Repairing Snare Drums and Cymbal Stands Part Two

I took apart the two snare drums last night. The Ludwig was an easy switch out with the new throwoff/strainer. I didn't have a new throwoff/strainer for the TJ Percussion (buy one mid-day today).

I took a good long look at both broken parts. The Ludwig I'm really not sure why it didn't work. Maybe a pivot point frozen. It seemed like it should work. The TJ had a rivet that had sheered off. I kept thinking I could fix it, but I couldn't.

I was surprised that there are no springs inside these things. They basically amount to a two stage pulley with rivits at both pivot points. Lever goes down and pushes thing that holds the snare wires down (loose)...lever goes up and pushes the thing that holds snare wires up (tight). The big screw adjusts where your starting point is...tighter means you start higher, looser means you start lower.

The thing is...there's kind of a huge amount of pressure on the system. I'm shocked these don't break ALL THE TIME. Maybe the cheap ones do. Maybe that's why you guy a $60 one instead of a $20 one.

I also went to the hardware store in search of cheap wing-nuts and wing-bolts. Determined that 6mm and 8mm drum hardware is just that...it takes 6mm or 8mm nuts/bolts. But there are other parts of stands that tend to be smaller...and I don't know what size. I assumed they were still metric (which might be wrong) and guessed 4mm (though I picked up some 5mm parts too). I had trouble finding wing-bolts at Ace. I got bolts instead that had these big heads with grippy stuff on them and an allen wrench hole in top. The wing-nuts were easy to find. Not as fancy as an actual drum wing-nut, but good none the less. The prices were steeper than I'd thought...because $0.55 and $1.80 per piece depending on the size. But at the music store two 8mm wing-nuts can cost $7...so $3.60 is still a savings. Not as big as I'd hoped, but a savings. I think that in some cases you can get a better deal at the music store...I'll just have to keep an eye out.

I ended up spending like $40 ($27 at the hardware store and the rest at the drum store) on parts. It'll end up saving two stands that were un-useable and sprucing up a handful more. I also have a goal to get cymbal sleeves on all of the stands. Stands without sleeves will cause the cymbals to keyhole and not last as long. It is an investment in protecting our cymbal stock.  I paid $5 for a packet of 6mm sleeves without bottoms.  I also wonder if I could buy bulk plastic tubing at hardware store and cut my own sleeves. That'll be a future project.

I used the short Ludwig cymbal sleeves with the bottoms and 2 thin felts on the stands with no "tops". Worked great. I'll add the wing-nuts I acquired today and should work great. I wish I knew what parts were in the storage shed and what parts I needed.

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.