Repairing Snare Drums, Etc

So I volunteered to take care of the gear for GRC.  We have about 1,000 pieces of gear. I'm not kidding. About 800 or so of those are things like cables, stands, etc. The rest are larger pieces...guitars, basses, amps, pas, drumkits, cymbals.

Most of the stuff is in ok shape. Beginners instruments, but decent. I have some goals, like changing the strings on every guitar and checking the setup. That takes time. I'd also love to put a new set of batter and resonant heads on all ten drum kits...but that costs some bucks. So I'm triaging for now.

I note all this here because I'm learning some stuff. My first repair project is to install new snare throw-offs on two of the snare drums.  And this is where you learn that the spacing for the mounts is important. So far it seems like standard spacing is about 2.5 inches...but some are more like 1.5 inches. And there's probably everything in between. And there's the whole...you can buy anything you want online but can't really look at it and see if it is the right thing...versus...you have coupons for brick and mortar stores but they don't carry every weird size thing that you might need.

With cheaper student instruments...things are built cheaply...and not always a standard size.  Another thing I'm taking on is getting proper cymbal sleeves and wing nuts on the cymbal stands. And, well, crappy drum stands don't always match up to the 6mm or 8mm standards. They get them as thin as possible. I may just go to a hardware store and see what I can rig up.

It's like the old 7/8", 3/4", 1" tom mount tube standards...which break down when you kit is none of those. So there are some challenges ahead in maintaining a fleet of el cheapo instruments for sure.

I'm also thinking about going to the SWAP and buying like a dozen power cords for amps. They are the same kind that computers use and I bet they are like a dollar each at SWAP.