4/04/2012

Cocktail Restoration

UPDATE: Here is a pic that Mikey sent me of the drum set up. I went and played it and it's dreamy. He's using the roto-toms, bell, and remote hi-hat. The stuff behind that is another one of his kits.



Here is the Slingerland cocktail kit that I found for $30. It had heavy water damage and the wrap was pretty well destroyed, so I decided to refinish it. I spent over 40 hours working on this drum and it shows. I sold it for a goodly sum and the new owner (Mikey) is very happy with it. Once Mikey tuned it, it sounded fantastic.

That wrap had to come off, so I started peeling it very carefully with a hairdyer and a paint scraper.

Before the shell could be sanded, the old glue (and glitter from the wrap) had to be stripped off. I used a very caustic paint stripper because the glue was old and kind of embedded in the grain of the wood. I got really high off the paint stripper and had to leave the room several times. The fumes gave me a pretty ruthless headache that I knocked down with some beers.

Once the shell was clean, I sanded it for a very long time - 25 hours of the labor in this project went into the sanding. Then I stained it (very lightly) and sanded it some more. Then I started coating it with a non-VOC floor finish that I like to use because it is absolutely brilliant. This picture is after two coats of poly.

After days of drying and re-coating (five coats of poly in all) the drum looked like this:

I was extremely happy with the way this project turned out. It was hard to sell this beauty, so I sold it to a good friend who I know will love it!

Another Frankenkit

Another Frankenkit that I built. The tom is a Peace tom ($10 at a thrift store). The kick drum is a Pearl Export series 22" (free - a gift from a friend) that I refinished. The snare is the now famous Buffalo Snare ($39). So total cost for the 3 shells - $49. That's right, less than fifty dollars and it sounds absolutely brilliant. The hi-hats cost me 40 bucks (jilted lover selling things) and the ride cymbal was free - I found it in the gutter, literally (along with a 7 piece kit, but that's another story.) The kick pedal is some cheap ass Pearl pedal, and the hi-hat stand is an Iron Cobra (of course!) The hi-hat pedal is the most expensive thing on the kit. This kit sounds thunderous and is super easy to set up and take down. There is a cocktail kit hanging out in these pics that doesn't belong there.


Buffalo Snare

This is my snare. I bought a cheap ($39 new!) Remo Buffalo Drum(hand drum) and screwed a set of snare wires into it. The Buffalo Drum shell is made of Acousticon and the head is Fiberskyn, both proprietary materials that Remo invented that are water, temperature and weather proof. After 7 months of playing, there isn't even a mark on the head. The head is bonded to the shell and there is no hardware on this drum. It weighs about one and a half pounds.

I used a 20 strand Puresound snare. I cut one of the ends off as well as about 4 inches of the snare wire. I attached the remaining end to the shell with a screw.


Inside view. I just used duct tape to hold the snare wires to the drum head's surface. There is no throw off so this is a full time snare drum. This drum is super dry and tasteful! No bottom head=lots of projection to cut through the mix.