Porter & Davies tactile monitoring systems power major 2026 drum tours

Porter & Davies’ silent tactile systems are showing up on some of 2026’s biggest drum rigs, from Harry Styles and Luke Combs to Band-Maid, Bryan Adams, Florence + The Machine and Architects. For drummers like Sarah Jones, Jake Sommers, AKANE and Pat Steward, the draw is simple: more low-end feel under the seat, less dependence on blasting wedges, and a steadier pocket when the stage gets loud and the set gets long.

The company says its BC2, BC2rm and TT6-equipped KT platforms are being used or bought by a wide spread of touring acts, including DJO, Niall Horan, Counting Crows, Vaccines, A Day To Remember, Wyatt Flores and Drumeo as well as the names above. That breadth matters. This is no longer a specialty fix for one kind of drummer in one kind of production. It is becoming part of the standard load-in for artists who need consistency night after night, especially when the show depends on clean timing and controlled stage volume.

Porter & Davies says it has been used by hundreds of musicians worldwide, and every hand-assembled unit is tuned and tested by Tim Porter and Dil Davies at the company’s headquarters in East Sussex. The origin story still reads like a drummer’s problem solved the hard way. In 2009, during an Oysterband tour, Dil Davies struggled to hear and feel the bass drum. After a rough show, Davies and Porter, who had already worked as a backline technician and touring sound engineer, began building the first prototype from parts inspired by the kind of hardware used in tank and helicopter simulators.

The core idea is bone conduction, which Shure describes as a way to send bass frequencies up the spine to the drummer’s inner ear. That is why the BC2 and BC2rm matter in practice: they let the drummer feel the kick without leaning harder on the kit or fighting the room. The TT6 Equipped Throne goes further, with a bespoke 1,000W TT6 super-transducer. Porter & Davies says it can be driven by an amplifier from 400W to 1,200W at 4 ohms and is especially well suited to fast double-bass or double-pedal players in high-volume situations.

The scale of the shows says as much as the gear list. Harry Styles’ Together, Together residency spans 50 performances across seven cities, including 30 shows at Madison Square Garden and a Wembley Stadium run that expands to 12 concerts between June 12 and July 4, 2026. Luke Combs’ tour schedule includes Lambeau Field on May 15 and 16 and Wembley Stadium on July 31. When arenas and stadiums get that big, tactile monitoring stops looking like a luxury and starts looking like the thing that keeps the drummer locked in, protected and consistent from the first downbeat to the final encore.