Roland TD-6 with reduced footprint

I've been owning a standard Roland V-Drum TD-6 for quite some time now. I bought it on a sale, probably around 15 years back, as a compact set that I could put next to my home office desk to play whenever I wanted. And although this set, and specifically the TD-6 module, is very much outdated by now, the kit does what it needs to do. It provides me with a practice kit, that I can keep close at hand, and on which I can play any time of day without needing to worry about neighbors, sleeping kids, or studying/working partners.

However, even though this set is relatively compact, the wide arms reaching out left, as well as the legs sticking out, make that this kits still takes more space than I think it should. (I like to keep my office nice and tidy, so every square foot of space saved just makes me feel better). So when in 2014 Roland released a new model, specifically aimed at being as compact as possible, namely the TD-1K, shown below, I started thinking about how I could make my TD-6's footprint as small as possible. So here is how I reorganized my TD6 in order to make it as compact as possible. 

Firstly I took the frames apart and created 1 vertical frame on which I wanted to attach everything, supported by 1 foot in front of that frame to create a triangular base to make the construction stand solid, as shown here (In my very primitive sketch).

That turned out not too difficult although I ended being short on 1 side of the triangle.

After adding the pads back on this is what the set looks like.

 

The final result is pretty compact setup for now in which I do have some pieces left over.

Good things about the current setup are

• very compact
• very stable (especially under the snare, the solid feel makes a difference)
• wires are now mostly all behind the frame, which makes things nice and clean.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the end result having reduced the footprint of my kick drastically.

On a side note, there also some things I still want to tweak over the next days and weeks although the have nothing to do with the footprint of the set.

Firstly there is the kick pad. I'm not a fan of the original construct for the bass drum that came with the TD-6 namely the KD7. I don't like it for several reasons

• The beater that kicks backwards (or rather downwards), just does not feel natural for me. You just seem to feel that you are kicking in the wrong direction. 
• Additionally, the rebound of the KD7 just does not feel natural
• And finally the pedal stands loose on the ground. Agreed, it has pins that keep it in place, but still, if feels wrong.

The hi-hat control pedal is something I'm not happy with either, but that has nothing to do with making the set-up compact. The pedal has never been too responsive. I think that needs some  research. (Or maybe just take out the dust that accumulated over the years).

I sacrificed a tom pad, and while I usually always play with just two toms, I'd still like to see how, if I can find a proper use for that pad. 

Finally, the TD-6 module has a remaining input that is left unused (the kit was sold like that), so I would like to figure out if I can put it to use somehow.

Maybe topics for a next post.

Tromsa Kombination M4

This week I made a new addition to my drum collection. I got my hands on an old Tromsa drum from the end of 1960's or beginning 1970's. It looks like a model "Kombination M4".  Anyone has more information on the origin of this set, please post me a comment.

Here's some pictures.

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Sources:

• http://home.arcor.de/pfaue/tromsa/katalog/kataloge.htm
• http://www.vintagedrumforum.com/showthread.php?t=8591
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8uC8D1afkA

Portable recykit, part 1: refinishing

Sometime back I ran into a nice article about refinishing a drum on instructables.com. I gave me the idea to (finally) clean up these two "drum sets" I had sitting in my garage. The idea was to give them the same look and merge them into one (very versatile) kit.

• The first set is an old drum of which I don't even remember the origins. I really liked to orange wrapping, but it was in a really bad state. I did do some digging, and it turned out to be a 1950's Tromsa drum, "Kombinationen 511", very similar to this model, shown on a very complete website on the Tromsa drums.

• The second set is something I put together 4 years back in order to have a very small portable kit. Obviously, I still want to keep that option, but it seemed to me that the 14" tenor could serve it's normal role when added to the orange set. Crazy enough, while researching the above kit from Tromsa, I discovered that this tenor drum, most likely came out of the same factories.

This blog post describes shortly my experience with refurbishing this old "junk" while keeping the cost of the whole experiment as low as possible. In the end I've done a bit more than just refurbishing the shells, but please, read on.

Part 1: Refurbishing the shells

I decided to perform a test run on the 12" tom of the orange set. I ripped off the cover and unscrewed all the hardware pieces. I filled any holes in the shell with wood putty. In order to stay on a budget, I used whatever I had left on the shelf. Clearly a bit to dark for these shells, but I figured the stain would hide most of the difference. (Turns out it didn't, and even worse the stain didn't attach on the putty as it did on the wood.)

   

Once that had hardened, I sanded the outside of the shell. I used a small hand machine with sanding paper 200.

 

After the sanding it needed some serious dusting off. I order to make sure I got all the dust, I first brushed it up and then I took a slightly humid cloth and cleaned the shell. I repeated that a couple of times until I was sure all the dust was off and the shell was ready for painting.

Next step was actually starting to apply the stain. I just used a brush and tried to apply the stain as equally as I could. After a first treatment with green stain, the drum looked like this. (Shell and remounted.)

 

I'm not sure whether the result of the staining was so 'unequal' because of my lack of technique, or because of the quality of the wood, any remains of glue, or anything else. Even though it might not show on these picture, I thought a second treatment would be appropriate. You'll see the result below.

In the meantime, I had treated all the hardware of the tom, with metal cleaner, so it was all shiny again. Before mounting the drum again, I decided to add some muffling to all the screws. I don't like rattling pieces in my set, so I decided to make sure that wouldn't happen. My wife likes the house to stay clean, and in front of the door that leads up to the house, she always puts a floorcloth. Now this floorcloth seemed to be made of something felt-like which could easily be cut. I cut of a large piece (2 cm wide the whole side), and used that to create the "mufflers" for the screws. (Up to today I don't know if my wife noticed the floorcloth got smaller.)

  

To muffle the tom mount, I cut out a piece of a mousepad. Mousepads are freely available on the planet earth. Websites as freepage.be or gratis.nl will help you locate your "donor".

 

When applying the second layer, I put the stain on a bit too thick. As a result, I found the green a bit to dominant and unfortunately the (grain of the) wood wasn't 'shining' through anymore. Still the option with the second layer was better than just a single layer. With the second layer of stain on the shell, and the clean hardware remounted, this is what the tom looked like.

 

While I was in doubt of applying a layer of transparent coating to protect the shell, I decided finally not to add the coating. The stain itself already hade a nice shine to it and while I intend to carry this kit around to all possible places, I also plan to take care of it.

All in all, not such a bad result, so I went ahead with the rest of the kit. The results you can see in part 2 of this post.

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Sources:

• http://www.acousticdrums.com/members/refinish.html
• http://jpyh.net/photo/refinish/
• http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-refinish-a-drum/
• http://www.pearldrummersforum.com/showthread.php?91346-Refinishing-drums-My-attempt-and-Step-By-Step-Instructions
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL4luB2gjhs
• http://members.westnet.com.au/freobonsai/

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Blorganization

Just for the record, I'll be using the following tags on my blog:

• Drimformation: General information on drums
• Drum lessons: Interesting grooves, links to lessons, video's and books
• Do it yourself: Build your own drum and percussion materials
• My Gear: The stuff I play on

My portable and compact practice and travel kit

This is my portable and compact travel kit.

Composed of:

• 14" tenor drum (marching band left-overs) on which I mounted two legs
• 10" snare attached to the hi-hat stand
• Tama Iron Cobra hi-hat stand
• Tama Iron Cobra bass drum pedal

    

All the junk in the world

The fact is that over the years I've "collected" (read: picked up) a lot of second hand drum and percussion materials. The objective has always been to "make something out of nothing".

I've added some pictures to illustrate what types of junk I'm talking about.

Children's drum set. Picked it up for 25€(?) of so about 4-5 years back. It's a 20" BD with a single 12" tom and a 13" snare. BD and tom sound pretty good. The snare is utter crap. There's no single sign of what brand this is. Any one who's every seen something like this and can shed some light on the origins of this thing, please add a comment to this page or contact me.

Some left-overs from the marching band in my home town. A huge 2?" "bass-drum", a 14" deep tenor and a 13,5" used-to be snare.  (You cannot see the original shape of tenor and snare any more as transformed the 14" tenor into a mini bass-drum that I use together with a 10" snare as compact practice and travel kit.) This pile of drums also came with a 20" Zildjian Cymbal.

So I hope to show in my next posts, what I'm able to make out of this junk.