Roland TD27kv2 drums ekit; replace stock clutch with drop clutch, muffle hihat clomp noise, adjust phones gain.

 I had to pack away my acoustic kit when covid was a thing & had to buy an ekit. A homebrew frankenstein kit off craigslist. It had a dm10 module & the worst excuse for a hihat.

I always got into a bad mood when the hats would constantly glitch right when i find a groove. I finally decided to buy a better ekit with supposedly the best hihat around.

However, right out of the box i had new issues.

First: apparently, they tried to make the clutch on the hats permanently installed with a set screw & threadlocker.

I got rid of that fucking thing right the fuck away.

The set screw is not a hex at all, i had tried 2mm, 2.5mm, 5/64, 3/32, eventually i realized it was a T8 star/torx bit. I also heated their threadlocking liquid with a lighter for 15 seconds.

The wingnut section of the clutch then spins off counterclockwise with no tools. You have to force past the 2 bad threads damaged by the set screw...but a few fwd/bwd rotations will smooth it out some.

I installed my Dixon Magnetic clutch, which fit perfectly. The hats have the same concave triangle shape under the hole as the other cymbals, but since theres those x2 left & right cables attaching it to the bottom hat, it was never going to spin anywhere, a thick small felt takes up the gap just fine, compressing into shape.

The slosh spring doesnt fit on these though, they did on my single alesis hat pad.

I modified a 3/4ODx1.25H compression spring to be wider at the base, reducing max load & crush height. I used a thin 3/4ID nylon washer under that but it was actually closer to 9/16 so i had to ream it with a dremel to .7 since the plunger was .69 & i wanted to avoid wobbling. I added a thicker 3/8ID nylon washer above the spring snug to the hh stands' stem, with a thin soft felt to top it off.

Left is the dixon slosh spring, right is the store bought spring unmodded, center (installed) is the modded spring final assembly.

I called a few spring companies to inquire about a professionally fabricated version, but most didnt answer the phone, some said they couldnt do it, one asshole said he'd make it for $700 each.

heres a simple demo vid i made, (not trying to show off any chops so fuck off) first is the acoustic sound with no module sounds, the 2nd is the same vid with no acoustic & all module sounds.

2nd: the clomping of the 2 piece hihats was loud as shit. I can differentiate the thunk of the pedal vs the top hat hitting the bottom hat because ive used different hats on this same pedal.

There was one guy online who glued triangles of foam on the bottom lip but he says it was a failure. 

My solution was a fucking 1st try homerun. I was looking at my sweatband laying nearby the kit & thought i could make a big sweatband for the bottom hat to dampen the noise.

I did a little research & looked at my options online & a local fabric shop after almost making the prototype out of a microfiber terry towel (probably would have worked but i only had white & wanted to use black to minimize contrast on the kit).

I wanted something fluffy but elastic, i ended up finding a black sherpa fabric with 1way stretch!

I traced the bottom hat 2x, cut both pieces out, cut out the centers, leaving x2 approx 2" rings, then sewed those together with a single backstitch -nap facing out (i didnt sew it inside out so there wouldnt be a bunched up seam along the hat edge).

It completely eliminated the clomping when footing/chicking the hats, & didnt affect playability at all, if anything, it improved the feel (the rubber on rubber sent a frictiony vibration down through the stand).

The stand does have its own noise, & i think the slosh spring needs some fine tuning so it doesnt accidentally rub against itself while fully compressing because my bends werent machine perfect, but its still way quieter than NOT having the sherpa wrap on it..

3rd: the fucking cymbals with the concave triangle design around the mounting holes require special triangle rotation stop mounts...these mounts are permanently glued or molded to the shitty balljoint tilter arms on the stock rack stand... roland does sell removeable versions for a stupid profit, but i found a 3D print file online for free, & i have a 3D printer, so i made those myself. I bought m3 hardware to install them on my cymbal stands. it would be better in resin, i only have a filament printer & sort of opened a tiny seam by tightening the 1st one too much.

(These cymbals have a stupid layout design, theyre actually heavier on the "back" end, the opposite side of the sensor half of the pad. This means theyll tilt AWAY from you unless you turn the tilters damn near sideways...)

As long as you dont overtighten them, theyre fine. & i can always print a replacement in 30 mins.

4th: the phones output was quiet as hell.. the alesis dm10 used to hurt my ears if i had it above half. 

I went into the Output settings & found i had to increase the phones gain by 10db! Just to drown out the acoustic noise of the kit!

however, when i connected to my daw for the 1st time, i found i had to raise the usb master out gain +15db to get decent level on pc, & to set it up to hear live monitor from pc to play with layered tracks i had to turn the phones gain on the td27 output settings back down to normal (0db) because the monitor volume coming back from pc was not attenuated like it sounded direct from the module.

i tried to remove signal compression from the phones in output settings path but that wasnt the problem & didnt really change it at all.

5th: the snare & hihat cables are like a mile long, they couldve just been like 6 inches. even for a left hand setup im pretty sure you would still keep the snare & hat near the module. 

the cymbal & tom cables are too short by a few inches, a little more length would have allowed for some rack wraps/cable management. as it is, each cable just barely reaches the damn pads like high tension wires. i would have loved to trade all the extra length from the snare/hats to the other pads.

i also confirmed the cable snake 1/4 plugs do work with non-roland piezo pads. i really dont like the puny roland toms/kick.

i kept my custom wood shell kick & dual zone toms.

The stick noise on the new hats is comparable to the noise of the kick beaters, but its so much more realistic & less glitchy than the alesis pad i was using, im enduring it for now.

i read someone suggest holes in the hats would reduce closing resistance & air pockets. after playing for a while, i dont think drilling holes in the bottom hat would affect the feel or sound enough to notice while playing. the person suggesting that didnt try it as far as i could tell.

I couldnt help but expand the kit a bit, its basically the same setup as my acoustic kit setup of choice. 

I added a china cymbal & split the aux1 input between x2 splashes. 

I separated the pad as H/R off, assigning different instr's to each. 

I found that i still got a different sounding edge/bow sound on each splash! What a cool surprise, i thought id only be able to get x1 of the dual triggers on the splash to register on each split of the input.

I also found that setting that split input (aux1) as a "pad2 parameter", instead of the automatically selected "cy12ct parameter" yields better threshold/gain presets.