Readers DIY Drum Kit Projects

Derek sent us a couple of pictures of his own DIY Jungle kit following the instructions on CompactDrums.com. It’s a nice 3-piece, all wrapped up in Walopus Birds Eye Maple Wood Grain Drum Wrap. Derek loosely based his version on our $100 Budget Jungle Drum Kit. As with our version, Derek’s also originates from a CB Craigslist find.

“This Rhythm Traveler kit was a cheap find on Craigslist. It sits nicely in a corner of the basement taking up little space and delivering all the rhythmic diversion that I need at the moment.

After playing around on the kit for a few months, I decided to customize it a bit to better suit my taste. The drum shells were scuffed a bit and the black lugs and black wrap were not a combination that I liked.

After stripping off all the hardware and old wrap. I decided that the bare wood shells didn’t look all that nice for staining or wood dyes.

I looked at various finish options. Some of the drum wraps available today are great looking but were a bit more than I wanted to spend. No sense paying $125 or more to rewrap a kit that only cost $200.00. After weighing looks, ease of application and cost, I decided to go with a glossy antique gold sparkle vinyl upholstery fabric material instead of a more traditional wrap. I bought my material online from fabricempire.com. I bought a two yard sheet that came on 54” wide roll and is 72” long, for $29 plus shipping. You can get by with a single yard (54” X 36” sheet) to cover a complete R-T kit. If you do this you will need to piece the bass drum wrap in two segments as you will need about a 64” long piece to wrap the 20” bass drum in one section. The material cost for this vinyl is so low that I bought extra to experiment with and may cover an old CB-700 floor tom for use with my R-T kit.

The vinyl is very easy to work with. It’s very flexible and cuts and glues easily with contact cement and looks great.

Overall I really like the look of the “new” kit. The black lugs really contrast well against the gold wrap. Total cost for complete rewrap is about $55.00 which included wrap and contact cement and assorted supplies.”

“When the wrap on my favourite snare cracked and started falling off I decided to take the plunge and attempt my first re-wrap. Following your instructions I was successful at refinishing it using Walopus Exotic Rosewood wrap. It was much easier than I thought and now I’m looking for a project drum kit to re-wrap.”

Leo, AKA the Drum Monger makes portable, compact drum kits for drummers in California. Leo has a whole website about his creations: http://etcdrum.weebly.com/

Leo can be reached at drum.mongr@gmail.com if you’d like to check with him about making a custom kit for you.

Here are a couple of Leo’s most recent projects.