The unofficial kickdrum topic

[Murgen]

Will start by putting all my post regarding the kick, kick pad fixation and heads in this topic.

[Murgen]

I was very happy with the 682 black mesh on the kick combined with the tennisball until the friction of the ball melted a hole in my kick head. I replaced the head, experimented a bit with felt and plastic beaters and in the end put a falam on the head with the tennisball back in place. Never felt happy, too much rebound.

Started a new test last weekend. Wooden beater from Pearl, 682 black mesh head, no falam. Tight spring tension. Does not feel wrong at all. The wooden beater is leaving traces of the paint on the mesh but no other damage yet.

Question for the audience: why do you think I picked the Pearl beater?

Keep ya all posted.


image by murgenetemplar, on Flickr


image by murgenetemplar, on Flickr

[mcrackins]

Wouldn't happen to be the colour would it?

I'll be following this with curiosity.
I definitely found that the mesh heads have much more bounce than the rubber. Also the kick flexes excessively with the tennis ball beater and mesh. My next update will be your kick bar brace mod.

I would think a wood beater would do some serious damage. I remember using wood beaters years ago and they would just thrash my skins.

[SJC]

Been reading all the info on here about the Kick drum. I've had my 2box kit for about a year now, one of the things I've had problems with is the Kick. Bouncing, re-triggering, intermittent late or no trigger. I have the design with the rigid back and 2box LED logo, and tennis ball beater. I have recently made some modifications and things are dramatically better. In order to get a good reliable trigger the mesh must be able to flex over the sensor, otherwise the sensor is simply reacting to vibration in the frame. I found I needed a gain setting of around 19 to get a good level, but this makes the sensor extremely sensitive and can be easily triggered just by touching or depressing the mesh, it even triggers again as I take my finger off. Also because of the high gain and sensitivity even slight movement of the foam insert causes triggering this is because the black foam insert is touching the foam mount under the sensor. So I did a couple of things. (1) Cut the hole around the sensor into a keyhole shape to avoid any contact between the large foam insert and the sensor mount.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1vue3j1d1ofbhke/2boxKick2.jpg?dl=0
(2) Cut a hole in small foam insert behind the LED cluster precisely where the beater strikes. With a circle of semi rigid foam about 10mm thick inserted into the hole. This allows the beater to flex the mesh with minimum bounce. After this i was able to reduce the gain to 9 and still got a full output level on heavy hits. I was also able to increase the threshold value, making it still responsive to gentle hits. This mod and using pad trigger type Kick2 in the unit setup, has completely eliminated false triggers and re-triggers. I am planning on making one further mod to the kick, which is to try replacing the small foam insert with memory foam. This should provide an even more 'dead' response, more like a typical loose damped skin, whilst still allowing good flexing of the mesh. I will post a new update after I have located a source for the memory foam and tried it out.

[hwasser]

I built a butt-ugly kick-stand from some wood I had in the garage. I really recommend you guys doing the same. The kickdrum don't vibrate anymore which killed a lot of doubletriggering + the rack doesn't vibrate anymore