Introduction: Repair a Rockband Drum Pedal With Household Items

By Good Idea Games
About: I'm just this guy.

A Drum pedal repair kit won't do you any good when your pedal breaks in the middle of a rockin' party. Instead of taking the drums out of the rotation and facing ingratiating social shame, you can follow these instructions and repair most common breakages with crap you have within arms reach.

Depending on your woes, you may need
1x butter knife
1x roll electrical tape
2x compact discs that suck

Step 1: So It's Broken in Freakin' Half

Your friends were rocking out a little too hard, and now your pedal split. Maybe you already tried taping the magnet to the sole of your shoe, but that doesn't work too well.

Trust me, stick to this.

The problem with the drum pedal is that the plastic flexes again and again, inducing stress and flex, and ultimately weakening the structure. It's pretty much inevitable that this will break.

To temporarily repair a split pedal, or to prevent the flex that could kill your well used kit at any time, all you need to do is reduce pedal flex.

I used a thin flat butter knife. The purpose is to provide uniform reinforcement to the pedal. The tape will hold it together well enough for a night, and the knife will reinforce the pedal itself, preventing the damage from worsening, or holding the thing together if it's already screwed.

You know what they say: more tape is more better!

Step 2: Then Fix It Right

This probably won't help you right now, but my two breaks were a week apart, so enjoy my chronology!

I got a $20 (after shipping) Drum repair kit off of ebay.
A word to the wise: Spring for the $10 kit with hinge reinforcement.

Step 3: So Then (now) Your (my) Hinge Snapped Off!

The drum pedal is generally good.... once you reinforce the crap out of it.

But once you reinforce the pedal, it just shifts the stress. It shifts it straight back to the hinge, where high school physics tells you that the force on teh fulcrum is dramatically increased by force on the tip of the lever.

Sure, the plastic looks strong, but physics says otherwise.



Step 4: Steal Ideas From Others

That's really the best way to go about at anything you do.

I looked at the hinge repair kits, which (at the time of publishing) you cannot buy separately from pedal repair, and I saw just how it works. They don't REPAIR the hinge, they REPLACE IT. They use a square of lexan to reinforce the pedal, to connect it to the heel rest, but it is also flexible, and not susceptible to flex-ware out.

Well crap! I have Lexan scraps lying around! They're called CDs! (note, CDs may not actually, chemically be lexan, but neither may be teh crap on ebay. the point is, they are GOOD ENOUGH.)

A real, burned CD has a lot more flexibility than a burned cd, so use an old AOL disc is you have one lying around. I used a demo for America's Army that I got at PAX last year (see, you should go, look how handy it will be).

You will want two CDs, just to be thorough. One should do the trick, but really, when are you ever going to listen to your Spin Doctors CD (the second one, not the album with "2 Princes") again?

Using a pair of scissors, cut them to basically the width of the heel of the drum pedal.

Step 5:

Start by taping the CDs, the the base of the pedal, slightly staggered to increase the effective length of the pieces. More tape is more better. Go around a few times, but not so much that it becomes uncomfortably thick.

Step 6: Reinforce the Heel. REALLY WELL.

Next put the heel of the pedal into the hinge where it belongs, and attach the bottom of the CDs to the heel plate of the pedal.

Remember, more tape is more better. Get that thing on tight. Electrical tape is flexible, is this to your advantage by pulling it tight around the unit.

And now you're done! This whole thing takes about 15 minutes, so you can be back to your party in no time. It's also easy enough to do while hammered, though you may want a designated driver to handle the scissors.

Though the hinge fix is mickey moused, mine lasted for weeks of heavy use.
Until the magnetic switch itself broke.

I don't have a fix for that, so I'll finally have to send the stupid thing back to EA.