Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Just an often overlooked option even with the technology takeover of today's musician.

Considering that an acoustic kit needs a lot of mics, a large mixer, generally 4 tracks to record to sometimes more, a LOT of sound checks and a lot of post processing I decided to go with a more sensible methodology.

Buy an electronic kit.
They're pretty affordable these days and while you may need to go entry level 5 piece and downsize your drummers lavish runs and shifts a bit, 1 stereo wire from the sample module to your computer or multitrack recorder and your rescued from a hell of a lot of work!

I picked up an OSP Electronic 5 piece for around $300 along with a cheapo 99 dollar double bass pedal. Plugged into my computer, did a few recordings and in playback, absolutely nobody would know it wasn't a recording of an acoustic kit.

I have something to contribute to that!

I've got a basic elec drum kit that I've had for years... few roland sp triggers and a vdrum snare. It's hard to get cheaper than $300 for elec drums but if that's your intent...

if you've got an old practice kit lying round...
go to radio shack and pick up a bunch of piezo triggers. approx $2.00 ea.

make a hollow space about the size of a quarter in the practice pad for the piezo trigger...

wire this up to a 1/4" jack... (black to neg, red to pos on the 1/4 jack)

these will actually work very well as cheap drum triggers.

You can also mount them to your real kit (on the shell?) and trigger electronic sounds via a real kit.

At one point I had made an entire elec drum kit using pvc and plexiglass (for the head - then covered with practice pad material).

I actually created my own bass drum triggers using pvc, a few long 1/4" bolts and some plexi and drumpad for the heads... they work pretty good. granted they don't have the sm response as vdrum heads but they get a pretty good bounce w the practice pad material.

you can go and buy frisbee golf frisbees and mound a piezo trigger to it... then wire to a 1/4" jack and you now have cheap cymbol triggers! (You will want to use the 1/8" double stick tape as the padding helps the trigger not 'dbl hit')

go out and buy a used alesis dm5 and you've got an elec drum set.

midi that to your computer or a sampler and you can fire off very high quality samples.

here's to some drummer finding this usefull!
ps... I learned this trick about 10 years ago from drummer magazine... don't ask me why I was reading it... I have no idea... I don't really even play drums!

cheers

I've seen the practice pad set conversions before.

You can actually get a couple dozen piezos for about 5-6 bucks mailed to your door off Ebay as well as a few websites I've got saved. Great place to pick up the 1/4 jacks in quantity for a low price too.

My OSP electronic 5 piece was I think $300 shipped and is identical to one sold by Roland for around 500. Genuine drum heads, decent module etc.

But had I seen these DIY rigs, I would have probably gone that direction because they can be built for about $200 including the practice pad kit and you can buy a much better module with expansion capabilities for a decent price.
The brain with my kit is nice but limited with no room for expansion samples.

Cool concept with the frisbees, I've not seen that addition to the DIY kits.

I've seen the practice pad set conversions before.

You can actually get a couple dozen piezos for about 5-6 bucks mailed to your door off Ebay as well as a few websites I've got saved. Great place to pick up the 1/4 jacks in quantity for a low price too.

nice... good find on the bulk piezos... hopefully someone will make use of that info! (little too late for me. I have a kit nowadays.)

can always use a good source for 1/4 inch jacks... are they cheaper than $0.75? that's about the best I've found for decent neutric jacks.

you can buy a much better module with expansion capabilities for a decent price.

I've got the complete sound set of the yamaha dtxpress, roland vdrum, korg triton percussion, etc etc etc... and the vdrum brain is still about the best I've heard for modules...

but you can get better results (IMO) from high quality samples (bob clearmountain, big fish, even the acid loops one hit cd's) and a soft sampler... and they seem to be a dime a dozen these days.

anywho, hopefully someone will pick up on the good advice we've set down on this thread.
cheers,
mv

Hey don't forget the option of making your own samples from your acoustic set then loading them into your trigger module.