DW5002s in Hard Case with Beaters Still Attached?

I have a DW5002 with hard case. I've always slipped the beaters off when packing up, and yesterday while in a hurry I put the main pedal in the case without removing the beaters. Lo and behold it fit. I then wanted to see if the slave would fit, too, so I put the slave pedal in, and it fit even with the beaters on the main pedal, although I had to cock the beaters a bit putting tension on the springs. This places the beaters against the slave's footboard, and the case closes just fine.

My question is: Am I causing harm to the springs by doing this? I mean, the springs are always used when playing, but will keeping the springs under constant pressure like they are when I pack up the pedals this way cause them to fatigue, or lossen up, prematurely? Anyone have experience or thoughts on this?

I can't imagine leaving a spring under constant tension does it any good at all.

Sure they stretch out when you're playing them, but they recoil back in a second. It's not the same as stretching them out under tension and leaving that way for days on end.

Takes two seconds to remove the beaters and you're asking for trouble with those springs under constant tension

Pocket-full-of-gold said:

I can't imagine leaving a spring under constant tension does it any good at all.

Sure they stretch out when you're playing them, but they recoil back in a second. It's not the same as stretching them out under tension and leaving that way for days on end.

Click to expand...

I'm not an engineer, but this would be my intuition as well. Better safe than sorry, so I would definitely recommend removing the beaters.

Or better yet just loosen the shaft from the spring and rotate them back. No more having to deal with taking them out completely.

That's what I wanted to know about springs.

Re: loosening the shaft, I'm not sure what that means. Hopefully, not the shafts on the ends of the springs, 'cause that would be more work than removing the beaters, especially when trying to get them adjusted to the exact setting again! :-(

Packing the pedals with the beaters on and slightly deflected will cause absolutely no issues at all. When was the last time you had to replace the springs in your car's suspension? Those are loaded by the weight of the car their entire life.

Elastic deformation does not damage the springs. That's what they do, they stretch and relax elastically. You would know if they plastically deform, as that happens instantly, and requires that you severely overstretch the spring. Deformation of a loaded member over time is called creep, but that's generally only an issue at very high temperatures (thousands of degrees) or very high levels of load, I.e., you're stretching it so hard it's about to break anyways, and can even take years or decades to manifest itself.

And let's not forget that the stresses on the parts of the pedal are much lower when it is packed in a case, no matter what the beater deflection, than when you're playing the pedals and slamming the beater into a drum 60 times a minute.

And yes, I was studying to be an engineer before I decided to change fields.

Soupy said:

Packing the pedals with the beaters on and slightly deflected will cause absolutely no issues at all. When was the last time you had to replace the springs in your car's suspension? Those are loaded by the weight of the car their entire life.

Elastic deformation does not damage the springs. That's what they do, they stretch and relax elastically. You would know if they plastically deform, as that happens instantly, and requires that you severely overstretch the spring. Deformation of a loaded member over time is called creep, but that's generally only an issue at very high temperatures (thousands of degrees) or very high levels of load, I.e., you're stretching it so hard it's about to break anyways, and can even take years or decades to manifest itself.

And let's not forget that the stresses on the parts of the pedal are much lower when it is packed in a case, no matter what the beater deflection, than when you're playing the pedals and slamming the beater into a drum 60 times a minute.

And yes, I was studying to be an engineer before I decided to change fields.

Click to expand...

Thanks for chiming in, here. I've decided I agree with your position, and just packed up my pedals for tomorrow's performance with beaters still attached. Upon close inspection, I can see that the spring are nowhere near being taxed, and in fact, it appears in the application of kick drum perdals, the springs don't get much of a load to begin with. And, now that I think about it, I've never heard of anyone replacing pedal springs from fatigue. I think back to my own previous DW5000 single pedal. That pedal served me well for 30 years. I had no case or bag for it, and just crammed it wherever I could fit it, including into an army duffle bag along with all other my hardware. It got banged around and ended up in all types of positions, including positions in which the springs were under some load, simply by virtue of picking up a soft-sided, non-reinforced bag like that. Over those 30 years, the pedal traveled to and from gigs from Hawaii to New York and back to San Francisco, all without mishap. At no time during its "career" did I ever even think to replace the springs, nor did I even have cause to inspect them.

So, I think I will transport my current double-kick DW5000 with beaters installed to and from local performances, for now. The springs DW uses are fairly easy to acquire from local hardware stores, so if I see a problem, I'll just replace them and go back to removing beaters for transport. Thanks again for posting up! ;-)