Hello, all
I've taken a small look at tweaking and improving my drum rack - I would like to share, and would like to have your own experiences, tips and tweaks to get the rack "just right".
Do post your own tweaks and modifications!
Rack installation:If you, like me, like to hit the rim triggers on the top side of the toms, do not face the bracket straight up from the tom - if so, the force of the blow will go straight into the rest of the frame and cause all kinds of crosstalk.
Instead - fasten the toms with the brackets angled, like so:
After angling the toms, the crosstalk from hitting the rims on the top sides of the toms just disappeared.
Fastening the (Surge) cymbals:When fastening the Surge cymbals, there is a screw for locking the cymbal foam pads to the pole, to keep the cymbals from spinning:
Warning: DO NOT over tighten this screw! It should be tightened
just enough to keep the pads from spinning - the plastic is extremely thin and brittle, and will crack if you apply just a slight pressure.
Luckily, there was one set of pads with every cymbal, as well as with every cymbal stand, so I had several to spare, and easily replaced the cracked one.
Loose cymbals:I want to have my crashes a bit loose, to let them wobble a bit - just the right amount - not too tight, but not too loose either.
The problem with that is that the plastic nuts on top of the cymbals kept unscrewing themselves as I played if they were not completely tightened.
To combat this, I added some hemp*). I had a bit of hemp used for plumbing, and it's just the thing to tighten up the cymbal nuts, so they won't come loose spin off the threading.
Hemp. Proper hemp.
Just take a piece of hemp, fold it a couple of times and thread it through your cymbal nut. Don't be afraid of using too much - you want the cymbal nut to be a bit hard to turn.
The finished cymbal. I ended up with a bit more hemp than in this first picture, and when turning the nut I pushed the hemp underneath the foam washer, so that it was not poking out underneath the nut.
And there you have it - now my cymbal is just the right amount of loose, and it won't get more or less loose on its own accord.
The screws for the L brackets:I did not like the wing screws, and wanted to replace them with proper drum bolts. If you
do use the wing screws, make sure they are facing away from the L bolts, otherwise you won't be able to turn them.
As well - the regular drum screws did not have any washers - and although I had only fastened and unfastened the bracket one or two times, it had already started digging into the plastic. I bought and added washers under each screw. (At least the wing screws had washers.)
And remember - if you buy screws to replace the wing screws - do check the thread gauge - I bought new drum screws, and the thread did not match. Thus, if I want to use the new screws, I also have to buy new nuts with matching threading. Don't try to use screws together with nuts with the wrong threading - it will not hold, and you risk damaging both the screw and the nut. For not to mention the drum, if it suddenly falls off..
And - it
is possible to overtighten the screws for the L brackets as well - I recommend using a regular small T-shaped drum key instead of the supplied drum key - with shorter arms on the drum key it is easier to keep from overtightening the various rack screws and brackets..
And - after seeing how I had overtightened the screws, the wing screws did not look quite that bad after all..
A hot tip to stop the clamps from slipping is to insert a thin piece of paper between the clamp and the rack, and the clamp and the L-rod. The paper will increase friction a lot, and will keep the clamp from slipping and requiring much less tightening of the bolts - you won't have to tighten them so much that the clamp starts cracking.
You may also use a very thin piece of craft foam, for both friction and slightly increased dampening - this is later in the post.
Replacing the bass drum feet:I had an issue with the bass pad - when I attached a bass drum pedal, the puny feet were lifted off the ground, and the pad wobbled a bit, as the pad was only stabilized sideways by the pedal plate.
I purchased some
slightly larger rubber feet (10mm high; if I would have purchased again, I'd gone for the ones that
were 15mm high.), and added some washers as well.
The original feet measured 7mm thick (or "high", if you prefer) - I replaced them with 10mm thick feet and four washers, totalling 17mm high - which was just right. And now the bass drum pad is much more steady.
I also had a problem with the pad sliding on my carpet, and so I bought velcro hook tape, and added plenty to the underside of the pedal.
If you use a carpet and do not have velcro on your drum pedal, I suggest adding some. I had a bit of velcro on my drum pad, but it started loosening and falling off - it was not enough by itself.
And now both the pedal and the pad work juust right.
Padding the module mount:There is a problem with the screws for the Dm10 module mount - they can be just a
tiny bit too long, touching the PCB (Printed Circuit Board) inside the module when fully tightened. If they do, it is
very bad! If you want to check if this is a problem - remove a single screw and then insert a toothpick, matchstick or similar, measuring the depth of the hole (you measure the combined depth of the hole in the module and the hole in the bracket). Compare this to the length of the screw and see, if the screw may be in danger of bottoming out if fully inserted. You want a couple of mm clearance.
My screws were just about exactly the same length as the hole was deep, so I wanted to pad just a couple of millimeters, and add some vibration dampening to the module at the same time.
I cut a piece of 2mm thick craft foam to cover the bracket, and cut four holes in it for the screws. I also added small washers and made 2mm craft foam washes. This extra spacing is
more than adequate - if the craft foam didn't compress when tightening the screws, it would almost have been too much.
And so all that remained was to assemble and remount the bracket.
Rack dampening (Moved from
my Mesh head conversion thread)
Like Gerdy shows in his dampening thread:
http://www.dmdrummer.com/index.php?topic=1541.0..I used water pipe insulation foam to dampen the rack.
I bough several lengths of 13mm thick foam for 22mm pipes (in retrospect, I should have chosen one step smaller/thinner foam), and went to it.
I cut out a slice of the foam to be able to roll it to insert into the rack tubes.
This is the piece for the curved bar, and so I had to cut a bit more than the other foam pieces.
When inserting the foam into the tubes -
do not push it - it will only get stuck.
Instead - tie a string to the end of the foam, send the string through the tube and
pull the foam inside the tube. It helps to be two - one to pull the string through the tube and one to curl and insert the foam into the other end.
I filled all the main tubes with foam, although the vertical tubes with the smaller cymbal tubes inside were only filled halfway - just like Gerdy did.
I filled the thinner cymbal tubes - I used smaller leftovers from the cutting and shoved them inside with the butt end of a drumstick.
It seems that if you want to fill the tubes as densely as possible with foam, the best bet is to use smaller pieces and shove them in with a broomstick or similar. Make sure there is an opening at the other end to let air escape.
Here's a video of me banging on two rack tubes, one filled with foam and one without:
Dampening the rack clamps:Inspired by Gerdys thread, I went to work dampening the various clamps.
I did not dampen the clamps holding the rack pieces together, as I want the main rack to be a single large mass, lowering the resonating frequency and thereby hopefully reducing any vibration issues.
But - I put pieces of craft foam inside the clamps holding the L-rods, both where the clamps are fastened to the rack and where they are fastened to the L-rods. I simply cut pieces of 2mm craft foam left over from the mesh head conversion.
I made the rectangle foam pieces for the rack side a couple of millimeters longer/larger than necessary to ensure that all the surface area was covered with foam.
I could have fastened the foam to the clamp with double sided tape like Gerdy did, but as the rack stays put in my basement, I rarely will move the clamps anyway and I did not have any double sided tape just then, I decided to skip it. The foam will stay put inside the clamps anyway.
When refastening the now foam-padded clamp, you will need to squeeze tight to hold the plastic pieces together close enough to get the screws to connect with the nuts - make sure you do not lose any nuts, screws or washers! When the screws are inside the nuts, you can tighten it to your hearts content.
Notice that you now no longer have to screw the bolts that tight to secure the clamps - the foam will greatly increase the friction between the rack and the clamp, and once you have tightened the screws, the clamp will be
really fixed in place - it simply will not budge accidentally again.
(But then again - now you probably will have to reopen the clamp to move it sideways at all - due to the increased friction, just loosening it will no longer do..
)
The fastened clamp:
Dampening the cymbal arms.I also decided to dampen the joints of the cymbal arms - I wanted vibrations to and from the cymbal heads to have to go through some extra foam, hopefully dampening some of the vibrations in the process.
I took the joints apart, and added some foam. For the joint between the vertical and horizontal arms, I cut a circular piece of the craft foam, cut a hole in it large enough for the bolt, and put it in place.
The foam is deformed from closing and reopening the joint.
When you cut the foam - cut a piece larger than you need. You want the foam to completely cover the connection - not only the bits inside, but also the rim of the joint. Any excess foam can easily be cut later, after assembling the joint.
I also added foam for the joints connecting the horizontal arm to the small arm connected to the cymbal:
Note - this image is not quite correct - I have large piece of foam with the hole for the bolt in the middle as shown, but on the sides I have not just one, but
two smaller pieces of foam, cut like small doughnuts, one below the washer under the wing nut, and one under the top of the screw. I first thought of replacing the metal washer with a foam "washer", but quickly discovered that the way to go was to have a foam "washer" underneath the metal washer. (The foam washer by its lonesome simply disintegrated when I tightened the nut.)
When you reassemble the foam-padded joint, it may be hard to get the nut to connect with the threads on the screw - just press it hard enough together and wiggle. Once the nut connects with the screw, you can tighten it properly - the foam will compress and give way once you have the extra force of the screw pulling it together.
The assembled joint - note the excess foam coming out of the sides - cut the large center piece of foam a bit larger than necessary - this ensures that you have foam covering the edges as well.
Angling the cymbal stands.When I first set up the cymbal stands, I set the stands to be as short as possible, pointing mostly straight up.
..And I started thinking - my two worst crosstalk issues were a) crosstalk from hitting the tom rims and b) crosstalk to/from the cymbals.
The crosstalk from hitting the tom rims disappeared when I angled them - the force of the blow went into the pad, and not directly into the rack through the bracket, as I was no longer hitting them on top of the bracket.
And I thought - why not do the same with the cymbal arms? I angled the arms, raising the vertical arm as high as possible, with the other arms at a high angle, barely avoiding the cymbals themselves, on the principle that blows to the cymbals would not go straight into the rack:
The bottom line.Does it work?
Well - angling the the toms and converting to mesh heads were the two most effective ways of reducing cross talk from the rack once I had adjusted the trigger settings. (Tuning the trigger settings is of course the most important step in reducing crosstalk - that goes without saying.)
I cannot say exactly which of my other modifications that helped the most - I did not perform extensive scientific testing before and after each single dampening modification, but I can comment on the end total result:
It has helped
a lot!
At first, out of the box, I needed a value of 6 or 7 for Xtalk Receive for my ride bell, and I had a lot of high values for the xtalk settings.
Now I have greatly reduced the xtalk settings - I have no longer a single xtalk setting of 5 - all of them are 4 or lower! And no xtalk! Whoohooo!
Well - I can still provoke some crosstalk from hitting the rims on top of the pad brackets, but for normal playing there is now
zero crosstalk. I have enjoyed making the modifications, and now I can play without enduring the
horrible crosstalk the drum set had straight out of the box.
Of course - I still had to adjust and tweak the trigger settings, and I get crosstalk if I reduce the various current xtalk values, but the rack now has
much less crosstalk than when I first installed it.
*) Regarding the hemp for tightening the cymbal nuts, I'm not talking about the hemp normally associated with musicians. This is hemp for pipes! Uhm - let me rephrase that - it's to make proper joints that are.. Ungh -
you know what I mean.
But - if you
do get pulled over at one point, by a nice officer - that would be a bad time to mention to him/her that you have plenty of hemp in your ride.