The Drum Modification Thread

Jasta 11 said:

i was looking at furniture hole plugs or maybe even wood too. tonight im playing it with the hole unplugged for now.

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I am about to take on a little diy project of my own: I have a Pearl midtown kit with a 16" bass drum. I got new maple hoops and the pearl masking plate kit so I can take off the tom mount and riser mount, cover those with the masking plates, and swap out the black wrapped poplar hoops (including the notched batter) for solid gloss maple hoops. It will look much nicer, reduce some weight, and allow me to put the drum on the floor where it belongs.

I also will be replacing both the white coated factory reso and the clear emad batter with new eq4 calftone.

I bought 16" maple hoops from Derek at Tree House Drums and a set of the pearl masking plates to finally give my pearl midtown bass drum the revamp it needed.

I got a rattle can of some gloss clear to finish the hoops, that was step one. The hoops definitely fit Evans 16" bass drum hoop style heads including the calftones. That seems to be a rarity these days and these hoops are the only aftermarket ones I found that do. I then took off the old hoops and heads, the tom bracket, and the small bracket for the riser. The pearl iss mount masking kit fits the tom mount perfectly and looks much better than a big hole (and much easier than plugging and refinishing a shell). Unfortunately the riser bracket has a smaller hole placement footprint so the masking plate did not fit. I got creative with the gasket from the riser mount bracket just to give it some type of protection. You can't see it since it's on the bottom so I'm fine with this. Finally, I installed new Evans eq4 calftones and the new hoops. The drum is much lighter and in my opinion looks much better.

Pics or it never happened:



I have nothing but great things to say about the customer service provided by Derek and the quality of product I received from Tree House Drums. If you are looking for hoops or anything else they provide I can definitely recommend them! https://www.treehousedrums.com

It looks so complete with those hoops and the block off plate. I thought it was just black until the close up pics, i dig the sparkle finish.

Jasta 11 said:

It looks so complete with those hoops and the block off plate. I thought it was just black until the close up pics, i dig the sparkle finish.

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Thank you! For being a cheap wrap it's honestly a very nice color. In low to ambient light it just looks black, which is cool and fine, but in bright light and sunlight the bit of gold in the sparkle really comes out. Also, their is a "regular" (silver?) sparkle mixed in which can catch colored stage lights. Unless it's really dark the color never looks the same.

Nothing epic just finished installing fresh slotted snap lock tension rods on the D506.

I realized I never posted my experiments with a cheap Fame Acrylic snare in this thread, so:



1. the stock snare. the paint on the hoops started to flake pretty fast
2. my favorite by far!!
3. the stock hoops spraypainted
4. a new set of hoops and the lugs spraypainted - but they paint didn't hold on well.
5. so new chrome lugs, a new strainer and I added a 2 strips of drumwrap and a (silly) custom logo

As the pictures proove, a clear acrylic shell does offer a lot of room for modding and creating a unique snare.

Having recently bought a Gretsch Catalina kit, I thought I'd give it the beer tap treatment.

Some of the wing bolts/nuts are M6 so I used male-male double threaded bar and male-female thread inserts with beer tap cymbal nuts

Sonor Hella Hoops, bronze snare wires and Remo heads installed

A bit of fun: I have a cheap Millenium piccolo snare.



I thought it would be cool to try to do something with the chrome shell, like painting it.
Here are some of ans I already have (but I can buy another one):


(Hammer) blue, copper, (glossy) gold, maybe hammer black.

Any suggestions?

Another thought would be to wrap it (also when the paint job turns out a mess ), I think I have a couple of rolls left.

eric_B said:

A bit of fun: I have a cheap Millenium piccolo snare.

View attachment 146098

I thought it would be cool to try to do something with the chrome shell, like painting it.
Here are some of ans I already have (but I can buy another one):
View attachment 146099

(Hammer) blue, copper, (glossy) gold, maybe hammer black.

Any suggestions?

Another thought would be to wrap it (also when the paint job turns out a mess ), I think I have a couple of rolls left.

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I have had much success spray painting wood shells, I've never had success spray painting metal shells. Well, it initially comes comes out ok but quick starts to chip. I think the paint has nothing to "grab" onto like it does wood. You could try a low grit sandpaper but that may show under the paint.

Wrapping it isn't a bad idea but a shallow piccolo shell made of thin cheap metal would have all the life sucked out of it with a wrap. Maybe that's what you are going for and that's fine. But if you want the typical open, bright, cutting piccolo tone that will be gone.

What are you trying to achieve? Just a different look?

Maybe try playing around with a torch, it could give it a cool "oil slick" type color scheme. Or you could sandblast the chrome off then apply a matte clear coat for protection, it would have a flat matte metal color similar to acrolites.

Another idea, how about that high temperature grill paint or plastidip? Ease of application of paint, durability of a wrap, and a cool visual appeal and texture.

Actually, a black plastidip piccolo with wood hoops would look really cool and probably have a super fat sound.

roncadillac said:

I have had much success spray painting wood shells, I've never had success spray painting metal shells. Well, it initially comes comes out ok but quick starts to chip. I think the paint has nothing to "grab" onto like it does wood. You could try a low grit sandpaper but that may show under the paint.

Wrapping it isn't a bad idea but a shallow piccolo shell made of thin cheap metal would have all the life sucked out of it with a wrap. Maybe that's what you are going for and that's fine. But if you want the typical open, bright, cutting piccolo tone that will be gone.

What are you trying to achieve? Just a different look?

Maybe try playing around with a torch, it could give it a cool "oil slick" type color scheme. Or you could sandblast the chrome off then apply a matte clear coat for protection, it would have a flat matte metal color similar to acrolites.

Another idea, how about that high temperature grill paint or plastidip? Ease of application of paint, durability of a wrap, and a cool visual appeal and texture.

Actually, a black plastidip piccolo with wood hoops would look really cool and probably have a super fat sound.

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Thanks for your feedback!

I have not much use for this snare so I thought I would change the look of it (just for fun) when I have some time on hands.
I was already thinking spray paint would not last (long) on chrome.
I like the torch and plastidip suggestions!

eric_B said:

Thanks for your feedback!

I have not much use for this snare so I thought I would change the look of it (just for fun) when I have some time on hands.
I was already thinking spray paint would not last (long) on chrome.
I like the torch and plastidip suggestions!

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Whatever you do, keep us posted!

roncadillac said:

Whatever you do, keep us posted!

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Will do!

So, I decided to make it white!



No, I decided to try sanding and spray painting it first - this is the primer.





If I don't like the result, I can always try another finish.

Thinking about it: wouldn't a white finish (maybe marble, sparkle, glitter, hammer finish) be cool?
Of course there are white drums but not that many.
I'll think about it.

Sand and prime was the way to go, that definitely will help.

roncadillac said:

Sand and prime was the way to go, that definitely will help.

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Yeah, I used my orbital sander to leave as few scratches as possible.
But it didn't catch some small parts around the air hole and I noticed I could scratch off the 1st coat of primer over there with my finger nail.
Taking the easy way and just spray painting it will mean a refinish is required very soon.

eric_B said:

Yeah, I used my orbital sander to leave as few scratches as possible.
But it didn't catch some small parts around the air hole and I noticed I could scratch off the 1st coat of primer over there with my finger nail.
Taking the easy way and just spray painting it will mean a refinish is required very soon.

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For sure, especially if you gig the drum. Also, don't forget to very lightly sand the bearing edge and a small section below it on the outer portion of the shell after you are done painting so you don't have any issues with seating heads and/or even tuning.

So I went to the local hardware store to get some hammer spray paint.
I had the astonishing choice of 4(!) colors.
I didn't want silver (too much like chrome), black or white so dark green was left.
Not exactly what I had in mind but so be it.



I have to say the hammer effect is disappointing.
I used the silver version in the past and it looked great but this looks more metallic:







It is a different look in a way and not ugly but not very exciting either.
I'm not sure I'll keep it like this.
I'll look at it with a fresh view tomorrow.

Update: the green Hammerite turned out to cause problems.
I wanted to spray paint a crappy logo on it and the paint started to dissolve!



I also noticed it didn't adhere well to the primer, I could scratch it off with a fingernail.
So here the paint stripper comes:



I decided to try blue paint (and leave the inside blank):



New crappy logo:



And I call it a day - for now :

eric_B said:

Update: the green Hammerite turned out to cause problems.
I wanted to spray paint a crappy logo on it and the paint started to dissolve!

View attachment 146324 View attachment 146325 View attachment 146326

I also noticed it didn't adhere well to the primer, I could scratch it off with a fingernail.
So here the paint stripper comes:

View attachment 146327

I decided to try blue paint (and leave the inside blank):

View attachment 146328

New crappy logo:

View attachment 146329

And I call it a day - for now :

View attachment 146330

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I like the blue with the logo 1,000x more than the green. I'm not surprised the paint came off, I never had success with painting metal shells even with a light pre-sanding and a primer. It's a possibility that the two different color paints are different styles of paint. Acrylic and enamel paints don't mix. I'm no expert, I've just painted a lot of crappy drums and I recently rekindled a side hobby of Gundam model building so I've been doing a lot of reading about acrylic vs enamel paint and how they react to each other as well as on different materials.

The blue is really really nice.