Upgrading or Hot-Roding Cheap Drum Sets- Please Contribute

S

stevieb

Just another guy, really.
China-made "stencil brand" drum kits are common as nails, cheap as dirt, and usually sound about as good as either- but they are not going away, no matter how much we rail against their poor quality, horrible sound, or repercussions (pun intended) of buying cheap, low-quality "goods" from China. There are, no doubt, much that can be done to improve them, yet be cost-effective. I'd like this thread to be a clearing house of good, proven, cost-effective (even cheap) ideas, which I will condense the best ideas into a guide, and post up- hopefully it will be good enough to become a sticky.

So, knowledgable drum folk, please post your cheap tricks, keeping cost-effectiveness in mind. Here's an example/suggestion, please try to follow this format:

ORIGINAL: Metal washers between tension rod head and hoop.

UP-GRADE: Replace metal washer with nylon ones from a drum shop.

BETTER: Get nylon washers from a hardware store (cheaper, and for this application, nylon is nylon.)

DIRT CHEAP: Retain the original metal washers, and put a VERY small dab of white lithium grease on one side of the washer. Put a VERY small dab on the tensioner threads, while you are at it.

You can save time/typing by cutting and pasting this:

O:
UG:
B:
DC:

and adding your suggestion to it.

Thanks in advance to all who will contribute.
 
Make sure your bearing edges are good. Lay the headless drum on a truly flat surface and shine a light inside the shell. If you see light poking through between the bearing edge and flat surface, your shit is fucked. Get it fixed or buy new drums. With a good bearing edge and good heads with proper tuning, any drum will sound good.
 
I used to do this all the time when I was buying the old 60's Japanese kits around town for as cheap as $50 and never more than $200. And that was if it came with hardware and cymbals. I would recut bearing edges, pack the lugs, and put good heads on. They sounded great. However, I gave up on that a few years back when I actually added up time and labor as well as parts cost to the 'bill'. In hindsight, I got to look like a rebel, and no one wanted to play my 'junk' at open mic night. :p
Eventually you just want 'good' drums. Some of the real low-end examples might only have 6 tuning lugs on a kick drum! The toms might have 6 lugs as well, and that just made tuning difficult. I mean, you could get a tuning, but it may not be the one you wanted. Hell, I'm getting spoiled for 10 lug snares, and 8 lug snares give me fits. Maybe you can compromise for using a 'good' snare with your cheap kit.
That's all I know. I have no 'original, upgrade, better, dirt cheap' solutions for you. I don't think there is much to do. Do you even need to recut the bearing edges? They are probably so much better these days, all you can do is put good heads on them, pack the lugs, and away you go. The quality is just so much better than when the Japanese first invaded North America with their drums. I'm playing Chinese Gretsch, and have no problem with the quality. What would I improve? My son has a stencil brand kit that we paid $400 for new a few years back, and I immediately threw out the cymbals. But other than that, what can you do? New heads weren't night-and-day as I would have wanted after spending $200 on 'upgrading' the kit.
 
Replace the crappy hardware with some decent hardware. Makes a lot of difference. I have an old Pearl that has a skimpy ride stand that goes out of the bass drum, I ended up buying an old double braced Rogers stand from the local drum shop for pretty cheap and that thing is a freaking beast, one of the best stands I have ever used.
 
Don't use squeaky kick/hat pedals. In fact, drums and hardware shouldn't squeak or rattle at all. Fix it if it does.
 
Thanks for the good start, some good suggestions, so far.

I once was given a kit that has FOUR tensioners per head! I think it was even 4 (maybe 5) on the 16" floor tom (I think maybe six on the 22" kick drum.) They were used, but intact. As we tried to tune them, the pot-metal tensioner mounts started to break. Tried various strategies to keep 'em going, but in less than TWO MONTHS, the whole kit was useless. We threw the whole mess away- I don't think we salvaged ANY parts from them.

Greg- do ya think that if you got a drum that light shown under the edge, you might use a flat, sand/concrete floor as a sanding surface, and move the drum shell 'round till the edge was light-tight? I know, you'd lose some of the proper bearing edge profile, but perhaps the compromise would be better?

Keep in mind, not trying to make a silk purse from a sow's ear, here... but sometimes, you gotta go with what you got or can afford. And now, cheap kits from the 60's are considered "vintage... hell, I'll take all I can find at $50-100 for a full kit. I've got a 60's CB700 kit here- removed the badly-cracked wrap, sanded, stained and poly-ed the shells, put them back together, complete with the original "tin-foil" badges. Now, everybody who sees them treats 'em with more respect than they would a new, mid-grade or even high-end kit!

But what is "packing the lugs?"
 
stevieb said:
..............what is "packing the lugs?"
Click to expand...

I never heard of this before, either, until I tried recording these old Japanese drums. You would hear a 'squeak' as you hit a drum. The engineer took all the lugs off, and wrapped the spring inside with a few turns of a light gauze. Years later, when I knew I had 'import' lugs on some Ludwig Rocker drums (remember those?), I thought I would just wrap the springs as soon as I could rather than be embarrassed in the studio down the road. Surprise, surprise; there was a carefully cut piece of yellow foam wedged in behind each and every lug spring. I have heard of people just packing in cotton balls, too. But I do the gauze still to this day. Cheap, and easy to cut and wrap.
You only hear the squeak as you record, unless the problem is really bad (the springs are rubbing on the casing), or you are a really hard hitter. But I've also heard old Ludwig Speed King pedals squeak really badly, to the point many engineers called them 'Squeak Kings'. But then I caught on; it was only when they mic'd the batter side, or jammed the mic way inside from the front. Just putting that D12 barely inside the port hole out front didn't make that squeak noticeable at all.
I've used the Gibralter 'upgraded' cymbal holder to mount to the bass drum. The original is always light duty and a piece of junk. It just completes that 60's look, and you feel like you are in a time warp. All you need to complete that look is some Ajax cymbals. No, I can't say that with a straight face. Throw them out. The 'worst' I'll go with is a set of Zyn that actually are pretty decent.
 
stevieb said:
Greg- do ya think that if you got a drum that light shown under the edge, you might use a flat, sand/concrete floor as a sanding surface, and move the drum shell 'round till the edge was light-tight? I know, you'd lose some of the proper bearing edge profile, but perhaps the compromise would be better?
Click to expand...

I've done just that, except it was on a piece of plexiglass with sandpaper cloth glued down. I was fine sanding some metal parts and thought "I wonder if I could do a shell like this". It took a lot of work, but I got a bearing edge smoothed out pretty good and it made the drum easier to tune.
 
You can definitely improve the performance of drums like this with head change, hardware change, and correcting the bearing edges, but you'll still be left with inferior (but improved) drums because the shells suck to begin with. It will take a considerable amount of money to buy new hardware (going with at lease 6 or 8 lugs on the smaller toms, 8 or ten on the larger toms and snare and 12 on the kick). But you are left with 4 to 6 ply cheap-shit bad wood shells that are going to leak all of the resonance from the shells and you won't get a good sound no matter how you hit them.

You'd be much better buying a used kit of good manufacturing quality that needs TLC and spending your time and money fixing it up.
 
No doubt that is true, Rim, but the point of this is to get "what we got" as good as possible, and still be cost-effective- and actually, "buying a used kit of good manufacturing quality that needs TLC and spending your time and money fixing it up" is the same sort of thing. Stensil-brand kits rum the gamet- from that crappy 4-lug kit I was given (please, don't do me no more "favors!") to a "Borg" brand kit I have that has hardware to rival the Gretsch Catalina kit we have in the New Orleans studio.
 
I wish I could contribute something more helpful than this quote, probably from Brock Yates or Carroll Shelby:

"You can't turn a pig into a race car, but you can spend a lot of money building a hell of a fast pig."
 
For less extreme problems with bearing edges, you can rub paraffin wax on them. This helps fill the cracks and voids, and also allows the head to slide over the bearing edge smoothly as it's being tensioned.

If you remove the tension rods, and they're clean, you should grease them with some vaseline or another suitable alternative. This will allow for smoother tuning.

I've got some more tips here (some of which have already been covered in this thread, like packing lugs):

How to Prepare a Drum Kit for Recording | Late Reflections – the Silent Sky Studios Blog
 
I was told from a Pearl rep that a maple shells from their factory were all the same. The only difference was when its fate was decided if it was to be an export shell {ECX} or a masters shell {MCX}. And of course from there it all came down to the finish and hardware, which the masters got more attention finish wise and better hardware.

Like has been stated if you start of with a good shell and good heads you should be able to coax good sounds from the drum. Its been my practice for years to buy lower end drums and hot rod them. I prefer to piss my money away on cymbals not a drum that has a hand rubbed finish rather then sprayed, or whatever.
 
dreib said:
I was told from a Pearl rep that a maple shells from their factory were all the same. The only difference was when its fate was decided if it was to be an export shell {ECX} or a masters shell {MCX}. And of course from there it all came down to the finish and hardware, which the masters got more attention finish wise and better hardware.

Like has been stated if you start of with a good shell and good heads you should be able to coax good sounds from the drum. Its been my practice for years to buy lower end drums and hot rod them. I prefer to piss my money away on cymbals not a drum that has a hand rubbed finish rather then sprayed, or whatever.
Click to expand...

Export is poplar. (expect the ECX, like you mentioned, those are maple. They may be of a lesser grade though)
MCX is maple.
Pearl Soundcheck is a cheap (Philippine) mahogany.

And it's not always the wood that makes the sound.
Also, the Pearl reference shells are in fact have a different sound, and it's noticeable.
The customs they make also can be modified to have African (the good stuff) mahogany, high quality birch, or maple, and you can specify every little thing you want on it. It's not all "the same wood".

But to each their own.
 
DrumRookie said:
Export is poplar. (expect the ECX, like you mentioned, those are maple. They may be of a lesser grade though)
MCX is maple.
Pearl Soundcheck is a cheap (Philippine) mahogany.

And it's not always the wood that makes the sound.
Also, the Pearl reference shells are in fact have a different sound, and it's noticeable.
The customs they make also can be modified to have African (the good stuff) mahogany, high quality birch, or maple, and you can specify every little thing you want on it. It's not all "the same wood".

But to each their own.[/QUOTE

I agree that wood does not play as big as a role as company's would have you believe, but what im trying to say is if there are people who are dead set on a maple, or birch, it would be in their best interest to check out the lower lines, that have what they want ,and then hot rod em from there.

A high end drum set does not guarantee a great sounding kit and it wont make you awesome.
If you guys gig alot you know what/whom im talkin about!
Click to expand...
 
The thickness and density of the shell is VERY important. A very thin 4ply softwood set will sound bad no matter how you tune them or what kind of heads you use. You definitely want thicker shells so that all of the resonance doesn't leech out through the shells when you strike the drum. Drums like this are like those horrible pieces of crap that have big holes drilled through the shells. They just sound bad no matter what you do. You can't get any kind of volume from those very thin shells that have reinforced hoop supports on the inside no matter how hard you hit them. You can't make "a fast pig" out of these. Give them to children to play with and maybe they can destroy them and do the world a favor.
 
Not to further cloud the water, but there is one factor about wood that I have never seen mentioned. Different woods splinter or split more easily than others. In my view, this is important on drums because a wood that is less likely to splinter will hold it's edge better over the live of the drum shell.

Carry on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top