Fix Your Rock Band Drums!

I had some of the same problems with my drums, real pain. This stuff should have been fixed correctly at the factory before they got sent out.

I had a similar problem with my green drum. Seeing as how I don't own a soldering iron, I simply used electrical tape (stick stuff) to affix the wire to the outer ring of the disk. It worked all night tonight. I'm sure that soldering will last longer, but if you don't have one you can use electrical or probably duct tape.

I'm having similar problems with my Red drum pad. I've taken out screws and tried to pop off the top and it still won't come off. Ugh! Anyway, I'm sure the main problem is with the wirering and to be honest I know absolutey nothing about soldering. What should I do then? Just give up or what? I'm pretty sure my warrenty has expired so I don't have the option of sending it off to get fixed. Can someone please help me? This is getting so frustrated!

Awesome instructions... and nice nod to Bruce Dickinson, lol. The cymbal expansion kit for the next-gen Rock Band 2 drums were my problem. I looked all over for a tear-down article until I came across this one:

http://www.protoolreviews.com/how-to/build-it-yourself/repair-broken-rock-band-2-cymbals

Might be helpful for your readers in the event they are looking to make the same type of repair with a current-gen set of RB2 cymbals. I'm a bit rabid about getting this info out since I couldn't find anything on it until recently and nearly all of my friends have had the same problem (double taps on the drums and missed notes).

I have soldered, taped, padded and all kinds of other stuff and now have a new problem. You know the yellow connector at the end of the yellow wire from the yellow pad? The socket it connects to is now broken. It is connected to a circuit board located between the black parts of the unit, but I cannot figure out how to get in there to re-solder it! Ack!!! I need to completely disassemble the pads, but after removing ALL screws, it will not come apart. It must snap together. Any ideas on how to unsnap this beast? Snap to it!! And thanks.

You Rock David! My yellow cymbal bit the dust after 2 weeks of use....After removing the the 4 screws from the under side of the cymbal, i located the loose red wire under a small plate that also had 4 screws, used small sissors to strip it (bifocals and flashlite to see it!) and took it across the street to my neighbor who is an electric train buff and has soldering stuff. All said and done it took about 45 minutes (I chatted with my neighbor!) So easy. Thanks for the tip.

sorry josh_leblond@hotmail.com

hey will im starting to get really pissed off about one week ago i plugged my drum setinto my little 4 usd port extenshions that comes with the bundel and the circle turned yellow red then red again and then shut down then i tried plugging it into my usb ports on my xbox 360 and nothing happened it just will not work can you help. e-mail: josh_leblond@hotmail.com thank you

There are better drum sensors at www.rockingrepair.com

I have their sesnors installed in boht my kits, and I have never had a problem to date.

Hi does anyone know how to open the rockband drum controller?
i smashed mine and need to repair it.
i have the "EL" model.
when i unscrew the 12 screws at the back of the two centre pads i still cant open it. and i dont wanna use to much force cause then i will break it permanently
what did i miss? been looking for at least 3 hours in forums and i only could find pictures of opened ones.

ok i was rocking out to hard.. and i snaped my green note off it still conected to it like the wire is in it and it works. i =need some help how the hell do u fix it?

oh yeah and i didnt touch any thing inside just unscrewd screw thought oh screw this hah a pun then screwed them up again

a

i unscrewd screw bu didnt take pads off is my warranty void now send an email to icecreamman42@hotmail.com and tell me

Racer
I've got the same problem. The sadthing is that OXM had a sidebar to this article in the magazine and my wife threw that one away. OXM, which month was that article? Or even better how about publishing that whole article on the website?

I need help with my drum set. Basicly they worked fine till last night. Now the drum controller in not conecting. It does not matter if i use the hub or not nor which usb port i plug into. It lights up just for a split second while connecting, than goes out and does not work at all. Any help would be great.

i had the same problem with my blue drum and i took it apart and checked all the connections and they both were still in good shape. so if anyone knows anything else i can do please let me know it would be greatly aprieciated. Marcenary360@hotmail.com thanks.

my drums have big holes wth rubber peg type things instead of screws!!!!!!!!!!!! y cudnt harmonix only make the ones wth screws!!!! anyways if anyone knos how u fix these ones plz tell me............. my email address is saif_skulls@hotmail.com

Yeah I have the same problem with my green pad. It will only let me hit the green pad in songs when I SMACK the darn thing as hard as i can with my sticks. I took apart my green one like the guy said in his advice and I see the 2 wires. They dont appear to be loose..? And it doesnt look like they need to be tangled together or whatever?? It looks like the 2 wires are joined and then separated and they go into to little metal holes or something? If anybody has any idea why my set is only letting me hit the green on massive impact, please message me at Skrehder511@aol.com THANK YOU!

I dont think the drum sensor ones look too bad. I went with the ones from www.rockingrepair.com though because they came with tape, and the wiring looked better. It was spun, not like the weird speaker wire stuff drum sensor has.

I bought the ones from drums sensor and they were pretty crappy. I bought better ones from www.rockingrepair.com and they worked a lot better. Even came with replacement protective tape !!

I have just installed the RadioShak $1.99 piezo 2-lead element. It is too large so it needs to be ground to size with a dremel. But I recommend not grinding where the wires are attached to the disc. Leave this area alone and you can form a nice little notch that will serve you well when placing the transducer in the drumpad. You have to be patient (I did most grinding at the Dremel's lowest rpm setting) but you can slowly take that outer brass edge down to size without having to remove or damage the two wires already soldered to the transducer. Then I just twist and soldered the the wires to the original wires leading to the plug (Red-Black and Black-Gray). I attached some band-aid to top and bottom. Tried to tuck the wires neatly as I popped the drumpad back in and it works great. An hour of your time and 2 bucks.

For those of you that are asking about the 4 rubber nubs on the bottom of your kit instead of the screws shown in the photos -- on later versions they changed where the press fit tabs are screwed in, from the back side of the kit to inside of the pad itself. The 4 rubber nubs are the ends of the press fit nubs. Pull away (gently) on the pad, and follow the rest of the article as he states.

I tried this route but the wires were still soldered on nicely(underneath all the epoxy on them). I did find on my set though they had installed it wrong. The piezo had been placed on an angle with one side on top of the plasic spaces that are in there. So when I took it out it had a nice bend on one side of it which I bent back but unfortunatly could not get to run again. So im waiting on my new set to get sent out. This way im still under warranty. But if this happens again I will just fix them on my own by replacing them like alot of u have.

Thanks btw!

All you have to do is firmly pull the pad off. Might take a bit of muscle, but the rubber things are just press fit. Btw, I noticed that www.drumsensor.com now has replacement sensors that don't void your warranty. Wish I would have waited for those. I have been super happy with the ones I got form them though.

My drums have rubber things on the bottom in those holes. How would i get my drums open to fix it? If anyone could help that would be great. Thanks

This mod is pretty cool also - http://www.drumpads4rockband.com

I ended up just buying a replacement sensor after I noticed a reduction in the hits being picked up. It was $8 which was worth trying. I have been really happy so far with the new one.
It was from www.drumsensor.com

I had the exact same problem... in fact, not only did we(there are 4 of us who take pretty regular turns at beating the snot out of the yellow pad)knock the wire loose, we managed to crack the plastic drum head too! I had an easier time reconnecting the wire. I was able to strip the casing away using my finger nails, laid the wire across the length of the metal disc and reapplied the band-aid looking-thingy(very techincal I know!)
I then reinforced the cracked drum head with some foam board and good old-fashioned duck tape, then tested my handy work with a rousing rendition of Run to the Hills. No smoldering required! (Except for my wife after 4 hours of listening to me sing foreplay/longtime)

the back of my drum kit looks different... i dont have accessable screws to unscrew... there are 4 rubber pads on the underneath side of each drum pad, only 3 on the middle two pads... how can i get inside of this rockband drum kit??

is the wire used, copper wire?? so, say i needed to replace one, or extend the wire, i could just use copper wire?

Using this guide I just fixed my green drum pad, thanks. This is my third set of drums and I'm not sure how many sets EA will actually send me for free. It's not hard at all, it actually took longer for my soldering iron to heat up then to do the repair.

I'm building my own e-drums, and it's nice to get a look into how harmonix went about making theirs. Exactly the same way I'm making mine... Now what happens to the signal after it leaves the piezo, I'm sure they're doing much more intelligent things than I am. :)


Thanks for the nice post! Hey, FYI, solder in the mouth is generally a bad idea. That _is_ lead in there. :) I realize the need for the 3rd hand when soldering.. but still...

-steve

For what its worth, there is somebody selling replacement sensors on ebay. They look the same. Seems easier then sending the whole kit back I guess.

when u unscrewed the drum set and saw the mother board what did u have to do after that

Thanks for posting this. I used the guide to repair my own yellow drum pad, worked out great.

Yes, it is a piezo transducer. Our drumset broke, we took it apart only to find that the plastic had actually cracked (on both our yellow and blue pads). I hopped into Radio Shack, and got part #273-073A (piezo transducer). When you take it out of its casing, it's very similar to the part in the game, only a bit bigger. We swapped it in, and it works, but we're still trying to figure out the best way to mount it. There's lots of DIY drum trigger tutorials out there on the web, and it looks like it might be worth it to try to make a trigger from an old Remo practice pad.

BUDDY, I LOVE YOU!!! My drums pad broke, I followed your guide and Now it works!!! THANK you!!!

It looks like a simple $1.99 RadioShack piezo you can extract from a buzzer. I have been making my own electonic drum kit triggers for years and I had a sneaking suspicion this kit used a similar method. Rock on kids!

Good article, I also encourage heavy footed drummers to reinforce the kick pedal with a piece of wood on top, like base board, and some hockey tape... Mine broke, but we fixed it up lickity split!

Seems like a lot of work? Hey, we didn't say it would be simple, we just said it worked for us. :)

hah spelled my name wrong

Yeah seems like alot of work

Hopefully this will help people fix their drums. Good guide! Will this be in a future issue of OXM?