Introduction: Drum Set Chandelier

My wife saw a drumset chandelier on line and decided she wanted it and I could create it. So I did.

Step 1: Ideas

I don't have access to a welder and I wanted to use as much drum/musical equipment hardware as possible. The main problem is I wanted three evenly spaced arms and most hardware is built with two or four sides.
I originally tried to used the base of a guitar stand, but there was not enough room to run all the wiring.
Also my original thought for wiring the bulbs ended up not working out. More on that later.

Step 2: More Ideas

So I was at band practice one night and I got the idea to use a microphone tripod base.
They aren't all created equally however. Most of mine are cheap plastic. I found the Tama mic stand bases looked good, had quite of bit of room and were made of metal.
Unfortunate I did not take any pictures from above. I drilled a hole in the mic stand for the wiring from the ceiling to come through. It feeds one arm. Then each box in each tom feeds the next arm. The last box feeds the bulb in the cymbal.

Step 3: Mounting the Kick Drum

I had to figure out how I was going to attach the kick drum to the downrod from the ceiling and how I was going to wire it.

I attached pipe flanges from the big box hardware store that fit on the ceiling fan downrods to a board (1" X 3") that cut to span the diameter of the kick drum. I mounted it using simple "L" brackets that I made from aluminum I had laying around.

Step 4: Revised Lights in Drums

So my original thought wouldn't work due to the amount of space the wiring took up and the fact that I had to daisy chain from drum to drum due to a lack of space for wiring and connectors.

I knew I could use standard 4 gang electrical boxes, but how could I attach them to the non-standard (for construction) tom arms? They are 7/8" in diameter and the electrical conduit is either 3/4" or 1". So I found plumbing fittings that slipped over 7/8" pipe to be soldered on and had a 3/4" thread on the other end which fit inside the standard electrical box conduit opening. That was perfect except that I needed to be able to remove it in order to mount the tom.

I drilled a hole and threaded it so the I could use a 6-32 screw to mount the fitting to the tom arm.

The microphone stand's outside diameter was very close to the inside diameter of the downrod, so I was able to slip it inside of a short length of downrod and mount it the same way as I mounted the plumbing fittings to the tom arms.

Step 5: Cymbal Light

I knew I wanted a cymbal to hang down from the whole thing and I wanted it to be lit as well.

I had some brushed nickel tubing left over from another project that a light fixture would thread into. The tubing was the perfect size to fit the adjuster of the microphone stand.

I polished an old cymbal with brass polish to make it super bright.

Step 6: Final Challenge, Hanging the Thing!

Our ceiling in the entryway of our home is 18' (about 6 meters) from the floor. This thing is way too heavy and unwieldy to hang using a ladder.

I tried to rent scaffolding, but the local equipment rental place didn't have anything tall enough that would fit in the entryway.

Fortunately my friend had a scaffold that would work.

Since this replaced a previously hung ceiling fan and weighed about the same, I was able to use the old box and ceiling fan mounting hardware.