Making my own e-drums: sold my set a few years ago and was really missing it; wanted an e-kit but did not want to drop 5-7k.

some day I'll write this up for real but here is an overview:

7 piece e-kit (kick, snare, 4 toms, and aux pad). Mostly made by me except for the aux pad (had it lying around, older roland mesh pad) and the hi hats (roland vh-12). hardware is mixed stuff I found cheap that was tolerable - used dw7000 pedal, used roland rack, etc. Heads are remo silentstroke. Tried many mesh heads and preferred these by far - even over the "roland" heads that are also made by remo.

brain is the excellent megadrum. Unfortunately for people who like to build this stuff someone was selling his code against his wishes so he only sells kits with a protected bootloader these days. He still has the old version up but he has since released an ARM version that greatly benefits from the extra power. Definitely worth the plunge IMO - exponentially cheaper than comparable roland/yamaha/etc equipment and immensely configurable. Learning curve is kind of high (as with anything that is super configurable) but the forum is supportive and active. Tons of features - multi-zone cymbals, tons of inputs, positional sensing, multi-zone drums, etc. Have this triggering addictive drums 2.

Kit was made out of a garbage set of toms from ebay. Got 10" and 12" rack toms and a 14" floor tom with all hardware. Stripped the drums, removed the butt ugly wrap (heat gun and scraper), and sanded off the glue. Also cleaned and sanded the hardware. Sanded the interiors as well (so much sanding, ugh). Cut the drums in half on the table saw (floor tom was cut into thirds and the center was thrown away) then sanded the bottom edge. Kind of a weird thing to cut on the table saw; came out really well but be super careful. After this I repaired the bearing edges; used a mixture of hide glue and sawdust in dings and breaks then sanded smooth once cured.

Stained the inside of the drums black. played with several veneers (can see another veneer I tried in some of the pictures). Eventually went with a tamo ash veneer from veneersupplies. Excellent service, highly recommended. I dont have most of the veneer gear so my process was to cut to size with a SUPER sharp blade, roll on a thin layer of veneer glue with a stiff foam roller, place the veneer, and tighten down with ratchet straps. There are probably many ways that are vastly superior to this method (vacuum setup ideally) but it worked. Of note: this method did not work well with my first attempt which used a redwood burl; this veneer wasnt very flat and as a result it adhered very poorly. Tamo adhered fairly well.

Drilled out holes (be super careful here, as you can see I lost some chunks of veneer, luckily most of this is hidden under hardware. don't forget to add a hole for the 1/4" jack) then stained and lacquered. I suggest practicing staining on scraps, especially if you're trying a fade or whatever like I did. Many guides out there for this that are far better than I could do. Be prepared to spend AGES lacquering and sanding if you want a good finish (I did over 20 coats). It's hard to get a picture of the end product but it came out very nice.

During this I powder coated all the hardware. Got this black powder with some sparkly crud in it from eastwood and it came out well. I was worried that it wouldn't adhere to chrome very well but a mix of pitted hardware, heavy sanding, and eastwood PRE for prep seemed to do it; been about 6 months and no chipping yet. Also used some cheap white harbor freight powder for accents.

I also cut supports from mdf - Cut circles roughly 3/4" short from MDF then cut them into a spoke pattern that matched the lugs. Got a bunch of roof truss clips and screws/nuts and painted everything black. After this I put all the drums back together, truss clip behind the lugs to mount the MDF. After some testing I added "platforms" that were outlet covers with neoprene glued on that were mounted about 1" above the MDF. This held the head piezo and cone, rim piezo went underneath the MDF. This led to the best distinction between head and rim without making the rim impossibly hard to hit. Wired head to tip, rim to ring, and grounds to sleeve. All mounting bolts were covered in loctite red thread locker; after a few days of playing the floor was littered with nuts and the drums started to buzz pretty bad. thread locker seems to have fixed this.

On the snare I added a second output jack. I got a cheap throwoff and finished it to match the kit. I got a SPDT limit switch with a long arm. The head + goes to the input on the switch and the output goes to the tip on each jack. Drilled a hole by the throwoff so that when I drop the throwoff the arm is triggered and input is switched. This does not switch the rim input (stays the same) but it easily could be adapted to do both.

Using 35mm piezos on the drums. Made my own 1/4" cables - far cheaper this way plus I can make them the proper size. Got gibralter tom mounts, snare is in a pdp basket, kick is on a dw kick riser. The tom mounts and kick riser are definitely available cheaper, can't remember where I got them but I paid much less than what amazon wants. Kick is also held in place with floor tom legs; mounted the leg mounts then measured to determine where bend should be. Bend process was fairly simple; heated bend point until glowing with MAPP torch and bent against a well anchored metal bar then quenched.

I added in some finishing touches - UFOdrum's rim condoms made the rims much quieter and improved rim triggering. Metal core edge trimming on the bottom drum edges to clean the look up a bit - mcmaster-carr #24175K17.

The last thing drum wise (aside from fitting the heads and the endless megadrum configuring) was cones to transfer head vibrations to piezo. I'm sure it's easy enough to buy roland cones but homebrew is cheaper and gives you more options. mcmaster-carr #86375K152 and 86375K153 are adhesive backed extra soft poron sheets in 1/4" and 3/8". Comes in varying softness, I've tried this and ultra-soft and prefer this. I've read going more firm leads to false triggering. Cut the 1/4" into 1 3/4" squares and 1" squares and the 3/8" into 1/2" squares. stack them as such - 2 1/4" 1 3/4" squares, 2 1/4" 1" squares, 1 3/8" square. Can leave it like this but I made it into a cone shape. This stuff is a pain in the ass to cut. Tried scissors, jigsaw, hand saws, etc. Cheapo electric carving knife from walmart was by far the best thing. Made a simple jig out of mdf scraps and mending plates to hold the carving knife at a 66deg angle and used a sewing needle to hold the cone in place. Then it was simply turning on the knife and slowly turning until you cut off all the excess. Cone.jpg in the pics folder shows the difference between the electric knife (left) and next best thing (jigsaw); shows the dramatic difference. With practice the cones got much smoother as well.

I got a set of plastic cymbals. The good is that they were super cheap on ebay. The bad is that they are just stupid loud, ugly, and have terrible feel. Tried several coatings and such - best by far was gum rubber (think realfeel drum pads) available from grainger. However, only available in "natural" color which is this ugly beige. The feel from this is very good but it's impossible to color - tried everything.

At this point I'm mulling over cymbal designs and considering where to go next. Considering the zildjian L80s as a base, significantly more than these plastic things but the feel is nice. I'd like to really tear into some though to see how loud they really are (and how durable). Similarly the Gen16 but those are seriously pricey.

Feel free to msg me if you have any questions or if you have any foolproof multizone cymbal designs!