So a few years ago I did an A2E kit with 12 and 13 inch toms (purchased an EBay for £9 - it was the tom bags that were for sale, the toms were free).
I had very little patience at the time, so split the toms, got some 3 ply Z-ed heads, TriggerIO, piezos etc. etc. and built them (I have all the photos if anyone is interested) but I never really did the finishing touches which has bugged me ever since really. Since the kit was packed away (back into the tom bags I bought) for christmas with people staying over I thought it was a good time to finish them....
So this is what I started with :
(Attached below)
Basically the rims were badly pitted and rusting, the lug screws were mainly rust, the lugs themselves were dirty and slightly corroded.
So last week I hit amazon and ebay...
I bought some Autosol chrome and metal polish (
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003XJ1ODM) and some wire wool and with a lot of elbow grease I scrubbed them up, finished them off with a cloth and the difference was quite astonishing. For the lugs I just used a cloth and did them quite lightly with the polish, they werent that bad anyway and wire wool on those would take the "chrome" coating right off them.
From a local home and crafts shop I bought some black gloss sticky backed vinyl and some black gloss paint. I painted the the trigger platforms and I wrapped the insides...
I also got some new lug screws (M4 x 12mm) and penny washers (M5 x 25mm)
Also from Amazon I got the rubber edging,
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00JI048BU for the bottom of the shell and
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B017QFPUXS for the rim. I got just 1m of each first to see if they would fit OK.
I am quite pleased with the effort, I am still waiting for the clamps, and I need to go and get something to fasten the cable back, but they look quite smart now, the pictures dont do them any justice since I am down to one lonely bulb in the drum room, but they are all shiny and bling now
Edit: Just to add to that while I was at it I replaced all the piezos (might as well for the cost), moved the edge triggers up to the top next to the head triggers and used a sound card to find the correct polarity of the piezos and have the head as leading positive and the edge as leading negative. Not sure if that really makes a huge difference but they seem to me to trigger better than ever, im not sure the alesis gear really cares much about polarity but I did it anyway. Also for reference if its useful to someone I used 27mm piezo for the head and 35mm for the rim.
The 12 inch ones are easy, next are the 13 inch ones which just goes into the wonderful world of double triggering, so those will take longer since it took me a while to get rid of it last time and now ive ripped all the insides out I will be starting again, but this time I can get it right first time... maybe..