I *love* my Sleishmans, but one persistent problem I've had are rattles from my floor tom. The depth of that drum requires fairly long tube lugs, which in turn have a significant amount of play at their longest extent. I do keep that drum tensioned fairly low (about low to middle I'd say) and it's actually possible to grab the top rim like a steering wheel and turn it a couple degrees either way. Tightening the drum might keep it from being able to twist like that, but that's a tuning compromise I'd rather not make.

When the rim is not twisted and the lugs are correctly positioned at 90° to the hoop, then all is well. However between bouncing around in the car during transport and being pulled out of the case by the rim it inevitably gets twisted a bit. When that happens one or more of the tension rods can be in contact with the side of its hole in the hoop. This metal-on-metal contact is what's causing my rattle.

Up to now I've just been living with it. Anytime I've had to move the drum then I'd invariably have to go around to each lug, tapping and tugging until the rattle goes away. Recently however I can across a product called Sleeved Washers distributed by a company called Hendrix Drums. These are standard sleeve washers, but in a size and diameter that perfectly fits any tension rod. The simple concept is that it would keep the threads from contacting the sides of the hole in the rim, eliminating the metal-on-metal contact.

Here's a before photo:

...and here's a photo with the new sleeve washer in place:

You'll note that I left the original rubber washer in place. These are designed so that the tuning does not back out at low tension. I merely replaced the lower white plastic washer with the new sleeved one. This keeps the tension rod from being able to rub against the hoop.

Here's a detail shot of the washers:

So you're probably asking how it turned out? In a word, "fantastic"! The rattle is gone, and the drum is holding its tuning as well as before. There also is less deformation of the rubber washers as the old white ones were not that rigid and were affected by the curvature of the flanged rim.

If you're suffering from rattles, I wholeheartedly recommend Sleeved Washers. They're quite inexpensive and do a fantastic job of isolating the rods from the rim. I have a couple non-Sleishman snare drums in my collection that I know can benefit from this as well.

HTH

A brief tutorial describing how to work with projects within the ZenEdit interface.

Over the past couple years I've tried a huge number of different sound sources with my Zendrum, trying to the find the "perfect" live rig to suit most situations.

I've tried small and simple, large and complex, dedicated hardware modules as well as VST hosts. None of them were quite "right". With any one rig I'd have to sacrifice a level of one feature to gain in another.

The key features of a live rig are (to me):

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One of the best upgrades you can get for your Zendrum is the integrated wireless option. This adds an internal MIDIJet board along with a battery compartment for a single 9-volt that powers both the Zendrum board and the MIDIJet. I cannot say enough good things about this setup, it simply rocks. Once you've tried it you'll wonder how you ever got by being tethered with a MIDI cable!

Of course keeping the option to go back to being wired is important too, if for nothing else than to have a "plan B" should things go wrong. For instance you may have forgotten to bring or charge your batteries, or perhaps there is too much radio interference at the gig. Whatever the circumstances, it's important to be able to go back to using a wired connection at will.

Which brings us to the point of this article, because if you have one of the first crop of Z4 boards and utilize any Roland drum modules, you probably have discovered that a wired connection (i.e. not using the MIDIJet) simply no longer works! The Zendrum powers up fine, but no amount of banging on the triggers will register with the Roland unit. The official explanation for this that I've received from the Zendrum folks is that the Roland units expect just a slightly higher electrical current than the Z4 is providing at the MIDI port, even though the Z4 is adhering to the official MIDI specification.

One workaround for this that I stumbled on is to rectify the MIDI signal before it reaches the Roland unit, by doing a pass-through on another unit. In other words, by placing an additional MIDI device between the Zendrum and the Roland unit, the MIDI data signal is boosted to a level that Roland can pick up on. This would seem to contradict the notion that the Z4 board is operating correctly and that it's the Roland unit that is at fault, but i can't speak to that -- I only know that using a middle-man approach here works. Of course that adds a bit of complexity to your rig, and it's not always practical to drag around secondary MIDI devices, so it's less than an ideal solution.

I've received information from one of the Zendrum electrical engineers on how to affect a more permanent fix, as I will describe here. This fix involves opening up your Zendrum and taking a soldering iron to it. If you're not comfortable doing either of those things, then stop reading now. Even if you *are* comfortable doing this, I would encourage you to first contact Zendrum corp and discuss your options. I'm making no warranty against performing this fix, and I certainly won't take responsibility if you brick your axe. Nuff said.

The fix involves shorting out one resistor on the main Z4 board, either R10 or R13. Removing one of these from the circuit path with increase the amount of current that leaves the MIDI port, bringing it in line with what Roland modules expect. The simplest way to short out one of these resistors is to place a blob of solder on top of it. As long as you are very careful about not getting solder anywhere else on the board it should be a piece of cake.

Details of the fix plus photos of my axe under the knife...

One thing I learned about my Zendrum is that the leads to the battery case are very fragile. It turns out that every time you swing the battery compartment out, the wires that are soldered to it twist a tiny bit. One of mine was just barely hanging on and indeed snapped off during reassembly. Call me paranoid, but I would try to limit how often you open and close the battery compartment. Over time I'm sure the lead will snap off on its own. If you ever find that your axe no longers powers up from the battery, this would be the first thing to check.

I threw together a quick template for jotting down mapping ideas for the Zendrum. I find it more useful to work out ideas on paper rather than by fiddling with trigger settings or sysex directly.

Use it in good health.