Changed up stuff on my hybrid e-percussion/keyboard rig.

**Drumbledore** · 11-15-2013, 05:18 PM

Part One:

As a few of you might be aware, nowadays for one of my music situations, I'm called upon to not only do percussion but also a bit of keyboard/tuned percussion. The keys I added as they are way more convenient to cart to gigs in comparison to a vibraphone and/or marimba. I had hit upon the solution to have a rig which would combine the large cross-section of sounds and percussion techniques I have to call on......different sorts of hand drumming, stick work and melodic percussion....without the headache of a cumbersome miking rig that would entail, and also some thing that would make things way easy for the sound engineer to balance (as well as doing small adjustments from song to song myself). So a while back I thought of having a couple of keyboards, my Roland Handsonic HPD-10 (for stuff such as congas, djembe, Middle Eastern percussion, Indian table, talking drum and other West African hand drums, etc) and a Roland SPD-20 Octopad all connected to a Yamaha mixer....then all I have to do is to give the sound guy two stereo-out leads and tell him just to connect to his sound desk and that's it, no more fussing over.

Well, a number of changes have been done to this rig. To start off with, to the left, I originally had a little 37 key Micro-Korg keyboard sitting above a Korg Micro-Station (61 keys). That's now changed, because a while back I got my hands on another Korg, a Korg X5D, this one with 61 normal sized keys (those regular late night keyboard practice sessions are slowly now paying off!). So I now have the Micro-Station sitting above the X5D. I still have the Handsonic (really, the heart of the whole crazy rig), but now, instead of an Octopad, I've borrowed (and might even later buy) a Roland SPD-S Sampling Pad (more compact and with one more playing surface than my Octopad). Coming off the Handsonic and SPD-S, I've a few pedals, but in the past I had two Roland PDX-8 snare mesh pads attached to a couple of foot-cowbell (or gajate) brackets, as well as an actual tambourine on another gajate bracket to the left of my Handsonic. This was okay, but now having more foot pedals for the two keyboards (volume pedals and dampeners)I was having problems with the long pipes that made up the "feet" of the rack, as they left less room to put the volume pedals and the two kick peadls for the percussion side of the rig. So after much head scratching, I came up with this solution.....why not have two shorter pipes for the "front" section of the rig? And the long pipe for the remaining foot on the keyboard side of the rig would help balance it. However, I didn't want to start trimming existing pipe sections, so I needed to find a spare one. Fortunately the other day, the guys at one of my local drum shops, Drum Factory at Parramatta, said they had such a piece of pipe around:

**Drumbledore** · 11-15-2013, 05:38 PM

Part Two:

Now that I had the appropriate piping, it was just an easy matter of cutting and trimming off two small sections that would allow two sections of pipe clamps to fit, plus two rubber feet per pipe. What I found was that the existing rubber feet for the previous pipe sections were just slightly large for the new pipes. No problems....that's what gaff's for!

Little strip of gaff tape, then slip the feet on....no problems....perfect fit!

Now, the few new purchases for the whole rig. To slash a bit off the set-up time, I replaces the mesh pads that I'd strike with my feet (handy for keeping cowbell patterns whilst playing timbales) with new Roland KD-7 trigger pads. These can also bekept attached to the pedals themselves, and both pedals and triggers can go into a pedal bag, together with the bits of actual percussion that you see in the percussion tray. Genius!. The tambourine with the foot pedal's now been retired, replaced by a Boss FS-5U foot switch (this in turn triggers the hi-hat functions on the Handsonic....it shares a split cable with one of the KD-7 triggers), so if needs be, the Handsonic itself becomes a complete "drumkit". To the left, I now have plenty of space for the two damper and two volume pedals for the Korg keyboards (one volume pedal is a Boss FV-50L, but the other one's an Ibanez VL-10, which is an interesting one...it's both a volume as well as a balancer pedal....one which if used in a keyboard or guitar-only rig, allows you to switch between amps....a very handy thing to have....these are really hard to find in decent condition nowadays). Coming off the rack I have a Gibraltar percussion tray full of shakers and other goodies, plus a convenient place to hold a pair of sticks for playing the SPD-S. And apart from the power supplies for the mixer and all these units, and maybe a lead for an amp (used as my own monitor) and the two 30 foot leads I give the sound guy.....all the leads for patching in the units plus their pedals are already set and velcroed to the rack, which can then fold up and be placed in my car. Looks a lot, but the whole thing sets up in relatively little time.

**Drumbledore** · 11-15-2013, 05:43 PM

Part Three:

And the best thing? This rig's now become really modular. If I don't require the keyboard side, all I have to do is move a bit of a few leads, use an Allen keyand slide off the left section, remove the mixer, add a Tama clamp to the taller vertical section to the left of the percussion section, and voila! One percussion rig.

**pcs90** · 11-16-2013, 01:33 AM

That is a really cool setup!
Do you also still use your acoustic percussion stuff? I remember there was a thread a few years ago where you posted a lot of detail on a percussion set-up. Being a percussionist it was interesting to compare and get ideas from that. Any changes with set-ups like that or do you prefer the electronics in general now?