DIY Acoustic to Electric Drum kit conversion

[Wamphyri]

Here is the kit when I bought it.
Roland TD-11K

I got a 16 inch floor tom from the tip shop for $5 and took it home and stripped it down and cut it in half...This became my kick drum.

I then painted it and set about making the internal trigger, the trigger design got trashed at a later date for a better version.

12 inch tom cut into two.

sanded filled and undercoated with a marine epoxy primer then sanded flat again and filled anywhere needed


basecoated with black gloss enamel then scotchbrited for adhesion


Old laundry tub filled with water for swirling (DIY plug too )


Red and Black enamel paint poured onto the water surface and then swirled around a bit to make some sort of a pattern and get the colours moving around each other


Slowly dipped into the paint and rotated while dipping


Clear the paint off the surface away from the shell and pull it out to avoid double coating


The toms swirled and ready for 1st round of clearcoats.

Internal triggers are an mdf base, screw cabinet foot and quartz trigger cones with 35mm murata piezos

more toms swirled

finished snare with hardware painted satin black and some rubber U-channel on the bottom

I didn't get enough pictures of the whole process, but here is some of the kit as it stands now, completely playable, so I am not in any rush to continue expanding just yet. And seeing as i have a new hobby I know where all my spare cash will be going now lol.

[headwerkn]

That is extremely cool!

I made the somewhat regretful decision to sell my Tama drumkit about 12 months ago (needed money for other things, wasn't really using it enough and it took up a heap of space)...





Really missing it now so am thinking of getting a cheap electric kit and maybe an acoustic snare and cymbal to tide me over for a while. The Alesis iODrum for iPad looks pretty cool, actually. Not sure about latency though.

Cheers, Ben.

[Wamphyri]

very nice headwerkn.

Wish I could have an acoustic kit, but unfortunately I live in units lol.
I was originally going to go with 2 kick drums on mine, but I was too impatient to wait to buy separate kick pedals, so went with one.
Going direct drive eventually maybe some pearl demon drives, or import some trick dominators.

Depends how cheap you want to go with the electric kit, I researched a fair bit before I bought and found that with these things you do get what you pay for.
2nd hand rolands or yamahas can be picked up for a decent price, but they tend to hold their value.
Ddrum electric kits are supposed to be good, and alesis are not too bad either from reviews I have read.

The cheaper ones are apparently pretty bad.
I would recommend a roland but I am biased :P
Haven't played ddrum or alesis, had a bit of a hit in music shop of a yamaha but didnt like the feel of their pads.
This is my first kit, so I am not overly experienced with all the products out there.

Roland mesh heads are pretty darn good. My ex's father had a Roland HD1 (small toy but kinda cool nonetheless - its what I learnt to drum on) and then upgraded to a TD-9KX which was excellent but $3K's worth.

All things considered I'd love a vintage Rogers kit one day...

[Youngun]

I had to sell my Mapex kit due to little use and wasting space I didn't have. Very regretful but is funding my next rifle project. This is a very sexy kit you have mate.

That rogers is very slick...if i could have an acoustic it would be a pearl reference, but if i had the choice and plenty of funds I would get 2 roland td-30kv's and build a monster kit :P

Yeah it sucks having to sell off gear you don't really want to part with, a long time ago I had to sell my Ibanez Steve Vai Jem, Twas a sad day. I orignally bought it because I didn't want to wait to import a Dean ML from the US and they wanted $3000 for one. 14 yrs later I got my Dean for $800