Drum shell sizing question for DIY project – Anyone?

[Torgil Benig]

Hi everyone, I’m new here and this’ll be my first post.
 
I’ve been playing drums for a gazillion years, and have plenty skill as far as DIY goes. I also (very convenient) happen to have a bunch of unused crappy drums laying around. So, due to my daughters new interest in playing drums, and my wifes extreme lack of compassion and understanding for the daughter banging the living h*ll outta her acoustic kit in our tiny house, it’s time to invest in some electronic drums.
 
And since I like doing weird DIY stuff, I am going to build some E-drums myself. I’ll start with the actual drums, cut shells in half and install roland style cones/piezos, or something like that. Aiming for a TD-12 or maybe a TD-6 module to run the things.
 
Now, my question is: How large shells can I use for my drums?
I have noticed that both the roland mesh drums, as well as most DIY’ers drums, are fairly small in shell dimension – is there a good reason for this? Since I happen to have most drum shell sizes available(well, 8″, 12″, 13″, 14″ 16″ 20″ and 22″) my personal preference would be to use standard acoustic sizes right down to a 22″ kick.
 
But is this a good idea? Mesh heads needs to be torqued quite hard even on say a 14″ snare, so maybe there will be problems with larger shell sizes as far as big head vibrations(like on a big kick) will backfire with double/false triggering?
 
Since I have so many sizes of shells available, it would be daft to just jump into it without asking the expertise here, so please help  me out. Give me some pointers on choosing good sizes for the kit. I’m aiming for a kit with snare, kick and 4-6 toms.
 
And I’ll buy some cheap used e-kit for the daughter, these ones will be MINE(my wifes lack of compassion and understanding extends to my own drumming too).
 
I appreciate any help I’ll get, and I’ll be posting my project as soon as it starts, got some ideas that might be useful to the other DIY’ers.
 
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Style0 – the world’s finest blues instrument

================================ Style0 - the world's finest blues instrument

Topic

[Firesoul]

Hi there style0!

It depends on which mesh label you would want to use, Roland has 8″ 10″ 12″ and 14″ heads, and they are the most expensive, but in my opinion also the best quality.
You can also get other heads up to 22″ and maybe 24″, but I think it’s better to make a small bass drum, though it is possible to make a 22″ drum, you just have to experiment with it.

Regards..

[Firesoul]

By the way, if you need cones they can be hard to come by, but I know some places you can get them, try this..
http://www.ufodrums.com/piezoscones.htm
or go to ebay and write “foam cone” and press seach

[gastric]

I think the general concensus is the smaller the mesh head size the better for triggering. Roland heads are most easily available in 12″ sizes, though you can find 14″ if you look hard. Hart mesh heads are less expensive and are available in just about whatever size you want, including for your 22″ bass. Of course you can make your own mesh heads cheaply using a couple layers of Lowe’s solar screen material bonded onto an old acoustic head hoop. Certainly a ton of options. Which makes it confusing. 🙂

I personally took a cheap-O Groove Percussions 5 piece kit and converted it to electronic using cheap 40mm eBay piezos, the Beatnik crossbar method, DIY cones, and Hart heads, and currently an Alesis Trigger IO, and did a set of brass cymbals using the same 40mm piezos and a PVC sheet underneath for sound dampening.

I’ve had good success with the following exceptions:

* 16″ floor tom still provides poor response and mis-triggers. I haven’t cracked the case on it yet. But it’s frustrating. I can tune it out with module settings but then loose playability for rolls and dymanics.
* I have the same issue on my 22″ bass but it’s not an issue to tune it out via module settings since I have a single pedal and the bass doesn’t require as many dymanics and speed overall.
* 14″ snare requires a boost in gain to get subtle nuanced hits which limits overall range, but it’s still very playable
* 16″ ride rings a bit hard on the bow sounds. I haven’t determined if this is my cheap cymbal, piezo location, or an Addictive Drum issue. I’ve always had issues getting a loud, clear “ping” on the bow sound via Addictive and it tends to move quickly towards a harder crashy sounding hit too easily. Particularly after striking the bell. So it’s probably a cymbal or piezo issue more than anything.
* Overall I get some extremely low-velocity mis-triggers that accompany my actual hits across the board. However, they’re not audible and are only visible when reviewing a MIDI piano roll. Most eDrummers aren’t recording MIDI and I suspect many have similar issues they simply aren’t aware of. But if you can’t really hear it I guess it’s not really an issue.

My general conclusion is:

* DIY is easy and doesn’t have to be hard or expensive.
* Turning out a totally playable/usable product is pretty easy.
* Getting it to work absolutely perfect is difficult.

The V-Drums forum is your best source for DIY stuff. Though not a concise collection that’s the most robust and active source of info available.

Christopher Graham

[Author]

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