At first glance, they appear to be conventional, chromed-steel tension rods. On closer examination, you'll notice that through their threads is cut a narrow slot filled with a hard nylon material. This material increases the friction and surface area between the TightScrew ® and the receiving nut, thus preventing detuning. Do the gizmos actually work? Absolutely. I tried them under darn-near-abusive hammering, and once my ears stopped ringing, I didn't detect any tuning changes. Because I had to eventually give the TightScrews back, though, I wasn't able to check how many times you can change your heads before the plastic insert loses some of its effectiveness. But I have faith.

Did you ever find yourself "playing ping-pong" in the middle of a rock gig? You know the feeling. You're playing all-out, slamming into the pocket with sledgehammer force. As the gig progresses, your snare doesn't sound the same as when you started. You tap the batter head near the lugs and find that most of the tension points sound like "ping," but when you tap the spots where the rimshots land, you hear "pong."

If you've been taking notes during the past few years, you know that this phenomenon is due to heavy playing momentarily reducing the pressure on those tension rods, allowing them to loosen in response to shell vibration. Various manufacturers have dealt with this problem over the years, using such things as locking nuts against the lugs or molded plastic heads that go on the rods to keep them in place. These solutions can take extra time and effort, and can interfere with fine-tuning capabilities. Carl Scott Percussion has come up with something different that does the job without the drawbacks.

The TightScrew ® is a non-loosening tension rod that is designed to stay right where you put it. It features a small channel cut along the length of the rod where the threads go into the lug. The channel is filled with something that looks like nylon, and the friction of this substance against the threads inside the lug casing keeps the rod in place. This technology is used on Apache helicopters to prevent parts from loosening under extreme vibration and temperature conditions.

To test how well the TightScrew ® rods worked, I replaced two rods on my snare and laid into it. The TightScrew ® rods stayed right in place, and I didn't have to do any retuning during the test period. I appreciated having infinite control over my tuning, without the constraints of a device that uses a plastic edge or ball-bearing click to hold the rod in place.

Carl Scott says that if you play at light to moderate volumes, you only need to replace the rods positioned immediately under your sticks. For higher volume levels they suggest that you replace all the rods on the rim. Once this is done, you shouldn't need to do anything until the head stretches. The rods come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, which should be plenty of time to determine if you'll have a problem. The rods on my test snare remain where I first tuned them, and I haven't had to touch them since.

Out of habit, I check my tension rods every chance I get when I am playing and not once have your rods come loose on me. When playing on ordinary tension rods, I usually have to crank them back tight on my snare drum every song. Because of those regular rods coming loose, it has caused me to break through heads at shows and become a total inconvenience. I've tried just about every other product out there to prevent the rods from coming loose. Gels to lug locks and they all have problems of one kind or another.

I consider myself to be a very heavy hitter. In the rock band I play with, we play three hour sets straight through and every hit on my snare drum is a rim shot. Constantly having to pay attention to my tension rods coming loose is a thing of the past now. Your tensions rods have given me total confidence to go into a show and not worry about them coming loose. Thank you so much Carl!"

These tension rods when placed in those 4 positions immediately alleviated the problem and allowed the drum to be played quite hard for an entire 1 hour set of heavy rock music WITHOUT HAVING TO BE TIGHTENED ONCE!.

Mr. Scott may very well have a revolutionary product here that could save a lot of drummers from countless interruptions in a performance by having to constantly 're-tighten' a drum that has gone loose even in the middle of a song."