I'm at it again.. The last mod above worked great for a few rehearsals, some practice at home and a show before failing.
Each time this mod has failed was to do with the rubber that makes up the fulcrum.
Hellfire suggested neoprene. Alas, that is not so easy to get without spending way to much for piece that is 100 times bigger than what i need.
I went to a local rubber business and alas he had no neoprene. I asked for something like it. Something a little firm, something that is NOT EVA rubber.
He found this...
Hard to tell from the image but this not EVA. It is rubbery yet firm. And if I squash one of the corners with my fingers for 30 seconds, it still comes back to shape.
It's a about 3mm (0.118") thick.
Interestingly it has a very thin sheet of perspex or plastic on one side of it. Handy.
In no time flat I had the 'fulcrum' arranged over the freshly painted wood block.
I did all the 12" pads and this stuff works great. Really great.
You may note above that I left the perspex side face up. This should prevent the head wearing down the rubber underneath.
The top, the assembly sits about 2mm (max) above the bearing edge. You'd want to carefully measuring this out. The potential is there to break the piezo if you have it too high over the bearing edge and tighten a head down on it. 1 to 2mm seems to be the sweet spot.
The 12" were such a success i turned my attention to the 2 x 10" pads. Still with towers of K-Flex.
One of them was not triggering right and opening it I saw that the tower of k-flex in that pad had shifted.
The wood base worked so well on the 12" pads, it was time to get my saw out and make some bespoke bases for the 10" pads.
In no time I had 4 blocks cut to length. Two for each 10" pad.
Here is one of them waiting for it's epoxy to try.. (24 hours).
A reminder, the base under the wood is old CDs. It is double layer and still has a little flex in it. It touches 2 ribs and just a bit of that center circle.
From behind....
I am gluing them in in these photos. Paint and assembly tomorrow.
Oh, and incase you missed it or a new to the site, my DM10X pads are about 10mm (0.39") deeper than standard. The 10" in this shot I extended with an embroidery hoop at the time I was changing the drum wrap from back to the red 'pre Strike' wrap.
As you can see from the images above, you could do this fulcrum mod on the standard pads. Just make the blocks shorter.. For the record, on my 12" pads the block is 22mm (0.86"). On my 10" pads the wood blocks are 37mm (1.45").. You could take 10mm of either of these for a standard pad. You just need to measure it up as you go.