Drum Wagon - DIY

Getting a Wireless Zendrum To Play Nice With a Wired Roland Module

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:16:00 -0700

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.

DIY Nylon Spacers

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:12:00 -0700

Lately I've been getting back into the DIY trigger spirit. Dusting off the toolbench and trying to complete the project I started last year. The triggers I'm building right now are of the cross-bar variety and one of the frustrating aspects of these is getting the height of the trigger cone just right. I utilize rubber grommets and nylon spacers in my design to reduce vibration and increase isolation between the head and rim sensors. Finding the right size spacers can be a pain and even more than that, can quickly run into money as most hardware stores insist on selling them individually and at a premium. Well today by happenstance I stumbled on a spool of polyethylene tubing in the plumbing asile and the heavens opened. This stuff when cut to length is vitually indistinguishable from nylon spacers. It handles being compressed like a champ, I can cut it to exactly the length I need and best of all it's damn cheap. If you're using plastic spacers in your designs you should do yourself a favor and pick some up. Why continue buying milk when you can have the cow!

Chameleon Snare Conversion - Part 1

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:34:00 -0700

Started work on converting the 13" snare from the Chameleon kit. I don't anticipate running into any major problems with this one, seems pretty cut and dry. I am however looking forward to applying some of the lessons learned from my first attempt, with the 10" tom.

Here are some pics of the snare before I started: [More]

Drumbot!

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:53:00 -0700

Throw a bunch of actuators on an acoustic kit and now you don't even need a live drummer to play em... neat. http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=19395558 Would sure be a lot of fun to set one of these kits up on stage and then use a zendrum to slave it. Sort of a remote controlled drumset. shweet.

Converting the Chameleon Kit - Tom 1

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 08:06:00 -0700

I've finally begun work on the electronic conversion of the kit I purchased a while back. I'm starting with the high tom (10") since it should be the easiest to convert. Here are some pictures of the procedure. [More]

Kable Keepers

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:51:00 -0700

One of the more pointlessly time-consuming aspects of setting up an electronic kit is plugging everything into the module. For trigger inputs alone there are 16 cables that you need to plug in for a Roland TD-20. Digging around in a bundle of 16 jacks and plugging them all in can be a major drag, worse still, if you should mix two up and don't have enough time for a sound-check so that you can discover the mix-up, you're gonna be in for an interesting show.

Enter the Kable Keeper!

My loving wife put these together to help me out.

[More]

New Acquisition

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 11:15:00 -0700

I picked up this Pacific Chameleon kit off of craigslist for a song. Nothing fancy, but they really don't need to be since I'm just going to be outfitting them with triggers. I likely won't be using this kick since I've already converted an 18" one that I'm more fond of. Chameleon kits are so named because they have Mylar heads on one side, and mesh on the other. The mounts are set mid-shell so that the tom and bass can be reversed, so that you can quickly change from a live to a practice setup. A nifty gimmick I suppose, although I can't imagine using these as acoustic drums. What interests me is that they have smaller shell sizes and already come with a mesh head. The toms are 10, 12 and 14" and the snare is 13". The single-ply heads it came with are a bit too flimsy I feel, so I will be using them as the bottom heads, and using double-ply heads for the batters instead. I also picked up the triggers, cones and rim silencers I'll need off of eBay. I'm still playing around with ideas for the crossbar, but otherwise I'm ready to start the conversion process. I'll be taking photos along the way to chronicle the job.