My DIY eDrum Build

Bye, Bye Frisbees!

matthew — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 16:20:12 +0000

As stated in my last post, I ordered a set of practice cymbals to convert to eCymbals. They were on clearance as blemished items, but I couldn’t find much wrong with them. The holes on a couple seemed like maybe they were a little ragged, and the 18″ seemed slightly warped, but they will still serve their purpose.

To convert them, I simply attached the encased piezos from Radio Shack with thin double-sided tape. Right now, the piezos are permanently soldered to the cable that goes to the brain. I will eventually make some sort of housing with a quarter inch plug, but this is working for now.

I was planning on gluing the “fan” section of the cymbal mutes directly to the cymbals, but I’m not so sure now. They do work well at eliminating the “tick, tick” noise, but they reduce the sensitivity of the trigger quite a bit. So for the moment, I have them draped over the cymbals as intended, and have the flexibility to use play on the mute during softer sections, or directly on the surface when I want them to be louder. After playing with them live more, I might decide I don’t want them altogether. The stage of the auditorium where our church meets seems to really eat a lot of sound, and any sound from the cymbals might be negligible.

Here’s what things look like now. I used one of the 14″ and the 16″ cymbals. I will probably make another cymbal and use my fourth tom input for that. I need some cymbals stands now, though, which is why I have sacrificed the second tom.

DI-Why?

matthew — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:44:48 +0000

In my last post I mentioned I was investing some more into my set. The weakest link in my kit to date was the hi hat contoller. I was using continuous controller/volume pedal, which worked, but it was backwards (down was open and vice versa) and not spring loaded. Hardly effective on a regular basis. So, in a break from the DIY spirit, I just hit up eBay and bought a Roland FD-6. Partly because I wanted it now, partly because I’m in between moves and I have no idea where my soldering iron is, but mostly because when you can buy one for $50, it’s hard to justify cobbling something together that might not work as well. Also, the thought came to me that I didn’t make my kick drum pedal, so why should this be that much different. I eventually I will DIY a hi hat stand, perhaps to go with my acoustic to electric conversion, but right now I’m enjoying the compactness of my eKit, an a hi hat stand might even look funny sitting there.

Splurge. . .

matthew — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:17:04 +0000

Well, some birthday money, and a need to use my own kit at church on a rather regular basis, has prompted me to put some more money into my DIY eKit. Maybe you know how it is; you get on Musician’s Friend to buy some strings or a pair of drum sticks, but you realize it would be silly to spend $5 on shipping $10 worth of gear. So you find a couple other cheap items, and before you know it, you need “just” $50 more dollars to qualify for free shipping, and by the time you’re done, you’ve blown past the $99 free shipping requirement, and then some.

Anyway, in my particular case, I started with a tuning peg that was on clearance for my violin, which is pretty much a conversation piece anyway. I really did need a set of strings for my mandolin, so they were next, and of course one can always use some spare sets of strings for guitar, so in went two sets of the Musician’s Friend premium 80/20 acoustic strings (I can’t recommend these enough; $1.99, and they are fantastic. Without a coating, they don’t last quite as long as some others, but you can afford to change these when you should).

Then, what do I see in the clearance bin, but a set of the Pintech 5-Piece Practice Cymbal Set for about 25% off. They were “blems”, but considering I planned on hitting them with a blunt object anyway, I didn’t figure any blemishes they might have would matter all that much. To mate with those, I came across a set of Pulse cymbal mutes on sale for $7.99 (regularly $15.99). They are made from .25″ neoprene, and should be perfect for attaching to the playing surface of the cymbals to reduce noise and give a little spring to the attack. They are already in almost the perfect shape, plus, they are way cheaper than any mouse pads I’ve seen in a while.

To round things out (here comes the “splurge”), I was finally able to justify a Buttkicker. The Buttkicker Gamer had been available for $69.99 for quite a while, but I noticed the other day it had gone up to $99. Ouch (edit: These are listed at $119.99 now. Double ouch; wait for a sale). This is more inline with most of the rest of the internet, but it looked like I missed the boat. Well, on my little shopping spree I noticed they were on sale for $79.99. So why not? I know I won’t be able to get near the monitoring volume I’d like on stage, so I think this will be a nice luxury that will become a necessity after some use. Plus, since I can hook it up to the xBox, computer, and home theater (okay, I don’t know if a DVD player and a 27″ CRT TV qualifies as a “theater”), it’s not just a one-trick pony.

So, if you’ve made it this far, thanks for listening, and, you should probably go outside or something; looking at the computer too much can rot your brain.

Everything Meshes

matthew — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 22:26:34 +0000

I’ve been going nuts converting my remo kit to an edrum kit. My camera was broken and it took great restraint to leave the last pad alone until I could borrow a camera to document the process. I plan to do a narrative of the process of both making the heads and how I attached the piezos, but for now you can go to the Photos section and follow along. I’ve commented on the pics, and it should give you a pretty good idea how I did it. Much of the credit goes to “ScarMike” whose tutorial is posted at the eDrum for Free website.

Remo Kit Received

matthew — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:08:18 +0000

Well, I got the Remo kit and overall was very pleased. It is in excellent condition, but three of the pads were modified pretty heavily. On what I’m guess were intended to be the toms, the previous owner had drilled out and/or removed a lot of the plastic material from the bottom of the pads. My best guess is that this was to change the pitch of the pads a bit, to they would be more realistic to practice on. Who knows, though. They will still work well for their intended use, although on one pad it will be somewhat of an issue to attach the phono jack, as there was so much material removed.

Remo Practice Kit

matthew — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 19:11:21 +0000

Well, this certainly didn’t fit in with my stated goals, but I couldn’t pass it up. I was on Craigslist and saw an ad for a Remo Versatilic practice pad kit for $50. I knew it was a good deal, but a little research told me that it was worth at least twice that. So, at any rate, this should give my build a nice jump start, and if I decide to make mesh-headed pads in the future, I will be able to get my money out of the Remo kit quite easily. The pads will probably trigger better than mesh triggers anyway, especially with my module. However, maybe I’ll make a mesh-headed snare pad to go with the rest of the kit. For that matter, I can also put mesh heads on the Remo pads (example here), if I feel I need to complicate matters; and I usually do. . .

Thanks Santa

matthew — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 01:42:07 +0000

It’s been pretty slow going with the edrums, but Santa was good to me this year. My Musicians Friend wish list had a few things related to the build and made it very simple for people to get me exactly what I wanted. I got a kick pedal, throne, and three Roland piezo cones. The pedal and throne were both Musician’s Friend “Pulse” brand, and I have to say I was really impressed with the quality of both items, and they cost about a third the price of one of the more popular brands. I used to be a lot more concerned with brand names. Most of my guitars are USA made Fender or Gibson, but the older I get (and the more kids I have), the more I find myself looking for true value. And while it’s not true across the board, the fact is that the factories overseas are now capable of making extremely high quality gear, and at a very affordable price.

Drum Module

matthew — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 03:42:09 +0000

I got a little caught up in the moment, as one can have a tendency on eBay, and purchased a Roland TD-7 Turbo module. I got for a pretty fair price, about $170, and it came with a rack mount tray and all the manuals. I was hoping that perhaps since it lived most of it’s life in a rack it would be in excellent condition, and I was right. . . almost. Apparently sometime after it was pulled from the rack, but I believe still attached to the rack tray, it was dropped. Something must have caught the volume knob on the way down, as it was way off kilter, and jammed against the faceplate.
It could still be turned with a little extra force, but I also found that the headphone jack wasn’t working properly. I was a pretty disappointed, and pretty P.O.’ed, but I tore it down to see what I could do. I often times will tear my gear apart before I plug it in anyway; maybe some of you can relate. It turned out that I could bend some internal framework back into shape and snap the volume pot back together and I was in business. Like I was hoping, the rest of the unit was in pristine condition, so overall, I was happy. The seller played dumb, and I can’t really say if he knew it was screwed up before he sent it, but he wouldn’t even admit there was a possibility, even after I said i wasn’t worried about it. He said that if there was any damage it must have happened in shipping. Too bad he packed it in two layers of the big bubble wrap, plus peanuts.

I have already found in my research that the TD-7 may not be the best solution for making the mesh headed drums I want, but we will see. At the very least it will help me get my feet wet, and I can upgrade the module later, if I find a need.

Hello world!

matthew — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 17:57:31 +0000

Welcome to my site dedicated cataloging to the progress of my DIY electronic drum set. Please follow along as I stumble through this, hopefully hanging on to all my digits in the process.