Deeaa, I too have resorted to using a lot of unsightly duct tape and foam, sticky on one side, window insulation on my drum heads.

I have found the current pin-stripe heads and the snare head and Aquarian muffled bass head, work really great to produce a nice warm thuddy tone, without the unsightly looking strips of duct tape, etc.

I have yet to try to record my drums but want to do so with my JamMan, along with some backing tracks; otherwise I'm going to resort to recording my Conga drums for an interesting beat.

I'm also considering a rivited ride cymbal to add some sizzle. I played a couple very nice Zildjans today that were rivited rides.

You might want to consider using a conga drum or a set in your recording. I have a pro set of three; 12", 11.75", and 9". These sound really good and a cymbal could be easily thrown in and played by hand. Hey, sometimes John Bonam would play his regular drum rig with just his hands during his solo's.

There's a way to quiet a drummer down, take his sticks away or have him play with brushes or mallets. LOL.

Unless you have enough influence in the band I don't think you are going to be able to get a slamming drummer or super loud, full stack guitar player to quiet down; as ego's sometimes run high in these type people, no insult intended. I like to play super loud sometimes myself, and was, in fact, playing my Schecter C-1 E/A and my Agile very loud this evening, with lots of overdrive. I don't usually hammer my drums excessively hard though, and never play slammingly head breaking.

After all, it oftentimes is Rock 'n Roll that we play and that has a certain inherent increasingly loud element to it that makes it fun and characteristically "gone too far". That's a big part of the fun, studio work, in some cases, aside.