How do you remove unwanted stickers from the front of a bass drum?

Drum heads are made from polyethylene terephthalate film, which has excellent resistance to most solvents. Acetone does have a slight weakening effect on PET, though, so I wouldn’t use that old standby, nail polish remover.

Goo Gone® is based on citrus oils and petroleum distillates, both of which are safe for PET, and it works great on sticker glue. If it’s a plastic sticker, you should warm it first with a hair dryer (“warm”, not “hot” setting), then peel the sticker off by hand and use the Goo Gone to remove the residue. For paper stickers, the Goo Gone will soak through the paper and weaken the glue, allowing you to peel or rub most of it away. Then use more Goo Gone on a rag to scrub away the rest.

Good luck with the un-stickering!

@harp: great answer!
@ writerini: I might just add that if you bought the drum kit second hand, you might want to conisder replacing the skins with new ones (unless they have been recently). It can be a good and relatively cheap way to make your kit sound really nice even if it isn’t new, per se.

@yannick, The skins have been replaced pretty recently so I’m happy about that. The previous owner also bought some really nice heads and stands.

WD-40 .....Use sparingly…....

Have you used it before, boffin?

Yes, to take stickers off of bumpers…..
Being that those were on steel, and some on the new molded plastic painted ones. Thus the use sparingly suggestion.