Guitar Hero World Tour Homemade Cymbals

I bought Guitar Hero World Tour mostly to play the drums- the kit has three drums, two cymbals, and the kick drum pedal. A lot of people had trouble with their drums not working; mine were fine, but the cymbals weren't great. Sometimes they wouldn't register a hit and sometimes they'd register two hits.

There are several sets of instructions for making your own cymbals, so I figured why not. It was a good excuse to buy a soldering iron.

I made my own mounting too, which I like a lot better than the original kit because the cymbals don't wobble when you hit the drum pads and vice-versa. The only components of the original drum kit left are the A/D drum controller board and the wireless interface.

Materials

Piezo electric benders from Mouser (665-AB2040B and 665-AB2746B both work; the latter is bigger and easier to solder wires to)
1/8in mono audio jacks hardware. I bought 7 plugs and 10 jacks.
24awg wire
10K POTs. You'll want five, maybe more.
Some heavy plastic plates for the cymbals. These are particularly nice because they don't have any rims or ridges on the bottom.
Some metal plates and pans for the drums
Neoprene, mouse pads, or other padding
5/16in threaded rod from Home Depot (two one foot pieces, though I could have used less). You'll want four or five one foot pieces.
Nuts, washers, lock washers, and rubber washers to fit the rod
L-bracket with pre-drilled holes
C-clamps

You also need a drill, a file, a soldering iron, and solder.

Construction

Drill holes in the plates and pans. I started with a small bit and worked my way up to the 5/16 inch bit to reduce the chances of cracking the plate. For one cymbal I drilled the hole straight through; the other two I drilled at an angle so the cymbal would sit at an angle

Glue neoprene or mouse pads onto the drums and cymbals.

To mount the snare and high-hat, remove the top of the legs from the original stand. You can mount a piece of threaded rod in the top of each leg by putting it through the hole and holding it in place with a washer and nut on either side. The two nuts clamp down on the plastic leg to hold the rod. I needed to file a notch in the washer for the inside of the leg to make it fit.

To mount the remaining cymbals and drums, clamp the L-bracket to a table or desk and then attach the threaded rod it. You may be able to use bolts rather than threaded rod. Remember to put a washer and lock washer on either side to keep things from wobbling loose.

Solder wires onto the piezo electrics. One wire goes in the center part and the other around the outside. Solder a plug on the other end. Make sure you use enough wire to reach the drum set from wherever you want to mount your cymbal.

Attach the piezos to the drums and cymbals. I suggest using tape to start. You can glue them on later once you've found a spot that works well.

I mounted the 1/8" jacks on two small plastic boxes. There are two jacks for each color so it's easy to re-assign pads to colors when switching between Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

You need to remove the drum controller board and wireless controller (inside the ps3-style controller box) from the drum assembly. Just unscrew the screws on the bottom and it should come open. Then take a leap of faith and cut the wires to remove the controller boards (cut them as close to the sensors as possible so you have plenty of wire to work with).

Instead of attaching the wires from the controller board to the jacks, I ran them through a protoboard. Two jacks connect in parallel to each controller board connection. There's also a 10K pot in parallel with the connection to tune the sensitivity of each color's pads. If you're feeling fancy, you can also put a pot in series with each pad to tune that pad without changing the sensitivity of the other pad for that color.

Calibration

I didn't use the calibration software because I don't have the USB-midi cable. The piezos are pretty close to start with and you can tune the sensitivity with the POTs.

arolfe@mit.edu
1/16/11