'd probably need to drill through the panels and bolt the hinges to them that way. I suppose you could probably do something similar with wood furring strips and attach hinges to the wood strips, but again, I've never tried anything like this.

 

Have you looked at any commercial acrylic panels to get construction ideas? I've seen plenty of them in person, but I have to admit, I've never paid any particular attention to the way they were assembled. Sorry.

[ChadGrieser1979]

I have seen them in a guitar center, and they use some type of plastic clip on hinge piece. It looks like something that i could find at a home improvement store, but i haven't seen anything even close to it. I have a good idea what i want it to look like, but i honestly don't know how to build it without screwing it up too bad. i have some good ideas, but thought i would come here and see if anyone had any ideas or suggestions. i figure that i can build something that would work well and hopefully look decent enough. I nearly fell over at the price of the one that i seen over the weekend at guitar center. 400 bucks for a 5 panel drum shield. i have less than 150 in my acrylic panels and foam board. i do have some wood around my place that i can use for this project if needed...

[SkullCap]

I took a piece of 4x8 1/2 inch plywood, cut in in half with a circular saw so it's now 2 4x4 pieces, hinged those two pieces together with heavy duty hinges purchased at Lowes and velcroed Aurilex panels to it. It lays on its side, so its 4ft tall, great for amp iso and it definitely helps on the drums too. I can lift it up and put barstools at each end and one in the middle (the hinge) and it stands about 8ft...it's great for vocal iso this way. This set up has worked really well for me. Maybe you could use or expand on this idea...hope it helps!

...I use velcro on my Aurilex so I can move them when needed.

 

On the floor:

 

Off the ground:

[SLY_Z_28]

good idea SkullCap!

[SkullCap]

 

good idea SkullCap!

 

 

Thanks! This thing has really proved to be quite useful in a pretty small room.

[drewl]

Years ago I grabbed a couple cubicle walls my old job was throwing away.

With the drums already in the corner of our studio, the two cubicle walls did a great job of isolating the drums, and when we weren't recording we just moved them aside.

They're alreadt carpeted and "lock" together and have adjustable "feet".