A 2Box love story.....

[Blocklobster]

Gday Dual Boxers! I just wanted to share my love story. Its about a persistant guy that had never felt content, that meets a broken yet complex girl. They dont get along initially but they decide to go on a journey together. They laugh, they cry, many ups and downs and they change each others lives forever.

About 6 months ago i purchased a Mk2 Drumit 5 kit on ebay. The ad said that it was a 'Roland-eater'. I have owned almost every Roland E kit at some point and was always happy, but knew things could sound better after experiencing VST kits using midi out from the module. A guitarist mate bought a 2box and was talking about being able to load your own sounds in. That caught my attention which eventually led me to the above mentioned ebay ad. I bought the kit offline after making an offer and it arrived a week later.

Im a little embarrassed now to say that, after about 3 days of playing around with it, i re-listed it back on ebay for what i paid for it. I was frustrated with it. Some of you may know what i was feeling. It seemed too hard to get it to react the way i wanted as i didnt understand it properly but more importantly a few of the triggers werent working properly. I thought it was the module, the lead, the pad and i just couldnt work it out. Some of the rims were lifting from the pads, i was getting double triggering, weird hi hat issues (that we're all aware of). It seemed like a mess. It was online for about a day and i decided to end the auction and have another crack at it.

I pulled one of the pads apart that wasnt triggering properly. A few broken rubber o rings fell out as i pulled the head off. Further disappointment. I could see the trigger so i tapped it a few times, it clearly wasnt working properly and only produced a sound every now and then. I jumped on ebay and found some piezo triggers in China for a couple of bucks each (or less). There were different sizes so i measured the one on the pad and purchased the replacements. They took weeks to arrive. Annoying looking at a kit i couldnt use for that time. So i pulled the pad apart again and tried to remove the old piezo. It was hot glued (or similar) to the foam riser it sits on. I was worried i would wreck something but i thought bugger it, its already un-usable, so i just peeled it off the foam. I was shocked how easy it came off and that nothing was damaged. Now i know nothing about electronics or soldering, nothing at all. Dont own a soldering iron and never tried it. I could see that if i removed the trigger that i'd need to solder the new one in. Not something i was prepared to try at this point so i chose a good spot on the wires and cut them with small scissors. It felt pretty scarey lol. A $3k kit that i didnt understand being butchered like this. Was i going to be able to do this? Was it going to work?

So i stripped small sections of each of the 4 wires (hard with scissors) and wrapped them around their relevant partners. I cut tiny bits of electrical tape and wrapped the joins. I did it this way because if the trigger needed to be replaced again, it would be easy next time (for me). The triggers seemed (and were) so cheap and i didnt know how long they'd last. Anyway, i tapped the new trigger after this (while plugged in) and it worked, much better than before, perfectly it seemed. Now i felt happy, like i'd built a computer on my own or something, unreasonably proud.

So i went to the hardware store to buy o rings. Couldnt find them the right size (having measured the bent and broken ones best i could). So i went to a car parts shop, they had packs but the packs were $15 and had so many different sizes that each pack only had 4 of the ones i actually wanted. Bugger that! So i went back to ebay and found them for a buck for a pack of 50, all the right size. I bought a few bags, all slightly different sizes just in case. They took weeks again to arrive.

The kit sat, looking at me every day as i walked past it up and down the hallway. Grrrrrrr. Frustrating. I kept thinking of the good ol' Roland days, where everything just worked and seemed easy. Had i made the wrong decision trying this new brand with funny looking orange pads?

The o rings arrived, i re-built the pad and threw it on the kit and it worked a charm. I played that 1 pad for an hour i recon, loved it. So i went and did this to 3 other pads that had the same prob. Did them all in one night. Set the kit up. After an hour of playing and trying to find settings in the module i stopped and headed for the pc to read the manual. Went back to the kit, then back to the manual. This went on for days. Each day, i fixed something that annoyed me about the way it felt/reacted to my playing style. After about a week here and there i was really happy with one preset! It took me months to get to what i should have done right away - threshold, gain, pad types, crosstalk etc because i just played that one preset over and over. It sounded good and i had changed the cymbal sounds and selected the snare i liked, got all the volumes right etc. Once i started on setting these newly found parameters i found myself here looking for information - what did threshold and gain do? What did it all mean? I thought gain was another odd name for volume! So i worked it out with this forums help and wow, things started to get really interesting. This kit just kept getting better and better to play as i dialed it in more and more. I was starting to see what this kit was all about, it felt great now and sounded much better than any of my Roland kits had in the sense that it actually sounded like a real kit (as you all know).

I 'built' up some more presets, each one getting better and better as i found more sounds and little things in the module, adjusting panning to be more accurate (everything was centred for 6 months), changing tuning of some of the sounds (instead of using a crash i didnt like i'd replace it with one i did that i was used on another pad and pitched it up or down, adjust the attack and decay etc). Each day i walked away from the kit thinking crikey, this thing is nuts!

So months pass, i'm now convinced that i made the right decision buying this kit and am thankful i went out on a limb to try it. I added several pads and split every tom with Y splitter cables for extra mono cymbals. Now its amazing, i had all the extra pads/sounds i wanted - china, splash and extra crashes.

Now i knew the whole time that this kit connects to my mac, i had seen some of the vids on Youtube but thought Naah, i dont need that stuff, not yet anyway. I saw those of you discussing and doing the SD mod and i thought 'theyre mad pulling apart their modules' (says the man that cut the triggers from his pads). The module had never been connected to my mac and was still running OS1.2. I didnt care.

So eventually i find a Mk1 kit on ebay. Its cheap, really cheap ($1000AU). Great working order. I wasnt looking for another kit, or extra pads now but it was so cheap that i bought it. I was going to swap out a few of the things that were on it to put on mine and re-sell it for what i paid (or more). All the lug screws and surrounds were corroded on mine for some reason, i was using Alesis pads for splash and china, i wanted to add a 12 inch pad as a second floor instead of having 4 10's in a row etc. I had tried to find some of these parts but in Australia we dont have a 2Box distributor so it wasnt easy, not that i was that persistent. I did try New Zealand distributors, they said they'd get back to me but never did. So i bought the 2nd kit and swapped over all the parts/pads. My kit was now amazing and i re-listed the 2nd kit on ebay for what i paid as an auction.

The next day i was thinking about the extra hi hat set up on the 2nd kit. Then the bass drum pad, what if i were to remove the mount and make it a floor tom? I could then have a 12 and 14 inch floor toms (i had grown tired of looking at 2 tiny 10inch floor toms). Then i started thinking about the rack and hardware on the 2nd kit. Then, the module and even more pads. It all got the better of me. So i ended this auction after a day, again.

Then began the week long task of building the super kit (to me). I added the hats, module, extra cymbals, a 2nd snare pad. Along the way i ran into trouble trying to fit so much on the side sections of the 2Box rack. The sections werent as long as the front bar was. So, i removed it all again, pulled both racks apart and started to build all the best parts into one rack and everything that was left over into the other. Now i had 2 side sections that were the same length as the front bar, about a foot extra space. Then instead of the shorter vertical posts holding up the side bars i replaced them with the longer vertical posts from the front section of the 2nd rack. My rack had grown. So i re-built the kit on this new rack. Pulled the bottom half of the 2box hi hat stand off and added the 2nd hi hat again. Added all the extra pads, a module on each side. I was amazed, it was so big (for me) that i was wondering if i could even play it all, was it worth all of this messing about?

At this point i decided to update the OS in the modules to 1.3. Another big step for me (strangely). I was a bit nervous having access to all the data of my amazing 2Box kit/s. One wrong click could be a disaster, or a wrong move, forgetting to do something etc. I read all the stuff on the 2Box site, downloaded the OS and plugged in the first module. I gotta say, all that fear was for nothing. It was a breeze. I backed everything up first of course. Turned the module back on afterwards and it worked. Again, i felt unreasonably proud, like i'd written my own amazing software package or something. Another win. I did the 2nd module, twice as fast.

Now the hard part, how to patch everything between 2 modules. I was thinking all the cymbals in one and all the drums in the other - easy. Then i thought about left half of the kit on left module and right half on right module. Hmmmmm. What to do. Did some more reading and realised that plugging cymbals into tom inputs (and vice versa) wasnt going to always work out the way i wanted/needed. So i re-thought about it. Couldnt do the left/right idea for the same reason, too many cymbals on one side.

So, i broke it up like this. I had 7 cymbals that needed to go into cymbal inputs (including 2 sets of hats), so 4 went into one module and 3 the other (a set of hats in each module in the hi hat input). One snare in each module. 2 of the 3 rack toms into one module, the other rack and both floors into the other. Kick into one (as i have only one pad and a double pedal). Its a mess to think through but everything is working as it should and i have max control over everything this way (i think).

Then i started building the first preset, 19 pads, 33 individual triggers (i think). Each trigger, multiple parameters to get right, then selecting all the sounds, fine tuning everything. Took 2 hours over 2 nights to get that first preset right. Played it for a few days and it was a lot of fun having so many options at once. Almost learning to play again too as the kits much bigger than i've had before.

Then i started thinking about all those extra downloadable sounds i saw on the 2Box site. Hmmmm, what if i cleared some percussion off the module, maybe the loops/songs, maybe i could make enough space to put a new kit on each module. So i downloaded all the sounds on the site. Unplugged the modules again and connected them to the mac, one at a time. I removed as much as i could. (Beware - if you remove all the percussion sounds you cant use your onboard click track anymore, i didnt think of that until i tried to use it today). I did have that problem i've read others have had - after removing a certain amount from the module, it didnt recognise that it was gone as each time i checked the space left on the card it hadnt changed. Strange, i will work this out once i do the SD expansion mod and get a new 32GB card as im sure the card is corrupt (thanks Jman). Anyway, there was still enough space for me to fit the cube beach kit, a new crash (sym 17) and 13' groove hats. I didnt add all of the cube beach kit to each module, only the parts that correlate to the pads each module ran. 8 and 10 tom .dsnds to one module, 12, 14 and 16 to the other etc. While i had the module connected via USB i played with the 2Box sound editor and was amazed at how easy it was, again, i had been worried about it for nothing. I grabbed the birch snare wav's from the site and built my first .dsnd file. Again, amazing and easy to customise. I added this .dsnd to each module. I put it all back together and created a preset for the cube beach kit and i gotta say, this kit sounds amazing and is a lot of fun to play.

At this point im in love with my 2Box kit/s. True love (as much as is possible with a machine). I could never go back to Roland. Im hooked and this ones a keeper. To anyone starting out or if you're having problems, please dont give up, you wont regret it once you get through the stage you're at and theres plenty of masters here to help you through (plus the manual and Youtube), including Jman's stealth hi hat and ride upgrades (which i will do soon too). Stick with it, until death do you part......

Now, masters, how do i upload a pic lol..... (i have some already on a pic hosting site, just cant work out how to use them here).

Always learning.......

Heres a link to a couple of pics until i learn how to post a pic

https://ibb.co/jhSedQ
https://ibb.co/hDwGQ5

Stay orange!

[welshsteve]

wow... that was a long read, but I LOVE you're enthusiasm. And you're totally right about persevering with it. We have all had blips with it, but the work rounds make it worth it. It really is an awesome product that for some reason, 70% of drummers don't get. And a few that do but still go with the big guns. Don't get me wrong, I actually like all the Roland kits, they work and require little effort. But the personalisation element deters me from having one as a main live kit. I do have one for triggering hat's only, but that's another story.

That's a killer set up there and you should use the spare 14" kick as a floor tom, I have seen others do that too. Then make the 12" your second to lowest and the spare 10" as maybe a secondary snare (if you have anyway spare inputs)

Now, if you wanna take it to another level, do the 32g mod, and then get into rendering VSTs (if you use them) sounds to be used on the kit(s) using Lustar's software!!!

Welcome to the family!!!

[eyerichards]

after removing a certain amount from the module, it didnt recognise that it was gone as each time i checked the space left on the card it hadnt changed. Strange, i will work this out once i do the SD expansion mod and get a new 32GB card as im sure the card is corrupt

Glad your loving the 2 box mate. Make sure you empty your Macs Recycle bin. This is why your module is showing as nothing has been removed. I found this out the hard way on my Mac.
Cheers

[Darthsleader]

Awesome story, and glad you stuck with it! I've recently bought another module and am about to do a dual-module setup myself.

My favorite thing is making my own samples played by my hands on my own drums. I have a friend who owns a very pro studio and he records them and gives me wav files. I do some editing (EQ and such) on my MacBook Pro and off we go!

I can help you with your deleting files space issue! While hooked up to your Mac, delete the files, and EMPTY THE COMPUTER'S TRASH BIN. Then the files are gone from 2Box and you can use the space!

Jer

[Blocklobster]

Thanks eyerichards and Darthsleader!

I will try that tonight. So should i just re connect the module, empty the trash and check space on the drive or do i need to add all the original stuff back on the drive, then delete the unwanted folders again and then empty the trash?

Thanks!

[eyerichards]

No you should be able to just connect to your computer then empty the trash can without putting the original files back first. 

[Blocklobster]

Too easy. Thanks for the help with that. Appreciate it