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Last fall I was gifted a drum kit from Vicki Elwood, owner of the Muse Theatre in La Crosse, WI. We were rehearsing for a musical production, and I was asking her about setting up a drum kit to stay at the theatre. That way, I wouldn’t have to bring my gigging kit back and forth from the theatre to a gig in between productions. If you aren’t familiar, some theatres have productions that go for several weeks or weekends, like Thursday, Friday, Saturday, with a matinee on Sunday. That’s not always the case, sometimes the Thursday show was just on the opening weekend, or the matinee was only on the closing weekend. Either way, I would have gigs during the week, and having a separate kit would make things so much easier. She told me there was a drum kit in the basement, and I could have it, so I said “Absolutely, thank you!” with the idea to turn it into a dedicated theatre kit.
What I was gifted were these 1980’s Pearl Exports, when they were made in Taiwan. I was given the kick drum and two rack roms, along with a Pearl Forum snare. The floor tom was nowhere to be found, but that’s okay, a 4-piece is great, and if I really needed a floor tom, I could take one off of my Pearl Vision kit, since I have two floor toms for that kit and usually only use one.
INITIAL INSPECTION
The condition of the kit was pretty solid, it was just cosmetically rough, with – marks, scratches, dings, pitting on the chrome hardware, the shell wraps stained a nicotine color, I discovered they were originally white when I pulled off the hardware. Replacing the few missing tension rods and swivel nuts as well as putting new heads on would have made the kit perfectly playable, but I wanted to restore it, as I’ve never done that before. That way I could make it look how I wanted to. Now this is all just how I did it, this isn’t necessarily the “correct” way to do it.
DISASSEMBLY
I started by disassembling all of the drums, removing the heads, hoops, lugs, the tom mounting brackets, the kick spurs, and the snare strainer, you can see the white I mentioned. After taking everything apart, I laid it all out on this fancy blanket that was shoved in the kick drum, very convenient.
HARDWARE CLEANING
Next, I started cleaning the hardware: every lug, tension rod, spur, tom arm, tom bracket, claw, swivel nut, spring, wing nut, anything that wasn’t broken, I cleaned and reused, except the screws, bolts, nuts, and washers, those aren’t specialized drum hardware bits, so those I replaced, as buying them in bulk was incredibly inexpensive, and I was able to get them from a local fastener supply company.
So how did I clean the hardware?
First, I took a piece and soaked it in WD40 for about 20 minutes. I soaked handfuls of pieces in several jars, or if the piece was too big to fit, like the hoops, or the snare stand, then I covered them in WD40 and let them sit. After letting them soak, I rinsed them in a bucket of warm water with Orange Goop Hand Cleaner, then I scrubbed it with #000 (triple aught) steel wool. I could have used #0000, as it is finer than #000, but I didn’t have any, and the #000 didn’t scratch the chrome, so I didn’t see a reason to get it. If there were any trouble spots that I couldn’t get with the steel wool, then I used my rotary tool with a brass bristle wire disc, and that worked really nicely.
I cleaned all of the hardware in about 8 hours. There were so many little pieces and I wanted to get them as clean as I could.
SHELL WRAP REMOVAL / INSPECTION / PREP
After getting the hardware done, I took the shells to my parents house, since they have the equipment to prep and paint them.
First, my mom and I took a heat gun to the wraps to soften them up, then used a putty knife to separate the wrap from the shell and a pair of scissors to cut them. They were very easy to cut, and we had all of the wraps removed from the shells in about 10 minutes.
Then we inspected the shells, noting some water stains, as well as lines of glue residue from when the shell wraps were originally put on, however the shells were not warped, there were no cracks or splits, and the bearing edges were in good condition. So we sanded the shells, inside and out, with 320 grit sandpaper, nothing fancy, just a basic sanding to smooth it out. We sanded down the lines of glue residue best we could, but they were still visible, even after painting. Fortunately they aren’t very visible, and are in spots that are mostly covered by something else, like the tom mounting bracket. Sanding took about 30 minutes total.
PAINTING
Lastly, for the shells, was painting. My mom, dad, and I taped off the shells, and gave them 5 coats of navy blue fast drying gloss paint. The shells sat for about 30 minutes in between coats, before finishing with one layer of clear coat to give it some extra gloss, and protect the paint.
ASSEMBLY
I had to buy a few things before I could assemble these drums.
I went to SSE Music in La Crosse to buy some swivel Nuts, rubber inserts for lugs, and tension rods, to replace a few missing or broken parts. I had a few Aquarian drum heads, but needed a few more to complete the set. I decided to try something different with this kit. I usually get matching heads for the toms, but this time since I have the 12” and 13” toms, and no floor tom, I went with two separate heads to try and differentiate them a little bit more – a Texture Coated head on the 12” tom, and a Super-2 Coated on the 13” tom. Hi-Velocity head on the snare, and of course, the Super Kick 2 on the kick drum. The only kick drum head I use. Classic clear resonant heads on the toms, Hi-Performance resonant head on the snare, and a Regular resonant head on the kick drum.
At the time I made this, I had the Studio Rings on, but I don’t really use those anymore. I usually use one piece of Moongel on the snare, nothing on the toms, and a small pillow in the kick drum.
I don’t like mounting my toms off of the kick drum, so I bought a Pearl Masking Plate for the kick drum. It didn’t line up exactly, as it’s designed for the newer BB3 bracket, so I had to drill a couple of holes in the kick drum.
I didn’t want to leave the hoops bare, so I bought some ribbon from a craft store and glued it on.
Something else I put on all of my drums are these Hendrix Drums Sleeved tension rod washers. I’m a big fan of these, they eliminate the metal on metal contact between the tension rod and the rim, eliminate tension rod rattle when playing with really low and loose tuning, I’ve noticed they stay where they’re at a lot longer, and they come in different colors. I just went with black because I bought a big pack for all of my drums.
Side note – I chose to leave the tom and kick drum bridge lugs off. I just like the way it looks.
SOUND TEST
So how does it sound? I recorded a quick demo using my Audix D6 kick drum, i5 snare drum, and F9 overhead microphones. I did have my F2 tom mics recording as well, but I didn’t include those in the final mix, and I don’t remember why. I recorded this over a year ago, and I don’t have the raw audio files anymore. I have the clip with unprocessed and processed audio.
SUMMARY
I did this project a while ago, and I don’t recall the exact amount of time or money that was put into it, but I can say it was a weekend project, and cost me less than $200. I already had the tools, some of the drum heads, I reused almost all of the parts, so this was significantly less expensive than buying a gig-ready kit.
THANK YOU
I would like to thank Vicki Elwood of the Muse Theatre for gifting me this Pearl drum kit,
My parents for helping me sand, prep, and paint the shells,
My wife Katee for keeping me company in the garage while I cleaned the hardware,
Marty and the crew at SSE Music, my go-to place for Pearl hardware, Aquarian Drumheads, Zildjian Cymbals, Vic Firth drumsticks, and more,
And you for watching!
Thank you!
