Hi, everyone. Man, I am SO psyched to pass on these two little tidbits I uncovered this last week! As a few of you know, I recently got some "new" (vintage) Ludwig gear. Two of the items that were included were a well-worn SpeedKing bass drum pedal and its contemporary side-kick, the SpurLok hi-hat pedal (the later one -"Big Beat" with the tension adjusting screw). As is the case many times with these pedals, a couple of small parts were missing....namely the little tab and screw that allows the heel plate of the SpeedKing to be converted from a "solid" footplate to a "hinged" footplate. The other missing part was the little "spike" that helps the SpurLok hi-hat from creeping -they almost always fall out and are often lost. Finding replacements for these parts may or may not be easy (I haven't checked!), but I Do know of some "home remedies" for these two problematic issues. Here goes:

I made a new spike for the hi-hat footplate by digging through my tray of old bolts ( I never throw anything away!) until I found one that jusssst fit into the hole in the hi-hat brace plate. The bolt I found had a large collar section that was un-threaded. I hack-sawed off the bolt head and the threaded part until I had just the smooth, collar-section only. I took that over and chucked it into my 3/8" drill and took that to my belt -sander (a bench grinder would work even better). Withe the bolt collar chucked into the drill, I started spinning it against the running belt sander until I had ground a point onto the bolt. Then, I re-chucked the opposite end into the drill and rounded off the other end of the bolt....Voila! -new spike for the hi-hat!

The SpeedKing conversion tab was even easier to make. I took an old "slug" (metal disk) that was punched out of an electrical outlet connection box that I had laying around...the slug, itself is about the size of a nickel...I drilled a hole near the edge of it and found a slotted, round head machine-screw that had a thread pattern that fit the screw hole on the underside of the the SpeedKing footplate...ground the length of the screw down to size and then attatched the slug as the new tab for the conversion-option. It's nearly a dead-match to the original!...AND it works like a charm! Now, I can put the heelplate in the "fixed" position the way I prefer it.

Anyway, many of us have discovered the problem of not having these parts available on Ebay (or wherever) when you need them. Sure, they are ALWAYS around when you DON'T need them, though! :) So, hopefully, this information will serve someone else well, too!

Peace!