Author Topic: Major DM10 pad mod  (Read 3474 times)

Offline Dobly

Major DM10 pad mod
« on: October 13, 2016, 12:52:59 AM »
I'm at it again. This time I believe I have it right.

I am very happy and inspired by the success of my recent bass drum fix
http://www.alesisdrummer.com/index.php?topic=6785.0

What I liked about it was that the beater no longer directly hit the thing the piezo was connected to.  I thought there must be a similar idea for the pads. I was tired of hitting the metal disc whenever I played hard. Plus the heads had to be so so tight to avoid dead patches here and there.. Not good enough.

In this thread started by estebanelequente, member rhysT shared an image of the internals of one of the newer Alesis pads. 

http://www.alesisdrummer.com/index.php?topic=6814.0

I ended up with this,



and was very pleased with the result. Time to update all the pads.



First job was to make new metal disks. This allowed me to use a thinner metal and also let me keep the original metal disks in tact. Just in case.

Tin snips are amazing tools for this.There are tons of videos on YouTube on how to use them. I strongly suggest you hunt a couple of them down before trying this for the first time.



The Red and the Green snips are Left and Right. (or is that Right and Left). Anyway, the idea is that one of them has the scrap metal waste going out the right, the other to the left. Consequently one cuts to the left and one to right.

Neither of these can cut straight down the middle of a sheet of metal. But there is way by making a cut or two with one snip, then a cut or two with the other one.



In that image they are both generating the same bit of scrap as you move up the sheet.

Anyway these tools are designed to take off strips of metal.



Do not make this mistake.



The circles are too close together and it was very hard to make the cut between them without damaging the circles. I attacked it from both sides in the end but it took ages.

Once all the disks were cut I used a file to remove the razor sharp edges.

 Next I cut the thin foam that use to be on top of the stack. This is cut such that it only sits on the ridged outside part of the drum. If you did not have the hole in this form your hits would transmit down to the dual piezo.



Note also, in case you missed this, all of my pad shells are taller than normal DM10 pads. I did this 2 different ways but of those by far the easiest was to use wooden embroidery hoops. Then simply recover the shells. That is a simple DIY project and well worth it for looks and to give you more room to move in these very shallow 12" pads.

More on that mod can be seen here.

http://www.alesisdrummer.com/index.php?topic=6685.msg46070#msg46070

Here you can see one of the hoops being installed onto one of my 10" pads. The coins between the pegs just help keep the hoop flush with the outside of the shell while the glue dries. 




But I digress.

Next added a new piezo to each disk. Some tape to hold the wires down, and some double sided tape to help hold the disk to the foam. Remember these disks are way lighter than the original metal disks.

The 12" shell



and here is the 10"



 Once the disks were wired up and fipped over the pads looked like this.



Note, the double sided tape sticks great to the metal disk, but hardly sticks at all to the form. What it does do however is make it difficult for the metal disk to slide. Once the rubber is pushing it down, it should not move, (fingers crossed).

Time to cut some rubber.

First I used a ruler across the bearing edge and a small ruler to mark the depth from the head down to the metal plate.



Then I cut disks of K-Flex rubber to that depth plus 2-3mm.

I stuck each on with double sided tape and the spent way too long cutting off the excess tape. So it looked nice.



Note the bond between the rubber and the metal is very very strong. If you try to remove one of the rubbers it will break and you'll need a razor blade to get the tape and rubber mess off.

Once done the pads now look like this.



The pads feel much much better to play. The heads are tight, but not as super tight as they were before. They respond great, there is no crosstalk and all in all this mod has been a major success.

Now, what can I do with these?



I'm trying to think of a way to mount them each with some rubber stuck on top to some sort of rack and used then with a Sample Rack or some such thing.


« Last Edit: October 13, 2016, 05:04:26 PM by Dobly »

Re: Major DM10 pad mod
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2016, 01:24:49 PM »
That looks great! I want to do a setup like this in my A2E shells. Just need to find the right kind of foam to make the towers.
Yamaha DTXtreme III with DIY drum pads

Offline AlanK

Re: Major DM10 pad mod
« Reply #2 on: October 14, 2016, 11:02:56 AM »
Dobly, that's absolutely incredible work, what a project. Congratulations on putting all this together, sharing it and I hope you get the sound and response you're aiming for. Wow, it's quite the intricate project, super documentation and photos are so clear  :D
DM10X with Addictive Drums 2, Pro X hi-hat, 4 crashes, foam cone conversion w Roland mesh heads, Laurin Drums snare and kick, Mapex P710W double kick pedal, Mapex 2 legged hi-hat, Behringer 8 channel USB mixer, Tascam 144MK AI, Samson Expedition Escape powered speakers

Re: Major DM10 pad mod
« Reply #3 on: July 24, 2017, 11:54:56 PM »
Sorry to relive the post, this is very good and I am very interested.
Dobly you could reupload the images? The links are broken..

I have an Alesis Usb Drum Kit, with 8 "drum pads and hitting the pads so hard they annoy me ..
I come from a DIY ZZ (Arg practice drum) Muda converted to Electronica and the experience with the mesh is just great.

I hope the fallen links are fixed ..

Greetings from Argentina!
Alesis Trigger I/O with Alesis USB Drum Kit 8"
Alesis and Fdrums Cymbals

Offline Dobly

Re: Major DM10 pad mod
« Reply #4 on: July 25, 2017, 03:07:08 AM »
Yeah. I had the images on Photo Bucket but just this year they started charging to display then I  another site.

Offline Dobly

Re: Major DM10 pad mod
« Reply #5 on: July 25, 2017, 07:22:58 AM »
Sorry to relive the post, this is very good and I am very interested.
Dobly you could reupload the images? The links are broken..

I have an Alesis Usb Drum Kit, with 8 "drum pads and hitting the pads so hard they annoy me ..
I come from a DIY ZZ (Arg practice drum) Muda converted to Electronica and the experience with the mesh is just great.

I hope the fallen links are fixed ..

Greetings from Argentina!

damage

After I did this mod I was not happy with it. So I attempted a different mod. ANd that mod was a MAJOR success..

YOu can read about it here..

http://www.alesisdrummer.com/index.php?topic=7136.0

The first image in that post is about the mod I did in this thread. This mod worked ok, but it lacked the dynamics of mod in the link above.  The mod in that link makes the pads perform perfectly.