My 60's rock band often plays at restaurants, so I need to be able to play quietly enough that the patrons can carry on conversations at their tables. It's a tall order, but since they are paying us to play (and feeding us, too), I guess I shouldn't complain.

As I get older, I am less inclined to want to carry an entire full drum set into and out of the gig. I sought a lighter solution and found an inexpensive RIMS PureCussion set on CL. It actually sounds pretty good when played with sticks, but when I play them with Hot Rods (which I call broomsticks), they sound pretty weak. We played twice last week at a restaurant with concrete floors. The place was extremely lively (acoustically-speaking), so using sticks was out of the question. The RIMS drums sounded bad.

So I need a solution for two needs: Lightweight, easy to carry drums, and; quiet drums. It also bothered me playing a RIMS set at gigs while I have great vintage drum sets at home.

I decided to give a mini-bass drum a try. I built the riser rig you see below. I know you can buy some risers fairly inexpensively, but I thought I'd take a stab at building one.

Here is my 1970 Oyster Black Pearl 16" floor tom serving as the bass drum. No modifications - just remove the legs and change the heads. The rims of the floor tom hold the riser together. I epoxied a piece of rubber to a door hinge for the pedal attachment. I tuned the 12 high and the 13 low, and there is plenty of tonal difference between the two. I still need to tune the 'bass', but without any effort, it sounds pretty good. I have a 13" Chinese-made Yamaha piccolo snare temporarily handling snare duties.

I think I can put all four drums in two cases, and they sound better with broomsticks than the RIMS set. I'll rehearse with them Friday, so I'll know better how they sound with our band.

Josh