DIY Foot Drum

[FrankenWashie]

That looks fantastic. There is no way I could put paint over that. I have some satin poly, but maybe an oil finish of some sort would be better. I am open to suggestions.

I also love the connection to one of your other builds. Do you have a link to the build diary of that guitar? I made good progress on the FS-808 yesterday, and should be able to wire it up for testing tonight.

That build is just a body blank at this point, it doesn’t yet have a defined plan. And to be fair it is about 6th in the queue of things I need to play with. With the exception of this stomp diversion, build efforts are focusing on Build for a Mate and Igor gets the blues.

[jugglindan]

Igor gets the Blues

I like that!

[McCreed]

Those little 4 ohm ones just look thumpier

[jugglindan]

Applying the electrodes to this project now that the beautiful box has arrived in the mail.

The parts I need to finish building the preamp are still en-route from Tayda, so I loaded the Xtomp mini with some of the preamp patches.

First experiment: piezo transducers. I stuck one underneath the box top, and ran it through the xtomp and into my THR on the guitar input.
Result: the same unsatisfactory clicks and taps as before. Using a piezo pickup will require some serious EQ. The best sound I could get was with the Xotic RC Booster patch loaded into the Xtomp, with gain and volume maxed, bass maxed and treble to zero. And when I say best it still wasn't good. I tried the Aux input on the amp: less volume and clearer sound as it wasn't getting hit with the reverb. But still not what I am after.

Second experiment: A small speaker salvaged from old PC speakers taped to the underside of the box, wired through the RC Booster.


Result: much better. The speaker only responds to the lower frequencies, so I get less of the stuff I don't want. With the same RC Booster settings as before this is much closer to a usable sound. I won't get the same result from the preamp I am building though. While I can boost the gain/volume sufficiently, it only has a passive EQ while the AC Booster is active so it can really push the low end.

Future experiments: Different speakers, an old bass pickup (once I can get hold of one).

Clearly more to these magic boxes than I first thought!

[jugglindan]

Revisiting the piezo option might be worth doing. This video shows a cigar box build with a piezo and simple passive circuit and it sounds quite good. I think the key difference is that it's plugged into a decent acoustic amp.

[Simon Barden]

It doesn't have to be a bass pickup. They aren't any different to guitar ones except in relation to pole spacing and number of poles.

A bigger diameter speaker would probably give more bass end. And a low power one should have a softer speaker compliance than a higher power one, so the cone will move more for a given input.

[jugglindan]

Thanks Simon.

Yes, I definitely need to try different speakers. And I have the old set of Schaller active HSS pickups that I took out of the G&L. Should be able to hook one up with a battery to test it.

And here's another video showing an interesting build from an elm log that uses 2 piezo pickups. Although he does say at one point that the best result comes from cranking the bass on the amp.


All these videos give me confidence that eventually I will find a combination of electronics that will work.

[jugglindan]

Final bit of research for the night: found this showing how to modify a small speaker to get an improved bass response by adding weight to the membrane:

[Simon Barden]

In that position, technically his 'high-hat' is a 'low-hat' or 'low-boy'. That's the original position for them and they were known as 'low-boys' and weren't played with sticks, just a pedal. Then they got moved up a couple of feet to their now-standard position. One of the pieces of info I retained from a Carl Palmer drum clinic. #notadrummer

[jugglindan]

I didn't know that. Not planning on the whole cymbals thing, but I just tried taping a 20c coin to the small speaker and I definitely get a better bass thump. Boosting the signal and running through a low-pass filter and it's getting a bit closer to the sound I want. This time without the active EQ of the RC booster. Just a simple clean boost followed by the low-pass. This is progress because it's closer to what I can build easily.

Will need to ditch the piezo preamp circuit though, as it has a fixed gain of 2 (6dB). I needed maybe 18 or 20 dB boost. I will try replacing the fixed gain resistor with a pot, and if that doesn't work will just build a simple clean boost and add a low pass filter (standard passive bass control).

The roomy box has enough room to fit all this and a battery inside (switched by the jack) if the design works out.