Repair a Rockband Drum Pedal with Household Items

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!

Comments

[powerfox1995]

Thank you SO much... I had a pedal with a reinforced plate but the hinge broke several months ago and the CD tip fixed it. :D

[bounty1012]

I lol'd at the knife.

[savageinjun]

that is a really well done tut....except i repaired the peddle itself using a 3mm thick piece of plywood cut to shape of the pedal and used pitbull grip super glue to meld it together overnight. probably won't come in handy if you need a quick fix like yours. the hinge part i haven't had to fix yet as my son uses the front part of his foot to come down on the middle to top part of the peddle. i believe it comes down to 'finesse' and looking cool while playing over smash and bash.. well done on your tutorial. kudo's

[lordhedgie]

I took some photos of the steps I used to replace the cable. It's pretty simple to put a new cable in. The steps I used are documented here.

[stoopynoonoo]

I saw a version where 2 butter knives were duct taped under the pedal... It seemed to work pretty well... I wanted to ask: My pedal is halfway cracked through, but not entirely in half; do you think that I can just gorilla glue it up and be done with it?

[Sp4m]

I'm afraid not. As great as teh Gorilla glue is, the plastic in the pedal itself is fairly flexible, and we're dealing with a lot of repetetive force. Even if it did repair the damage perfectly (which it won't) the pedal would just start to break somewhere else. Your best bet is to step in w/ a permanent solution ASAP.

[stoopynoonoo]

darn...I just thought of something...Mighty putty! Do ya think that would work?

[cookies and milk]

Actually i just finished doing mine. Instead of the top, I did the bottom of the pedal. 1 on either side. This avoids the pain in your arches when you're hitting the beats. You might have to carve out some slots for the knife though so the sensor triggers. So, your choice, move the magnet at the bottom of the pedal or carve out some slots so the knives can have somewhere to go. If you broke a pedal, your chances of breaking another is pretty good. I took my temporary knives off and ordered a replacement pedal from a company www.pedalmasters.com Theres a bunch out there, buy one you like. I liked them cause they offered an all metal red colored pedal. I like red, what can I say. The next thing you'll have to be careful about is the drum sensor. Just after I replaced my pedal a few days later my sensor broke. I opened it up and found that the wire connected to the sensor had broken. If you carefully pry the cap off the drum you can resolder the wire again. Be careful about holding the brass(piezo disc) with your fingers while you're soldering. It gets hot pretty fast. Oh yeah, you'll have to make sure you are scraping the old crap or plastic that surrounds the wire before your solder joint heats up otherwise, you'll get what they call a cold joint and it'll break again. Good luck. I'm feeling pretty invinvible for fixing my drums so I'm gonna try to connect these sensors to some real drums and teach myself how to play, sorta like the light-up keys of those electric pianos? Anyone try before?

[Zideeane]

Nice one! it's about time somebody did this, I might send the link to a friend who's suffering from this. By the way, does the whole 'Knife on pedal' not make it uncomfortable on your foot?

[Sp4m]

Depending on the flatness of the knife, it can be uncomfortable. However, the butter knife fix is not supposed to be a long term solution. It is supposed to keep the party going until you can legitimately repair/ replace the thing.