Saturday Morning I Made an Electronic Snare

Mezzo

Member
I was getting a bit bored with my rubber snare, so I found on ebay 2 toms and tom bags, total cost 12 UK Pounds, inside were 12 inch and 13 inch toms, So this is what I did :

(There is a video link at the bottom of it in action)

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I have the other half to do and the 12 inch one to split and make into two as well, which will give me snare and 3 toms in total..

The total cost is as follows :

Half a drum : £3
35mm piezo : 2 x £0.33
1/4 inch stereo jack socket : £0.98
13 inch twin ply mesh head : £9.98
Everything else I had hanging about

Total Cost including all delivery charges : £14.62

And here is a video of it in action :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZZRwB929Nc



Happy Drumming
 
That's a cool hack, you did a good job. Post another video when you get the other drums set up like this.

Is is possible to set up a trigger on the rim of the snare, and get a cross stick sound?
 
That's a cool hack, you did a good job. Post another video when you get the other drums set up like this.

Is is possible to set up a trigger on the rim of the snare, and get a cross stick sound?

Thanks!

Yep the video I did was just testing the center trigger, I hadn't put the rim trigger on by then, but if you look at the last pictures of the underside (6 and 7 from the top, i just put some text on the picture) in my first post you will see the other piezo mounted on the underneath which i then covered in foam just to protect it. its connected to the ring / second trigger, and i dont get any cross talk between the two, so the mesh head does not set it off even if I belt it. If i tap the rim cross stick style then i just get the cross stick sound, no head triggers, then if I do a rim shot / head and rim together i get both.

Thanks for the reply
 
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Now I am happy with the 13 inch snare I made, I am now starting on the others, The mesh heads are ordered, I got 3 ply ones this time because the 2 ply ones seem to be out of stock anywhere, so its cost me £30 for two 12 inch ones and another 13 inch one.

Some pictures... here is the 12 inch getting the chop :

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All the Y platforms cut out

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And fixed in, missing some brackets for the 13 inch so that will have to wait :

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And made the brackets for attaching to the rack :

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The brackets are made from a sheet of stainless that I had hanging about, there is foam on the insides where it clamps onto the shell.

Next thing I need to go out and get is the piezos and 1/4 inch sockets
 
Gotta hand it to you, that's pretty cool! Good thinking all the way around, and way to do it on a budget!
 
Just curious, how is the "chopping" done?
 
Just curious, how is the "chopping" done?

what I did was to mark the half way point right around the drum, every 2 or 3 inches I made a mark, then I got the white tape you can see in the pictures, and i stretched it and stuck it so one edge was on to the marks, so this made a perfect center mark on white tape. Then I did the same with some more white tape leaving a gap of about 1mm for a cut mark, then thickened the lines out for something for the jigsaw to rub against.. Yes, I used a jigsaw and a very steady hand! There was a mount hole already in the drum which met the half way point, so I used that to start off. I was going to use a sander to square off anywhere that I hadn't got dead straight, but it was a perfect cut all the way around on both.
 
Gotta hand it to you, that's pretty cool! Good thinking all the way around, and way to do it on a budget!

Thanks! I'm really pleased with them.. this is how the actual figures break down for everything :

Doner drums (13" tom and 12" tom, Second hand) : £12
Mesh Heads (2 x 12" 3 ply 1 x 13" 2 ply and 1 x 13" 3 ply) : £38.69
Piezo Triggers (4 x 35mm, 1 x 27mm) : £1.98
1/4 inch sockets (1 x stereo, 3 x mono) : £2.91

So, the conversion will have cost me £55.28, for this I get 2 x 13" mesh electric drums and 2 x 12" mesh electric drums.
 
almost identical to a snare I built for same money. Sold my roland PD120 for £120 and never looked back. Mesh head pads like this really are not worth what Roland charges IMO, although they are solid
 
Just thought I would give an update on the kit I made. I have given it some stick, not held back at all, and no problems what so ever, still very consistent triggering, so all looking good. I had to have a re configure of the rack to give more strength to the frame to stop it wobbling, but all good. Changed the setup around a fair bit in terms of hardware, dusted off my digital mixer and JBL monitors and linked that up on SPDIF, the sound quality is awesome.

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And some recordings off it out the mixer using my android phone as the track source, (shame youtube ruins the sound quality) :
(Oh yeah, sorry about the drumming, early days!)

Compressed to 192Kbps MP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7bDnw9NfGY
Compressed to 128Kbps MP4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHTJcquvemw
 
Awesome job, makes me want to do this as I have a cheap kit with plastic heads and a couple beater drums. Thought about doing the kick?

Make sure you practice with a metronome by the way. :)
 
Awesome job, makes me want to do this as I have a cheap kit with plastic heads and a couple beater drums. Thought about doing the kick?

Make sure you practice with a metronome by the way. :)

Cheers! Yeah I have thought about the kick, I think I will try for a 10 / 12 inch on that with a 3 ply, If I do it with a 10 inch tom I can cut that to make the bass plus move the toms around to give me 4 toms then.

As far as the metronome goes, I have actually missed the basics out really and jumped into it with both feet first, so I have actually started going back to basics on rudiments and a metronome, I think in the short term it will feel like taking one step backwards but without getting the basics I wont be able to progress i think. So I have started to do that now.

Thanks for the reply!
 
As far as the metronome goes, I have actually missed the basics out really and jumped into it with both feet first, so I have actually started going back to basics on rudiments and a metronome, I think in the short term it will feel like taking one step backwards but without getting the basics I wont be able to progress i think. So I have started to do that now.

Thanks for the reply!

You're absolutely right. Most things on the drum kit involve keeping single and double strokes in time, it's just about mastering the building blocks and putting them together.
 
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