Hi, I am looking at adding a 14'' drum to our 3 sets of 6-8-10-12-13'' pearl tenors. I would obviously move all the drums up one to make the set up something like 6-8-10-12-13-14. The unfortunate aspect of this project is that I have never undertaken a project like this. Does anyone have any experience or suggestions? Maybe a step by step guide? Ha, that would be nice.
The drums are about 3-4 years old and are in fairly good condition. So I welcome any suggestion other than buying new drums. The band budget just can't facilitate an order like that.
Well back in the day before drum manufacturers realized that tenor players didn't like their drums three miles apart redrilling was pretty common and that's a cheap approach to reassembling the drums. The other option would be purchasing a new drum assembly like the XL Omnirail.
To drill the drums just take some 9/16"; bolts, redrill the drums to have two bolts between adjacent drums, and connect the drums with washers and nuts on both sides of the shell. You'll likely need to invest in a new carrier bar since there will be more distance between 3 and 4 with the spacing of a 10 and 12. I haven't read it since it was a Kinkos job sold at the Bluecoats souvie stand, but Bill Bachman's Quad Logic used to have a section about redrilling tenors and connecting them with bolts.
The other option as I mentioned was to just look into complete solutions such as the XL Omnirail:
I like the idea of the XL OmniRail, but I am not sure what else I would need. Would I need to anything else such as spacers, and what else there may be? Or is the OmniRail the complete solution, nothing else needed? THANKS!
L
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said
about 17 years ago
No that's all you'd need--the system comes with 3 spacers for the main drums and the spocks attach to the rail.
You will likely have to redrill the main drums for the spacers--XL mount holes are a little more narrow than Pearl's iirc. Don't worry about the tone quality of an extra set of holes if it comes to that, I've played on toms that looked like swiss cheese and they still had a pretty warm principle tone. Just make sure you don't drill too close to the old holes, most modern toms are pretty thinly-plied.
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The drums are about 3-4 years old and are in fairly good condition. So I welcome any suggestion other than buying new drums. The band budget just can't facilitate an order like that.