Drummers: need your advice

I'm lucky enough to have a good drummer in my band. His sense of tempo and timing is very good. He is the conductor and the glue that holds the band together and rarely forgets his cues. He can count to 4 better than any of us.
 
The only problem is that he's too frickin' loud. In a big room or an outdoor venue he projects power and confidence. But when we play a small room we have to choose between driving the audience to the far end of the bar or turning the whole performance into a 4-hour drum solo. To make matters worse, the bass player feels obligated to match the drums' volume, and unfortunately he's no Jack Bruce.
 
Long ago I played with a drummer who'd managed to address this with light sticks, gel heads and a light touch. But I don't remember the details and don't know what to suggest that won't kill Mark's mojo.
 
Electronic drums would be the obvious answer, but he can't afford them. At least not the high-end kits I've looked at, which run upwards of 10 grand, not counting amplification.
 
So I'm appealing to drummers out there who've dealt with this issue to give me some ideas.

Thin heads with moon gel or duct tape applied. Thinner sticks. Thin cymbals. The snare is usually the biggest problem. You  could heavily dampen it and use a trigger which are pretty affordable these days but you would need some sort of sound module. Playing with a lighter touch as well as striking the drum to the side of the head instead of dead center will also make a huge difference. All of these things will change the sound. Not always a bad thing depending on the situation.

Get a different drummer.

Or use a computer or a drum machine.

Hey Bitflipper,
 
I'm thinking stick control (power) and stick diameter are the big issues.  You could suggest a smaller diameter stick  and possibly some tone control rings from Remo.  Hot Rods are awesome and could work well too.  
 
Here's a vid from Sweetwater that could help though those drum shields at the end are pretty pricey and in my opinion, not so practical for gigging.
 
edit* ok, the youtube link was stripped.  Lookup "6 ways to overcome drum volume by sweetwater".  

Tell him to practice playing at lower volumes. I have known many a drummer who simply loses all of his feel for the kit when asked to play at a lower volume while others (who make it a point to practice at varying dynamics) who can retain the feel and some of the sound. It is difficult but not impossible. 
 
I have also used RTom Black Hole practice heads and Zildjian L80 practice cymbals for my drummer when in really tight spaces where volume is an extreme issue. They are not cheap and you have to tape some cymbal felts in between the pad and the drum head to get any tone out of the drums but the snare sounds like a snare and so on. It takes work and it's not prefect but it does work with time and effort. The practice cymbals sound like crap and will likely be too low in volume so it's a trade off. Lack of tone for less volume. If interested I would just buy a snare head and try it before investing in anything else. 

Sounds like he is still hitting hard.  I have had several pairs of rods and they are still completely whole!  He is hitting them harder in order to make the same amount of sound a stick would whacking a snare drum.  It is one of the loudest drums that drummers can get wrong so easily.  He would be better off using sticks and playing quieter. Rods sound better played softly.  Then you really hear the sound of individual rods contacting the snare head. Although a very fast flam say this sound is easily picked up if the stroke level is not too loud either.  You can capture this sound and to sounds killer.  Fat. The note is wider. Whacking a rod is more akin to using a single solid tip. 
 
Try this experiment.  Try letting a stick fall under its own weight  from about 6" up.  One end of the stick should swing on your finger about 3" up from the edge of the head.  Listen to how much sound it makes.  Well, the snare drum has something to do with it too.  A Sonor snare (wood or steel) sounds loud doing this!  A drummer only has to add little more energy to snare drum strokes in order to achieve quite a high volume in the whole room.  One can wish.
 
I am in an interesting situation now.  Mixing a tribute show.  They do three sets one for Orbison, a British song collection say around 60's and a 70's American song collection.  I am enjoying pulling a good FOH sound while not to have to sweat the music.  The drummer I am working with has a Pearl electronic kit with nice pads triggering. The snare is electronic too.  He uses real hats though and sometimes a real crash and ride etc.  This sounds very nice and natural as well.  He has the electronic cymbal hitters as well.  (Note the original balance from him was wrong though. Electronic kit Drummers also don't know how to balance the kit pieces leaving a drum brain.  Drums need to be all in balance.  Keep the reverbs to fast and subtle effects. Setting velocities is real important to your playing style and dynamics. Hats and cymbals mixed right down and add some crispness.  Many brains have amazing production processing that is going on inside) It still takes the same amount of time to set up an electronic kit as it does for me to set up my Sonor kit. 
 
Got to say though. Once you get this right the drums can sound amazing.  Out front and on stage too.  I have got full drum brain PA splits in stereo from him of course.  He can fiddle his monitor levels without interference to me.  Drum sounds are very consistent now from venue to venue as well.  Once I get the PA out front sounding nice to the room (a la Steely Dan ref mixes out front tell you everything!) The drum sound tends to slot right in with a minimum of fuss. 
 
Now this sort of thing does allow more control over the overall stage sound.  It takes a surprising amount of amps and speaker power would you believe to achieve anything is remotely close to a loud Sonar kit say.  Our drummer has two monitors next to him.  One on top of the other.  Both powerful active full range boxes.  The drums come out of the lower one for him and he is letting himself mostly hear it too.  So this is good.  It also creates quite a nice amount on stage for the rest of them.  Not too much though.  I have three foldback mixes and the drummer is one of them.  His top speaker does the vocals and the rest of the music.  The others all have nice active wedges and I can slip some drum sounds into any of them as well.  This all does work rather nice and you can control the amount of stage sound.  Still got a reasonably loud guitarist and bass player to contend with which can sometimes over power the PA, but I can usually keep them under control.  They are nice fellas and listen to me.  We are using backing tracks too which the drummer controls.  He wears one headphone in this situation to hear the click.  The backings out front are clear and in stereo too.  I have mixed them.  I blend them into the live channels.  The line between the backing and the band is real blurred there too. 
 
The fabulous thing about this though is his ability to switch entire kits to suit all the songs involved.  You can carefully go through all your set lists and call up a range of kits.  Not major changes all the time either.  Keep some kicks while changing snares etc and toms.  Some of those big Orbison numbers need the fat deep rock 80's snare like She's Got It.  But in the 60's Beatles stuff, that older English rock kit needs to be pulled up, and it can. The 70's American disco songs need some change ups too.  It's all good and the kit changes can add a lot of colour to the show.
 
 

Wow, that's some inspiring DIY, Mark. The kind of project I would have gleefully dove into 30 years ago. Age has made me lazy. I was hoping there might be some inexpensive transducer, kind of like Drumagog in hardware form.

Check out pintech.com.  They are an electronic kit manufacturer and started taking on conversions a few years back. They have some simple triggers and mesh head sizes from 8" to 26".  I'm not sure how those mesh heads will hold up though, still sounds like he's hitting hard to me too but may be worth a try.  I also don't know if you can get their drum module (brain) without a kit but there are other brands too.

Also might think about an acrylic drum sound shield.  I have seen these used quite 
effectively at casino gigs, where volume is often an issue.
 
https://www.sweetwater.co...g6ZEAQYASABEgJIkvD_BwE

I think the shield would be the best choice. I played regularly on a top of the line Yamaha V-Drum kit a few years back. No matter how far they've come through the years, it still doesn't feel right to me.

A bay window for your studio???

Hey Bit - I just noticed the price listed is for a 3 panel shield.  The photo in the link shows maybe 5 panels.
The # of panels is selectable and the price rises with each additional panel.  Ebay has some posted too.