The Drum Modification Thread

Why don't you seen drums that are varnished/stained on the inside as well as the outside?

I'm about to begin de-wrapping my maple kit and do a Tobacco Satin Oil finish, and I think it would look awesome with the inside done and clear heads.

Has anyone here done that, or seen it done?
 
Why don't you seen drums that are varnished/stained on the inside as well as the outside?

I'm about to begin de-wrapping my maple kit and do a Tobacco Satin Oil finish, and I think it would look awesome with the inside done and clear heads.

Has anyone here done that, or seen it done?

A hard drying varnish or paint would increase the reflictiveness of the shells interior, thus increasing attack and reducing sustain. Case in point, Hayman Vibrasonic drums use a Polyurathane paint to achieve exactly this.

I believe some Tama Superstars have stained interiors, but without effect on sound.

So, it can be done, but keep in mind what it could possibly do to effect the drums sound.
 
Hey all, I'm doing a job on my Mapex Horizon; a humble and misunderstood kit.

There's an attachment below, sorry for the watermark but I don't have one of my actual kit, just mine has an extra tom (8") in the run which is white and the run follows black white after that. (I'll try to get pics soon).

Anyway, I'm not rewrapping it as such, though I am getting a custom decal job over the existing wrap (it won't affect depths of anything for hoops etc) and also getting bass res heads done.

I'm also reheading the whole thing for a nicer, deeper sound.

And now onto my question. I'm also thinking about staining the insides of the shells. They're the white wood and I want it a nice rich, dark brown.

So does anyone have any tips, like how and what to use?

I'll get pics up once it's all done :D

Here's how it is atm (just the colours are reveresed and there's the extra tom in the beginning of the run).

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Why don't you seen drums that are varnished/stained on the inside as well as the outside?

I'm about to begin de-wrapping my maple kit and do a Tobacco Satin Oil finish, and I think it would look awesome with the inside done and clear heads.

Has anyone here done that, or seen it done?

Yamaha Recording Customs have stained interiors. Their shells are extremely well made. The stain seals the interior nicely and it does look great. The Cherrywood finish drums have a red stained interior that looks very classy.
 
That paint job looks great, GD! Did you have to sand down the inside of the shell to get the sealer to soak in, or was the wood unfinished? While I was working on that Ludwig Classic Maple BD I found that the clear coat they use inside the drums is quite heavy and tough! May not be silver, but I bet it influences the sound!

Nice work!

If there was a sealer on the drum I couldn't tell. The paint went on easily enough. One reason to paint the inside was that with clear heads the drum just stood out like a sore thumb. Now that it is also sliver inside it looks more like it belongs to the set.
If I had wanted a brighter sound I would have been in trouble. I'm going to see if Gretsch wants to buy the left over paint from Ace.
 
This is the Bumble Bee Bop set I made from four different brand drums. 18 x 16 converted floor tom with wood hoops, claws and t-rods from 3 different sellers. I think I had 8 or more different sources for the drum parts.
 

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Hi -

Really impressive mods here! When I have time I'll have to check them out in more detail.

I'm a newby and an amateur drummer but I decided that it was time to replace my old Royce kit with something a little better, so I got a Ludwig CS Accent Combo Rock for a good price off Ebay, with an extra kick and 8 x 10 tom thrown in. I was considering a Gretsch Catalina which I'm sure would have been a better set overall, but decided to cheap out because I thought I had a mod that might allow the CS toms to punch above their weight acoustically.

It looks like the tom shells are 6 ply, all light colored wood. If anybody knows what Ludwig means exactly by 'select veneer' here, please tell me. All basswood? Basswood & some birch, or something else? IAC, I assumed the worst. So when I got the drums I bought a 4 oz bottle of thin CA model glue (penetrating super glue) and painted the insides of the tom shells and bearing surfaces with it using a cheap foam paintbrush. I did this outside because the CA fumes while it was curing were horrendous. I figured the results couldn't be too awful because CA basically hardens up to acrylic plastic like used in Vistalite drums:) If anybody else tries, this, don't get the CA glue on the outside of the shell - it's tough to impossible to get off without marring the finish as I found out the hard way. Fortunately, I was able to remove it using acetone and a lot of elbow grease without fatally marring the wrap, which I was able to polish up again with a lot more elbow grease.

I haven't got the drum kit together yet - still waiting for the second kick and the 10 x 8 tom as well as the Remo pinstripe and Aquarian Super Kick 2 batter heads with Falam patches, but the tom shells are definitely stiffer - I'm guessing as much as twice as stiff as they were before I painted their insides with CA glue, so maybe I'll get a better sound than the dead 'thud' sound I've heard some people say basswood gives.

Also, has anybody tried adding mass to the center region of the kick's resonant head, like maybe gluing a cut down single ply head to it? I wonder if giving it more of a diaphragm motion with a bit of extra mass could give more LF output and punch to the sound? Also, I was wondering if doing this might possibly allow tuning the resonant head lower with less wrinkling. I'm not planning to cut a hole in the kick resonant head, so this could be an option.

Thanks much for any response, and I'll be back to check out this site again soon.
 
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Also, has anybody tried adding mass to the center region of the kick's resonant head, like maybe gluing a cut down single ply head to it? I wonder if giving it more of a diaphragm motion with a bit of extra mass could give more LF output and punch to the sound? .

I've read quite a few posts where drummers will take an older head and cut out the center of it and tape it over the center of the batter head as you've described. And they all say it adds to the punch of the drum (more articulation).

So, if you have an old head laying around or one that is slightly damaged and you plan on tossing it anyway, it is a free experiment that would only take a few minutes to try out. Give it a whirl and let us know what you think about it.
 
May I also mention the EQ pads you can buy for such a purpose?

Just in case :D
 
The head is a clear Emp for the reso side of a Tama Starclassic Bubinga/Birch 24x18 kick. I like this head on the reso for what this group requires. I am fortunate to use several kits for different projects. The small grommet is my compromise on a ported head for a cover trio rock group I play with fairly often. They house their own P.A. Let it be known. I DISLIKE CLICKY KICKS! They were used to having a "clicky" kick sound for their modern songs (20% of their night). I explained how my full reso would provide plenty of click and, more importantly, low-end provided amps and cabs were not too close to the kick and external mic. We had a discussion similar to this...

Them: "Where are your pillows?"
Me: On my bed. Why?
Them: Fine. Where is the hole?
Me: Well... If you must know...
Them: Nevermind. How does it sound?
Me: Turn on the mains.
Press button.
Them: Why is there so much bass?
Me: (face palm) Because it's a bass drum.

We found a happy ground between low end and punch acoustically and I told them I would replicate it over a P.A.

So... This went on for a few gigs and they wanted more attack. I attribute this to their lack of knowledge on running sound; be it FOH or Mons.

Anywho...
I came up with this. I checked out the Kelley Shu mounts and realized I had everything but the cordage in my garage. One trip to HD, minus $7.99, and my internal kick mic is complete. This pic is of a PG52 instead of the Audix or Heil I would normally use. It is installed in my Starclassic Maple 20" kick (in the pic), but was easily switched onto the 24 B/B. The group was more than pleased and I got to keep my almost full (less 3/4") reso.
 

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I'm fairly new to all this, so technical terms don't really mean much to me. Anyhow, I've been drumming a year or so on my boyfriends kit. He's now got a new kit and decided that because the old one was past it's best he'd just give it to me (thanking my lucky stars). It's not actually all that bad, just happens to have been passed around a lot. I've now got a whole set of new remo heads and am building up on cymbals but the kit looks horrid.

It's cream.

I've been reading up on recustomising and from what I can make out it's better to strip the wrap from the shells before doing anything. And I'm up for doing it and know all about the prep needed before hand (My dad has had various jobs) but I wanted to know if staining or spraying would be better if there's much difference. I've heard sprays can later crack but presumably if it's good enough quality and done in the right weather it would work?

I'd like to use two colours on my shells (purple and black) so I'm thinking spraying would be better but I'd like some insight first

Cheers
 
The drum is finished and reassembled. While I had it apart I ran some 220 grit along the bearing egdes to clean them up a bit. Now as for sound. Unless my tuning skills are vastly improved over the last four hours, this drum sounds much better. I'm sure the paint had something to do with that whether it was the Gretsch Secret sealer or not. Who knows they may also use ACE Hardware paint by the barrell. It is warmer, less harsh sounding. Now go paint all of your drums quick.

Looks good! How many coats did you do and did you sand between coats?
 
This is the Bumble Bee Bop set I made from four different brand drums. 18 x 16 converted floor tom with wood hoops, claws and t-rods from 3 different sellers. I think I had 8 or more different sources for the drum parts.


Sounds like a real 'labor of love'. The end result looks great.
 
Thanks. Just keeps me out of the bar. Took a while to amass all of the parts but that kept me from rushing.
 
I'm looking to strip my amber fade down and make it ruby fade... What's the best way to do this... The drums Are to have the wood grain showing so any help would be greatly appreciated :) x
 
This is a great thread....some real cool mods out there......here is a pic of my acrolite. A buddy of mine "duracoated" it in camo colors and it is now a ...... camolite! Check it out:
 

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As a drum builder, I would say not to attempt a sprayed sparkle finish unless you have lots of experience finishing drums already. This type of finish is one of the most difficult to master. An auto shop would be able to do it for you, but if I were you, I would just wrap it in a sparkle wrap, or try a different finish. I did this kit with paint I bought from Lowes. It was the first kit I ever painted, and it turned out great.

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....Beautiful....You did that with paint from Lowes? That is gorgeous
 
So I'm repainting and finishing an old cheap kit for my brother's birthday. I have painted the shells with regular latex based interior wall paint (lime green leftover from painting my kitchen)
I want that standard high gloss lacquer finish that's on most finished sets, but I am becoming very indecisive about what to choose for the coating.

The lady at home depot said I should only use high gloss polycrylic (only comes in a can- not spray form)

Then as I'm reading various forums/blogs, they say urethane, and stay away from lacquer. But other places say lacquer works just fine.

Needless to say, I'm pretty befuddled with what to choose and what will work best with my interior latex paint job.

Oh, and what works best for cleaning up old, rust-spotted hoops, lugs, etc?

Anyone have any suggestions?
 
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